apher John Forster in a private conversation; and he only
recurred to the subject once more when under the disguise of a novel he
told the story of the childhood of David Copperfield. By shifting the
horror from the realm of fact to that of fiction, perhaps he lifted the
weight of it from the secret recesses of his heart.

When his father's debts were relieved, the child regained his freedom
from servitude, but even then his schooling was desultory and
ineffective. Well might the elder Dickens, in a burst of candour, say to
a stranger who asked him about his son's education, 'Why indeed, sir,
ha! ha! he may be said to have educated himself.'

At the age of fifteen Charles embarked again on his career as a
wage-earner. At first he was taken into a lawyer's office, where he
filled a position somewhat between that of office-boy and clerk, and two
years later he was qualifying himself by the study of shorthand for the
profession of a parliamentary reporter, which his father was then
following. He entered 'the Gallery' in 1831, first representing the
_True Sun_ and later the well-known _Morning Chronicle_; and at
intervals he enlarged his experiences by journeys into the provinces to
report political meetings. Thus it was that he familiarized himself with
the mail coaches, the wayside hostelries, and the rich variety of types
that were to be found there; with London in most of its phases he was
already at home. So, when in 1834 he made his first attempts at writing
in periodical literature, although he was only twenty-two years old, he
had a wealth of first-hand experiences quite outside the range of the
man who is just finishing his leisurely passage through a public school
and university: of schools and offices, of parliaments and prisons, of
the street and of the high road, he had been a diligent and observant
critic; for many years he had practised the maxim of Pope: 'The proper
study of mankind is Man.'

Friends sprang up wherever he went. His open face, his sparkling eye,
his humorous tongue, his ready sympathy, were a passport to the
goodwill of those whom he met; few could resist the appeal. Many readers
will be familiar with the early portrait by Maclise; but his friends
tell us how little that did justice to the lively play of feature, 'the
spirited air and carriage' which were indescribable. On the top of a
mail coach, on a fresh morning, they must have won the favour of his
fellow travellers more easily than Al