Title page

FOREWORD

One day, a little more than a hundred years ago, a boy was walking along a crowded street in London. It is likely that Dick Whittington had walked on the very same street about the time when he heard Bow Bells ring. But this boy was not thinking about the bells of London. He had been reading a story in a book, and he was thinking of the people in the story, especially of a man called Leander who swam across the straits named the Hellespont.

The story of Hero and Leander is told in a poem. These two people were in love with one another. But Hero, who was very beautiful, was a priestess of Aphrodite, and she was not supposed to fall in love or marry. Leander lived at Abydos, which is on one side of the straits of the Hellespont. Hero lived in a high tower at Sestos, which is on the other side of the straits. The shores are rocky and dangerous, beautiful to look at, but hazardous for sailors and ships. Tides and winds make it difficult to sail through the straits, and very difficult at times to swim across from shore to shore. Leander used to swim from Abydos to Sestos after nightfall to see Hero, who had become his wife; and Hero, on her high tower, held a lighted lamp that shone like a star to guide Leander so that he would not be dashed on the rocks.

The name of the boy who had been reading the story was Samuel Taylor Coleridge. He was a country boy, the son of a clergyman, and he was at a boarding school in London. The school was for boys whose parents had not much money or who had no parents living.

On a school holiday, after breakfast, at which there was not a great deal to eat, the boys who were boarders were sent out into London and were not expected to come back until nightfall. Sometimes, they had nothing to eat all day long until supper-time. Coleridge was one of the boys who had to spend his holidays in this fashion.

On one holiday, Coleridge, as he walked along the crowded street, began to imagine how it would feel if he were swimming the Hellespont with Leander. You know how often we think when we are reading an interesting book that we are living with the people in the story. Being greatly absorbed in his thoughts, Coleridge began to move his arms as if he were swimming. If he had been in a field by himself, or on an empty street, no one would have minded. But Coleridge was on a crowded street, and by and by one of his arms struck a man who was passing, and his hand caught in the man's pocket. The man thought that Coleridge, who was only a boy, was trying to steal from him. However, he asked Coleridge a good many questions, and discovered that the boy had been reading in a book the story of Hero and Leander, and had been imagining that he was swimming across the Hellespont.

When the man found that Coleridge loved reading, but could not get the books he wanted easily, he took the boy to a library, which was not a free library but one where people had to pay a fee, and the man arranged for Coleridge to be allowed to read there.

Many stories are told of the different ways in which boys and girls have found famous books which they have read with enjoyment, and never forgotten. Another boy called Samuel—Samuel Johnson—had been looking for apples that he knew were hidden somewhere. He climbed upon a step-ladder to look behind the rows of books in his father's book shop, and while he was looking for the apples he found Plutarch's Lives. Very likely the boy Samuel Johnson began reading the book, and forgot about the apples. Another boy once was told to watch a fire, which was burning rubbish in a field, so that it would not spread and burn the fences. He watched the fire for a while, but he had a book in his pocket and presently he forgot to watch, and so the fence was burned. Likely he was punished at the time, but years after his friends used to tell the story, for the boy had become an eminent man. How many of us have climbed into trees to read books in a leafy solitude! Louisa May Alcott was one of the girls, later known for her charming stories, who had a special tree into which she used to climb, so that no one should interrupt her while she was reading.

This book which you are reading now is meant to help you to find books that you will enjoy. You may begin at the first chapter; perhaps this is the best way. Or you may look at the list of chapters, and try the one which seems to you most interesting. But when you have read that chapter, come back to the beginning and start over again.

Fairy tales and stories of marvels you will find described in Part III, also stories of heroes, and such stories as Alice in Wonderland, Kipling's stories, and Malory's Morte d'Arthur, a great book telling of knights and their adventures.

The books in Part I are wonderfully interesting. In this Part you will find examples of some of the ways in which we may enjoy books of famous authors, for instance, the work of novelists like Dickens and Scott, and the plays of a great dramatist like Shakespeare. First, we may read some of their stories or plays; then we may learn of the lives of these authors, especially about that part of their lives when they were young which is always interesting; and finally, we can read of the world as it was when these writers lived in it and of the effect their work has had on this world of ours.

