The hidden Great the humble Wise, Yielding with them to God's good law Makes the Pantheon where he lies.

WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY.

Now that his noble form is clay,

One word for good old Thackeray,
One word for gentle Thackeray,

Spite of his disbelieving eye,

True Thackeray — a man who would not lie.

Among his fellows he was peer
For any gentleman that ever was ;
And if the lordling stood in fear
Of the rebuke of that satiric pen,

Or if the good man sometimes gave a tear,
They both were moved by equal cause,

They loved and hated him with honest cause ; 'T was Nature's truth that touched the men.

O nights of Addison and Steele,

And Swift, and all those men, return !
Oh, for some writer now to make me feel !
Oh, for some talker that can bid me burn,
Like him, with his majestic power
Of pathos, mixed with terrible attack,
And probing into records of the past,
Through some enchanted hour,

To show the white and black,

And what did not — and what deserved to last!

Poet and Scholar, 'tis in vain

We summon thee from those dim halls

Where only death is absolute and holds unquestioned reign.

Even Shakespeare must go downward in his dust

And lie with all the rest of us in rust

And mould and gloom and mildewed tomb
(Mildewed or May-dewed evermore a tomb),
Yet hoping still above the skies

To have his humble place among the just.

And so
"Hic Jacet," that is all
That can be said, or writ, or sung

Of him who held in such a thrall

With his melodious gift of pen and tongue, old and young.

Both nations

Honor's a hasty word to speak,

But now I say it solemnly and slow,

To the One Englishman most like the Greek
Who wrote "The Clouds " two thousand years ago.

ADSUM.

I.

The Angel came by night,

(Such angels still come down!)

And like a winter cloud

Passed over London town,

Along its lonesome streets

Where Want had ceased to weep,

Until it reached a house

Where a great man lay asleep ;

The man of all his time

Who knew the most of men,

The soundest head and heart,
The sharpest, kindest pen.
It paused beside his bed,
And whispered in his ear.
He never turned his head,

But answered, “I am here.”

II.

Into the night they went.

At morning, side by side,
They gained the sacred Place

Where the greatest Dead abide :
Where grand old Homer sits
In godlike state benign :
Where broods in endless thought
The awful Florentine.

Where sweet Cervantes walks,
A smile on his grave face :
Where gossips quaint Montaigne,
The wisest of his race:
Where Goethe looks through all
With that calm eye of his :
Where little seen but Light-
The only Shakespeare is!
When the new Spirit came,

They asked him, drawing near,

"Art thou become like us?"

He answered, "I am here."

CHARLES DICKENS.

DICKENS'S EARLIEST WRITINGS.

ONCERNING Dickens's earliest printed writings, Mr. James Grant, the well-known journalist and author, has supplied us with an account which differs much from what has been elsewhere said upon this part of our author's career. "It is everywhere stated," says Mr. Grant, "that the earliest productions from his pen made their appearance in the columns of the 'Morning Chronicle,' and that Mr. Jöhn Black, then editor of that journal, was the first to discover and duly to appreciate the genius of Mr. Dickens. The fact was not so. It is true that he wrote 'Sketches' afterwards in the 'Morning Chronicle,' but he did not begin them in that journal. Mr. Dickens first became connected with the 'Morning Chronicle,' as a reporter in the gallery of the House of Commons. This was in 1835–36; but Mr. Dickens had been previously engaged, while in his nineteenth year, as a reporter for a publication entitled the 'Mirror of Parliament,' in which capacity he occupied the very highest rank among the eighty or ninety reporters for the press then in Parliament. While in the gallery of the House of Commons, he was exceedingly reserved in his manners. Though interchanging the usual courtesies of life with all with whom he came into contact in the discharge of his professional duties, the only gentleman at that time in the gallery of the House of Commons with whom he formed a close personal intimacy was Mr. Thomas Beard, then a reporter for the

'Morning Herald,' and now connected with the newspaper press generally, as furnishing the court intelligence in the morning journals. The friendship thus formed between Mr. Dickens and Mr. Beard so far back as the year 1832 was, I believe, continued till the death of Mr. Dickens.

"It was about the year 1833-34, before Mr. Dickens's connection with the 'Morning Chronicle,' and before Mr. Black, then editor of that journal, had ever met with him, that he commenced his literary career as an amateur writer. He made his début in the latter end of 1834 or beginning of 1835, in the 'Old Monthly Magazine,' then conducted by Captain Holland, an intimate friend of mine. The 'Old Monthly Magazine ' had been started more than a quarter of a century before by Sir Richard Philips, and was for many years a periodical of large circulation and high literary reputation a fact which might be inferred from another fact, namely, that the 'New Monthly Magazine,' started by Mr. Colburn, under the editorial auspices of Mr. Thomas Campbell, author of The Pleasures of Hope,' appropriated the larger portion of its title. The 'Old Monthly Magazine' was published at half a crown, being the same price as 'Blackwood,' 'Fraser,' and 'Bentley's' magazines are at the present day.

“It was, as I have said, in this monthly periodical — not in the columns of the 'Morning Chronicle' that Mr. Dickens first appeared in the realms of literature. He sent, in the first instance, his contributions to that periodical anonymously. These consisted of sketches, chiefly of a humorous character, and were simply signed 'Boz.' For a long time they did not attract any special attention, but were generally spoken of in newspaper notices of the magazine as 'clever,' 'graphic,' and so forth.

"Early in 1836 the editorship of the 'Monthly Magazine'— the adjective 'Old' having been by this time dropped — came into my hands; and in making the necessary arrangements for its transfer from Captain Holland then, I should have mentioned, proprietor as well as editor -- I expressed my great admiration of the series of 'Sketches by Boz,' which had ap