'Dictionary of Dates' and the 'Book of Dignities' (I believe I am right in the titles), was working, to my knowledge, under the pressure of extreme destitution, aggravated by wretchedly bad health, and a heart slowly breaking through efforts indefatigable, but vain, to support in comfort a wife and a young family. I could not afford him at the moment any material relief, and I wrote to Charles Dickens, stating his miserable case. My letter was no sooner received than it was answered – and how. By a visit to his suffering brother, and not of condolence only, but of assistance rescue! Charles Dickens offered his purse to poor Haydn, and subsequently brought the case before the Literary Society, and so appealingly as to produce an immediate supply of £60. I need not say another word. I need not remark that such benevolence is not likely to occur solitarily. The fact I communicate I learned from poor Haydn himself. Dickens never breathed a word to me about it."

METHODICAL HABITS.

He did not work by fits and starts, but had regular hours for labor, commencing about ten and ending about two. It is an old saying that easy writing is very difficult reading; Mr. Dickens's works, so easily read, were by no means easily written. He labored at them prodigiously, both in their conception and execution. During the whole time that he had a book in hand, he was much more thoughtful and preoccupied than in his leisure moments.

His hours and days were spent by rule. He rose at a certain time, he retired at another, and though no precisian, it was not often that his arrangements varied. His hours for writing were between breakfast and luncheon, and when there was any work to be done no temptation was sufficiently strong to cause it to be neglected. This order and regularity followed him through the day. His mind was essentially methodical; and in his long walks, in his recreations, in his labor, he was governed by rules laid down for himself by himself, rules well studied beforehand, and rarely departed from. The socalled men of business, the people whose own exclusive de

votion to the science of profit and loss makes them regard doubtfully all to whom that same science is not the main object in life, would have been delighted and amazed at this side of Dickens's character.

No writer set before himself more laboriously the task of giving the public the very best. A great artist who once painted his portrait while he was in the act of writing one of the most popular of his stories, relates that he was astonished at the trouble Dickens seemed to take over his work, at the number of forms in which he would write down a thought before he hit out the one which seemed to his fastidious fancy the best, and at the comparative smallness of manuscript each day's sitting seemed to have produced. Those, too, who have seen the original MSS. of his works, many of which he had bound and kept at his residence at Gad's Hill, describe them as full of interlineations and alterations.

MANNER OF LITERARY COMPOSITION.

A writer in a weekly journal says: "I remember well one evening, spent with him by appointment, not wasted by intrusion, when I found him, according to his own phrase, ‘picking up the threads' of 'Martin Chuzzlewit' from the printed sheets of the half volume that lay before him. This accounts for the seeming incompleteness of some of his plots; in others the design was too strong and sure to be influenced by any outer consideration. He was only confirmed and invigorated by the growing applause, and marched on, like a successful general, with each victory made easier by the preceding one. seemed hardly to come within his nature to compose in solitary fashion, and wait the event of a whole work. No doubt this resulted in part from his character as a journalist; and so did his utter disdain of the shams which it is the express province of journalism to detect and expose.

It

"His composition, easy as it seems in the reading — indeed, so natural that it would be difficult to substitute any truer word in any place was, we are told, elaborate and slow. But in his happier days the process was by no means wearisome. It

was the love of the idea, that could not let it go till he had nursed it to its utmost growth. In this he resembled many of the greatest humorists, whose enjoyment of their own fancies is evidenced by the impossibility of passing them into print while a single mirth-stirring thought or word could be added to make the picture perfect. The result was invaluable. With the exception only of Shakespeare, among English writers of drama and fiction, no other author than Dickens yields so many sentences on each page of sterling value in themselves; no other author can be read and re-read with such certainty of finding fresh pleasure on every perusal. Nowhere, with the one exception, does so much thought go to finish the production. It is jeweler's work, inlaying and enriching every part."

BLANCHARD JERROLD ON DICKENS.

I was passing in review masses of correspondence, betimes, on June 10, 1870, clearing the weeds from the flowers, and tying up the precious papers of a life passed in the thick of the literary activities of my time, when I received a letter: "I should have written to you earlier to-day but from the smart blow of this sudden illness of our dear Charles Dickens, who had engaged to meet me this very afternoon (June 9) at 3 o'clock, little dreaming of what was to put aside the appointment." I rang for the morning papers.