Part II is about romance and adventure. In Part IV you will find ballads and stories in rhyme or verse. Part V tells of some of the greatest writers and their work. Part VI is meant to help boys and girls to be good citizens, and to undertake all kinds of responsibilities when they are men and women. In one of the chapters of Part VI there is a list of books, many of which are biographies of noted men and women, but there are also books about such subjects as flying, inventions, science, hobbies, birds, flowers, gardens and mountain climbing. The last chapter in Part VI tells of some books of travel and discovery.

The books in Part VII are specially enjoyable, because they are intimate books; and you will find great poetry spoken of in Part VIII.

We do not all like the same books; and this is likely the best way, for some books which may seem dull to us, other people find interesting. What is important is for each of us to discover the books we enjoy most.

So if we do not happen to like Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift, there is no great harm done, although Dean Swift was a notable writer. And if some of you do not care for Robert Louis Stevenson's Child's Garden of Verse now, the chances are that by the time you are over sixty, you will think it a charming book, and you may even repeat the verses aloud to your grand-children.

We never know when we may discover, hidden in the midst of dullness perhaps, some gem of a story or poem; and this is one of the reasons why most of us love reading, and will take a good deal of trouble to find the books we enjoy.

Before you read this book, perhaps you had better ask yourselves the question, what kind of books each one of you cares for most? And then, after that, ask yourselves another question, what kinds of books do you think you would like to enjoy? The last question is worth considering with not a little care; for when we think about it, we really set out on a journey into the world of books.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following authors, literary agents and publishers, for permission to quote in this volume certain excerpts as follows:

To Mr. Walter de la Mare and Messrs. James B. Pinker & Sons, for an extract from "The Listeners"; to Mrs. James Elroy Flecker and Messrs. A. P. Watt & Son, for an extract from the late Mr. James Elroy Flecker's Hassan, and to Messrs. Macmillan & Co., Ltd., for a quotation from The Iliad of Homer (edited by Lang, Leaf and Myers) and for a short passage from the late Mr. Thomas Hardy's The Dynasts.

CONTENTS

PART I

DICKENS, SCOTT, SHAKESPEARE, THE BIBLE

CHAPTER

I  SOME OF DICKENS' NOVELS AND CHARACTERS

II  CHARLES DICKENS: BOY AND MAN

III  WHAT DICKENS DID FOR HUMANITY

IV  THE WAVERLEY NOVELS

V  SCOTT'S OWN STORY

VI  THE TEMPEST AND OTHER OF SHAKESPEARE'S PLAYS

VII  SHAKESPEARE: THE GREAT WORLD ITSELF

VIII  STORIES FROM THE BIBLE

IX  LIVING WATERS

PART II

ROMANCE AND ADVENTURE

X  DUMAS. HUGO. STEVENSON

XI  ROBINSON CRUSOE. LORNA DOONE. HEREWARD. WESTWARD HO! ROUND THE WORLD IN EIGHTY DAYS. TWENTY THOUSAND LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA. MIDSHIPMAN EASY. PETER SIMPLE. TWO YEARS BEFORE THE MAST. THE GOLDEN DOG

XII  LAVENGRO. THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS. TOM SAWYER. HUCKLEBERRY FINN. KIM. SARD HARKER. THE LIVING FOREST

PART III

SONGS OF HEROES, MYTHS, FAIRY TALES AND MARVELS

XIII  THE ILIAD AND THE ODYSSEY. GREEK HEROES. TANGLEWOOD TALES. THE WONDER BOOK

XIV  ÆSOP'S FABLES. GRIMM'S FAIRY TALES. HANS ANDERSEN'S FAIRY TALES. THE ARABIAN NIGHTS. MALORY'S MORTE D'ARTHUR

XV  ALICE IN WONDERLAND. THROUGH THE LOOKING-GLASS. THE GOLDEN AGE. THE WIND IN THE WILLOWS. FOUR BOOKS BY A. A. MILNE. RIP VAN WINKLE

