eye and the feeling heart--were these nothing to have
acquired?

That so abnormal an education can have been entirely without
drawbacks, it is no part of my purpose to affirm. Tossed, as one may
say, to sink or swim amid the waves of life, where those waves ran
turbid and brackish, Dickens had emerged strengthened, triumphant. But
that some little signs should not remain of the straining and effort
with which he had won the land, was scarcely to be expected. He
himself, in his more confidential communications with Forster, seems
to avow a consciousness that this was so; and Forster, though he
speaks guardedly, lovingly, appears to be of opinion that a certain
self-assertiveness and fierce intolerance of advice or control[9]
occasionally discernible in his friend, might justly be attributed to
the harsh influence of early struggles and privations. But what then?
That system of education has yet to be devised which shall mould this
poor human clay of ours into flawless shapes of use and beauty. A man
may be considered fortunate indeed, when his training has left in him
only what the French call the "defects of his virtues," that is, the
exaggeration of his good qualities till they turn into faults. Without
his immense strength of purpose and iron will, Dickens might never
have emerged from obscurity, and the world would have been very
distinctly the poorer. One cannot be very sorry that he possessed
these gifts in excess.

And now, at last, having slightly sketched the history of his earlier
years, and endeavoured to show, however perfectly, what influences had
gone to the formation of his character, I proceed to consider the book
that lifted him to fame and fortune. The years of apprenticeship are
over, and the master-workman brings forth his finished work in its
flower of perfection. Let us study "Pickwick."

FOOTNOTES:

[5] _Macmillan's Magazine_, July, 1870.

[6] It was the pet name of one of his brothers; that was why he took
it.

[7] Froude's "Thomas Carlyle: A History of his Life in London."

[8] Transcriber's Note: The word "time" appears to be missing from the
original text.

[9] "I have heard Dickens described by those who knew him," says Mr.
Edmund Yates, in his "Recollections," "as aggressive, imperious, and
intolerant, and I can comprehend the accusation.... He was imperious
in the sense that his life was conducted on the _sic volo sic jubeo_
principle, and that everything gave way before him. Th