Charles Dickens had passed away from us! Lay before me his letter in which he told me how, on a certain June day, travelling from Gad's Hill to London, a bluff city man had piped over the edge of his morning paper, “Do you see this? Douglas Jerrold is dead!" Dickens was inexpressibly shocked, for he had seen into the heart of his friend; and they had parted only a few days before, with the intention of spending some happy hours in the house by Rochester. "Few of his friends," I have the words before me in a blurred writing not often written by that firm and willing hand, — “ I think, can have had more favorable opportunities of knowing him, in his gentlest and most affectionate aspect, than I have had. He was one of the gentlest and most affectionate of men.”

So of Dickens. Who knew him best and closest, saw how little he would ever produce to the outer world, of the bright, chivalrous, engaging, and deep and tender heart that beat within his bosom. The well of kindness was open to mankind, and from it generations will drink; but it was never fathomed. Charles Dickens, as all writers about him have testified, was so graciously as well as lavishly endowed by Nature that every utterance was sunny, every sentiment pure, every emotional opinion instinctively right, — like a woman's, The head that governed the richly-stored heart was wise, prompt, and alert at the same time. He communicated to all he did the delightful sense of ease with power. Prodigal as he was, he seemed ever to reserve more love and tenderness than he gave. His vigor was sustained, as well as brilliant and daring. His mind, so marked in its self-respect and equal poise, was never weak on great occasions, as the judicial mind so often is. There was something feminine in the quality that led him to the right verdict, the appropriate word, the core of the heart of the question in hand. The air about him vibrated with his activity, and his surprising vitality. In a difficulty men felt safe, merely because he was present. Most easily, among all thinkers it has been my fortune to know, was he master of every situation in which he placed himself. Not only because of the latent, conscious power that was in him, and the knightly cheerfulness which became the pure-minded servant of humanity who had used himself to victory; but because he adopted always the old plain advice, and deliberated well before he acted with the vigor which was inseparable from any activity of his.

The art with which Charles Dickens managed men and women was nearly all emotional. As in his books, he drew at will upon the tears of his readers; in his life he helped men with a spontaneous grace and sweetness which are indescribable. The deep, rich, cheery voice; the brave and noble countenance; the hand that had the fire of friendship in its grip, — all played their part in comforting in a moment the creature who had come to Charles Dickens for advice, for

help, for sympathy. When he took a cause in hand, or a friend under his wing, people who knew him breathed in a placid sense of security. He had not only the cordial will to be of use wherever his services could be advantageously enlisted, but he could see at a glance the exact thing he might do; and beyond the range of his conviction as to his own power, or the limit of proper asking or advancing, no power on earth could move him the breadth of a hair.

Slow to adopt a cause, Charles Dickens was the first in the battle for it when he had espoused it. He had the qualities of the perfect trooper, as well as the far-seeing captain. I have a letter of his, about Italy, dated 1844, in which, amid hearty gossip, he turns to a cause that was dear to him at the time. "Come and see me in Italy," he says to my father. "Let us smoke a pipe among the vines. I have taken a little house surrounded by them, and no man in the world should be more welcome to it than you; " and from the midst of the vines he turns to the Sanatorium in the New Road, nearly opposite the Devonshire Place in which so many wisely-happy evenings have been passed. "Is your modesty really a confirmed habit, or could you prevail upon yourself, if you are moderately well, to let me call you up for a word or two at the Sanatorium dinner? There are some men excellent men connected with that institution who would take the very strongest interest in your doing so, and do advise me one of these days, that if I can do it well and unaffectedly, I may." Dickens had steadfastness, endurance, thoroughness, in all he undertook. If he invited a friend to his house, and it was at a distance, he would write the most minute directions, a way-bill, and enliven every mile-stone with a point of humor or a happy suggestion of pleasure to come out of the excursion. "Think it over." (This from Switzerland to a dear friend in London.) "I could send you the minutest particulars of the journey. It's nearly all railroad and steamboat, and the easiest in the world." I have another letter of invitation to Paris, written some three-and-twenty years ago. Amid exquisite touches of humor, and in the glow of his friendship, lie details of the pre