XVI  THE JUNGLE BOOKS. JUST SO STORIES. PUCK OF POOK'S HILL. REWARDS AND FAIRIES. THE BLUE BIRD. PETER PAN. KILMENY

PART IV

BALLADS, LAYS, AND STORIES IN VERSE

XVII  PERCY'S RELIQUES. CHEVY CHASE AND THE BATTLE OF OTTERBOURNE. SIR PATRICK SPENS. THE NORTHERN MUSE

XVIII  THE LADY OF THE LAKE. MARMION. JOHN GILPIN. EDINBURGH AFTER FLODDEN. HORATIUS. THE ARMADA

XIX  HIAWATHA. FRENCH CHANSONS IN QUEBEC. A CHRISTMAS SONG

PART V

SOME GREAT IMAGINATIVE WRITERS

XX  DANTE. CERVANTES. SPENSER

XXI  JOHN BUNYAN AND THE PILGRIM'S PROGRESS

XXII  THACKERAY. MEREDITH. HARDY

XXIII  JANE AUSTEN. GEORGE ELIOT. THE BRONTES

PART VI

HISTORY, POLITICS, BIOGRAPHY, TRAVEL

XXIV  WHAT IS HISTORY?

XXV  THE MEANING OF POLITICS

XXVI  HISTORIES

XXVII  BOSWELL'S LIFE OF JOHNSON

XXVIII  READING FOR WHAT YOU WANT TO BE

XXIX  TRAVEL AND DISCOVERY

PART VII

ESSAYS, CRITICISM, LETTERS, DIARIES

XXX  CHARLES LAMB AND HAZLITT: ESSAYISTS AND CRITICS

XXXI  LETTERS AND LETTER WRITERS. PEPYS AND OTHER DIARISTS

PART VIII

POETRY

XXXII  POETRY AND BEAUTY

XXXIII  POETRY AND TIME

XXXIV  READING FOR YOUR OWN COUNTRY. ENGLISH LITERATURE AND ITS BRANCHES

AFTERWORD

INDEX

PART I

DICKENS, SCOTT, SHAKESPEARE, THE BIBLE

CHAPTER I

SOME OF DICKENS' NOVELS AND CHARACTERS

It is an odd reflection how silent a book may seem when it is waiting on a shelf to be read. But once its covers are opened, and our eyes follow the lines of print for page after page, voices speak, people that we had not known before become familiar to us or old friends give us greeting; thoughts, knowledge, events, pass from the silent pages into our minds. Some books possess this property of rich and glowing life in a high degree. No books surely have it more abundantly than the novels of Charles Dickens.

Here are scores of friends for us, playmates, companions. If anyone has a fit of loneliness, or should anyone be looking for change and variety, let him open one of Dickens' novels. Which one will he choose first? A boy or girl is well advised who takes, shall we say, David Copperfield or Pickwick Papers. One or the other will make an excellent beginning. Having read one, or both, it is unlikely that the reader will refrain from adding five, six, seven, eight, or even twelve more novels by Dickens to the list of books he is happy to remember having read.

What are the names of Dickens' other better known novels? Nicholas Nickleby, Oliver Twist, The Old Curiosity Shop, Barnaby Rudge, Martin Chuzzlewit, Dombey and Son, Bleak House, Little Dorrit, A Tale of Two Cities, Great Expectations, Our Mutual Friend. But still we must add the Christmas books, for no one, old or young, should lose the benefit of having read A Christmas Carol. And there is also the unfinished novel Edwin Drood, probably more talked of still than any other story of a mystery, new or old. It is nearly sixty years since Dickens left the story incomplete, but how gladly many people still would discover the secret ending that the great novelist had planned in his mind.

Once read, Dickens' novels cling to the memory. The characters he made inhabit this world of ours as substantially, it seems, as people do who have been born not from imagination merely. As lately as the spring of 1928 a London hotel, the Adelphi, changed owners. In a brief history of the place a list of persons was given who had visited it, ending with the remark that Mr. Pickwick had had his first dinner there after being released from prison. The other people mentioned were what we describe as historical characters. Mr. Pickwick, although thousands of people know him so well that if they met him on the street they could not possibly fail to recognize him, is the miraculous product of Dickens' imagination. If you have not read Pickwick Papers, in a few hours you too may know Mr. Pickwick, and he will be for you also a lifetime friend.

When we read these stories for the first time, we must be prepared to become acquainted with Dickens' characters much in the same way as we meet strangers in everyday life. His people are odd, exuberant, amusing, extravagant; they are too strange to be true, we may say to ourselves. But as we read on, we come to know them so well that the oddness and queerness seem to wear off. We look into their hearts and forget to be surprised by their extraordinary looks and characteristics. Sam Weller is odd, but he is the most delightful, amusing young man on his own, once boots at the White Hart Inn. Like Mr. Pickwick, Sam lives in Pickwick Papers. No one could imagine a better Sam Weller than Dickens' creation, for the simple reason that to make a better Sam Weller is impossible.

It is a great, a glorious adventure to sit out of doors in summer, or in a warm, quiet room in winter, and read one of Dickens' novels. What happenings, what delightful, absorbing people, what a stir of life, what laughter, gaiety, bravery, what wonderful meetings with high and low fortune!

The world of Dickens' novels is a world of coaching days, of old English roads and inns, of feasts and conviviality; a sporting world, often hard and cruel, in which existed bad old customs against which Dickens fought with all his might; a boisterous world of strange adventures, great friendships, and measureless laughter. These books are crowded with people, diverting and friendly, grotesque and menacing, or grotesque outside but with golden hearts hidden behind the queer exteriors, loving people, heartless people, beautiful people, brave, true friends, friends of everybody.

We have already spoken of Mr. Pickwick and Sam Weller, his man or valet. Mr. Pickwick's benevolence, his goodness of heart, innocence and simplicity make us love him more and more as the story unfolds. Sam's wit and audacity, his extraordinary good humour and high spirits, his devotion to Mr. Pickwick, his independence and self-reliance, make Sam so real that he seems never far away. He is always only round the corner of our minds and will appear jauntily as soon as we think of him. In the one book, Pickwick Papers, there are a dozen other characters only less wonderful than these two. Would anyone prove at once how diverting and delightful such a book can be, let him read of Christmas at Dingley Dell in chapter 28, or the Adventure at the Great White Horse Inn, chapter 22, or the trial of Bardell against Pickwick, chapter 34, or for natural feeling simply expressed the lines in which Tony Weller, Sam's father, tells of Mrs. Weller's death in chapter 52, or the downfall of Mr. Stiggins, in the same chapter, or, in the last chapter of all, of Sam's devotion to Mr. Pickwick.

Striking characters of a like description are to be found in all Dickens' novels. David Copperfield is probably the richest of all, in this respect, although one can easily imagine a dispute amongst the warm admirers of Dickens as to which novel is pre-eminent in the possession of immortal characters. Those who love David Copperfield best can scarcely discuss the book with detachment; it belongs, as it were, to such a reader's own special family life. The novel holds a wonderful company of people: David himself, Peggotty, her brother and nephew, Little Em'ly, Mrs. Gummidge, Miss Betsey Trotwood, Steerforth, Traddles, the magnificent Wilkins Micawber and Mrs. Micawber, Uriah Heep, Miss Mowcher, Mr. Spenlow, Dora, and many, many others. David Copperfield was Dickens' own favourite among his books.

In Nicholas Nickleby is the infamous school, Dotheboys Hall, and Wackford Squeers, the schoolmaster. Dickens' crusades for reform will be considered in another chapter. But Mrs. Nickleby is one of the most memorable of Dickens' foolish characters. Surely no other writer has achieved so many delineations of the silly person, masterpieces touched with an unerring hand. Yet, and this point is perhaps the crown of Dickens' genius, these foolish characters of his often reveal, before the novels to which they belong are ended, some nobility of character, some goodness of heart, some greatness in conduct or of nature which makes us bow before them as belonging to the highest ranks of human nature. Toots in Dombey and Son is a very foolish person, but Toots saying goodbye to Florence Dombey shows a chivalry comparable with that of Sir Philip Sidney.

Dick Swiveller and the Marchioness belong to The Old Curiosity Shop. Barnaby Rudge and his raven Grip are easily found. Mr. Pecksniff, Sairey Gamp and Betsey Prig, terrible examples of hypocrisy and heartlessness, are from Martin Chuzslewit. But the same book has loveable Tom Pinch and indomitable Mark Tapley, the champion of courage and good cheer in adversity. Tiny Tim and Bob Cratchit live forever in A Christmas Carol. Paul and Florence, Captain Cuttle, Susan Nipper, Mr. Toots, Cousin Feenix, belong to the crowded pages of Dombey and Son. Bleak House is a wonderful story; if one chooses Caddy Jellyby from its pages it is not because a dozen other characters are not as interesting. In Great Expectations the boyhood of Pip is marvellously portrayed. Anyone who has read Our Mutual Friend can never forget Mr. and Mrs. Boffin, or Lizzie Hexam, or the R. Wilfer family, or Silas Wegg, or Mr. Venus, or the dolls' dressmaker, Jenny Wren, or Johnny the orphan, and Mrs. Betty Higden and Sloppy.

It is a point not to be overlooked that Dickens takes his characters from any occupation, but preferably, it would seem, from the humblest. Goodness of heart, wit, humour, gaiety, stout-heartedness, are proved by him to exist in the most depressing circumstances. His heroes and heroines do not wear crowns or jewels. They are not specially learned, and they are rarely wealthy or beautiful, but they are good company, light-hearted, and kind-hearted. Love, faithfulness, self-sacrifice, purity, sincerity, courage and cheerfulness shine out from his pages so brightly and so engagingly that we cannot but long to join the company of those who travel the same road.

CHAPTER II

CHARLES DICKENS—BOY AND MAN

The best way to understand Charles Dickens is to learn to know him first when he was a boy. Odd though it may sound, we can actually become acquainted with the boy Charles Dickens. David Copperfield, at least in the beginning of his story, is a close delineation of the writer's own boyhood. David's feelings, and many of the happenings of his youth, are the feelings and the happenings which made Charles Dickens the boy and the man that he was.

While this is true, it is true at the same time that we should use caution lest we read into a story more than the author intends us to find either about himself or of other people. Human beings are so wonderfully and strangely made that no mortal, no matter how hard he tries, can ever draw a perfectly true or a perfectly just picture of anyone. Some quality always escapes analysis, and each person living now, or who ever has lived, remains himself only. Dickens drew a wonderful picture of himself in David Copperfield. This is one reason why we love David and understand him so well. Yet David Copperfield is not exactly Charles Dickens. We can scarcely believe for one thing that David ever could have written as well about Charles as Charles has written about David.

When Dickens was a boy of ten he was sent to work in a blacking warehouse by his father who was at that time in a debtors' prison. People, when Dickens was a boy, were sometimes left in prison for a long time if they could not pay their debts. Years afterwards, Dickens wrote of the secret agony of his soul while he worked at covering blacking bottles and of how he longed for companions, boys of his own age. Indeed, so unhappy were his recollections that when he was grown-up he mentioned these years to one person only, John Forster, the friend who wrote his biography; to remember this part of his life always gave him great pain.

Charles Dickens was born at Portsmouth, Hampshire, England, February 7th, 1812. Life in the Dickens family was not settled or stable. They moved frequently, and were always more or less uncertain as to the future. The father, as has been said, at one time was in a debtors' prison, and the family, including Charles, became familiar with the strange life of The Marshalsea which is described with exactitude in more than one of Dickens' novels, but especially in Little Dorrit. At other times, and even in the Marshalsea, life for the Dickens family was interesting, even exciting. Charles was unhappy because of the work to which he was put, and because he saw clearly, although he was only a little fellow, that he was losing the chance of obtaining an education. He was, however, an extraordinarily observant lad and read with passionate absorption all the books that he could find. Pictures of the strange people he met and of the queer things they did remained with him throughout his life, and from this material gathered in his youth he fashioned his great novels.

He had dreams of what he would be and of what he would do. The family lived for a number of years in Chatham, his father being a clerk in the navy pay-office at the dockyard, and he used to see, when he was walking with his father in the neighbouring country, a house called Gadshill Place. He planned then that some day he would own that house. It was in 1856 that he became the owner of Gadshill when he was forty-four years old, a considerable achievement for the boy of ten who had washed and re-covered blacking bottles. But many greater achievements than this were brought about by the genius of Charles Dickens.

All his life these youthful days were lived over again in his stories and in his own memory. To a not inconsiderable extent they influence us, too, because of the novels which Dickens wrote. The roads of Kent, where he went walking when they lived in Chatham, are the great roads of his novels. The characters he wrote about were created from traits and habits which he had observed in people known by the boy Charles Dickens. The unjust laws and cruel customs against which he fought so powerful a battle were those whose victims had excited his pity long before he had grown up.

When the family fortunes were brighter, Charles Dickens went to school again for a couple of years. But from the time he was fifteen, he earned his own living. He began as a clerk or office boy. Later, he studied shorthand, and entered the reporters' gallery of the House of Commons when he was nineteen. He began to write articles and sketches soon afterwards. His first book, Sketches by Boz, was published when he was twenty-four. In the same year, he married Catherine Hogarth, the eldest daughter of George Hogarth, a fellow writer on The Morning Chronicle, who had been kind to him.

From this year, 1836, until his death in 1870, he wrote a series of novels and stories with extraordinary speed and diligence. He travelled much, but never ceased writing. He gave many public readings from his own works. He visited the United States and Canada in 1842, and in 1867-68 gave readings in the eastern cities of the United States. Wherever he went he was received with acclaim, and he was at all times an object of public attention. His gifts were great, but no one who follows the story of his life can help being struck by his extraordinary capacity for hard work. All his life he laboured more assiduously than any ordinary person can work; and when he stopped writing, with one of his novels unfinished, he was, as far as we can tell, still in the enjoyment of almost undiminished powers as a writer.

Dickens had been a sickly boy, often ill and suffering. As soon as he could be put to stand on a chair, so young was he, he had given childish recitations and sung childish songs for the entertainment of his father's and mother's friends. He was, in effect, as a child somewhat spoiled by too much attention. Throughout his mature life he lived at white heat; ordinary quiet days had no attraction for him. He was inclined to think that people treated him unjustly. In truth, one is reluctantly compelled to admit that Dickens was over-sensitive and somewhat quarrelsome. These are, perhaps, the only faults, certainly the main faults, in his character. It can be said with justice, however, that he was continually under strain and pressure from overwork; he was, as well, excitable by temperament.

One of the best brief descriptions of Dickens' appearance is by Leigh Hunt. "What a face is his to meet in a drawing room! It has the life and soul in it of fifty human beings." He lived with an intensity which it is scarcely possible for less intense people to understand. He gave his wonderful vitality without stint to the writing of his books. When he finished David Copperfield his life had been so absorbed in its characters that he wrote "I seem to be sending some part of myself into the Shadowy World." Thackeray said of A Christmas Carol, "It seems to me a national benefit..." Dickens was generous in his praise of the work of other writers, and deeply grateful for any kindness shown himself, no matter how slight the benefit was. He quarrelled, one may say, with America as well as with some of his friends and contemporaries, but years afterwards he wrote in a postscript to a later edition of Martin Chuzzlewit a warm tribute to the magnanimity of the country. His married life was not altogether happy. But in Forster's Life, there is a story that his daughters Mary and Kate having taken pains to teach him the steps of the polka so that he might dance it at their brother's birthday party, Dickens, waking in the middle of the night before the party, was afraid that he had forgotten the proper steps, and immediately got up out of bed to practise them.

Two of his characters, Wilkins Micawber and Mr. Dorritt, are drawn, to some extent at least, from the character of his father; Mrs. Nickleby is said to be a portrait of his mother. It can at least be conceded that Mr. Micawber and Mrs. Nickleby are among the greatest characters ever created by Dickens. Apparently he had no unkind intention; still, one would rather that he had denied himself the use of this material. He was attached to his father and mother and took pleasure in providing for their older years. He bought them a house a mile from the town of Exeter and looked after the furnishing of the house himself.

His feeling for his children was deeply rooted in his heart. It expressed itself in numberless ways, never more plainly than in a letter to his youngest son written on the eve of the boy's leaving to join his brother in Australia. (Forster's Life of Charles Dickens, Book xi, Part iii).

Dickens' popularity can hardly be over-estimated. There is a story that while Dombey and Son was being published in monthly parts, a man who kept a snuff shop in London and had as well a number of lodgers, read aloud the month's instalment on the first Monday of every month at a tea. Only those who paid for the tea shared in it, but all the lodgers could listen to the story. The incident affords a striking picture of the power Dickens had over all kinds of people. Recent reminiscences by one of Dickens' sons tell of how when he was walking once with his father along the broad walk at the Zoo in London, they met a little girl running ahead of her father and mother; when she saw who it was she ran back crying, "Oh, mummy! mummy! it is Charles Dickens." Dickens was greatly pleased.

He made for everyone who lived with him a life of constant gaiety and variety. Well-known and celebrated people shared this entertainment. His heart was passionately attached to the cause of the poor and oppressed. He had unfailing belief in human nature, and was hopeful of everyone and everything. A well-known statesman who lived in Queen Victoria's youth once said at a private dinner at which Dickens was present, "Nothing is ever so good as it is thought." Dickens at once answered him, "And nothing so bad." We remember that few opportunities came to him. His great career was the result of his own exertions. There was no one at all to help him when he was young. We think with pride and admiration of his great achievements, and we love him for his affectionate nature and goodness of heart. No one can read Dickens' novels without learning what his character was, ardent, generous and loving. He was a great novelist and a great benefactor.

CHAPTER III

WHAT DICKENS DID FOR HUMANITY

Dickens from his childhood seems to have had a strong desire to leave the world a better place for other people than he had found it for himself. We can trace this feeling in his youth and through his manhood. It runs in his novels like a great tide of impulse and energy. "These things should not happen" he seems to cry to the world. "Come, let us unite against injustice and heartlessness in public and private dealing, against public and private wrong of every description. Let us banish bad customs from the earth, so that it may be a fairer, brighter, happier place."

One of his novels A Tale of Two Cities is a story of the French Revolution. The story shows that, in common with the rest of the world then living, Dickens' outlook on life had been powerfully affected by the French Revolution, as our world to-day has been vastly changed by the Great War. The watch words of the French Revolution were Liberty, Fraternity, Equality. They rang like bells to waken all men's hearts against injustice; their echoes are ringing still. During the Revolution which began in 1789, a little more than twenty years before Dickens was born, and in the years following the Revolution, there were terrible excesses of cruelty, murder and bloodshed by the revolutionists. But the spirit of revolt against wrong was in men's minds everywhere. In every country change and revolution were impending, either violent change and revolution with bloodshed, or silent change and a peaceful revolution. In Great Britain, it appears reasonably certain that the works of Dickens had much to do with preventing a violent revolution. Well-to-do people read these books, and their minds became more kindly to their fellowmen. They were eager to help the poor and oppressed. The poor and unfortunate read Dickens' stories and were filled with the spirit of brotherhood to everyone, to the rich as well as to those who were poor as they themselves were poor. Dickens showed, not that the poor were unhappy, but that they were unjustly and harshly treated. The living spirit of happiness and of Christmas is found in the house of the Cratchits. The Cratchits are poor, but they are wonderfully happy. People in many other countries as well as England rushed to the help of the poor because of the happiness of the Cratchit family. Tiny Tim and his crutch touched the heart of the world, and the heart of the world was made the better for it. We still are made better by the story of the Cratchits. Above all, Dickens' novels overflow, not only with tenderness and indignation against wrong and cruelty, but with abounding good temper and inexhaustible mirth. It has been said that danger of a violent revolution in Great Britain was swept away by the gales of good-tempered and hearty laughter which seized upon thousands of people who were reading these great stories. It was a splendid achievement for any novelist, or for any man or woman. To help to bring about a peaceful revolution, instead of one in which blood is shed, is a claim that can be made on behalf of few people in the history of the world.

Dickens is generally given credit for having secured for the world a number of much needed reforms. There is no doubt that Dickens had a great deal to do with promoting these reforms. But it is the glory of the age in which he lived that many people were working to make wrong conditions right. What Dickens succeeded in doing, possibly in a greater degree than anyone else at that time, was to produce in a great multitude of people the spirit which is willing, more than willing, very desirous, to make wrong right.

An English poet who was born about a half century before Dickens, (Dickens' dates are 1812-1870; William Blake's dates are 1757-1827) wrote lines which embody wonderfully this passion for helping other people who need help. It is a passion which happily belongs to our own age. Who can tell how many people now living carry about in their hearts the resolution expressed in one of Blake's verses?

I will not cease from mental fight,
    Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand,
Till we have built Jerusalem
    In England's green and pleasant land.

Jerusalem, of course, means heaven. The Lord's Prayer says, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

You had better learn by heart this verse written by William Blake, for you will often want to remember it, and to help to build Jerusalem in your own country, wherever that country is.

Charles Dickens has other claims to greatness, but surely none so compelling as the fact that the spirit of his novels is the aspiring, tender, loving spirit of humanity.

It is interesting to know the names of the special reforms for which Dickens worked. These were to change the customs of the law courts so that there should be less delay and greater simplicity in securing redress for hardship, and to improve the character of the men appointed to the bench; to change the Poor Laws, and especially to improve their administration; to change and improve greatly the schools which existed at that time; and to bring about a reformation in the administration of prisons. Finally, he wished to have the nation provide common means of decency and health in the dwellings of the poor, so that fever and consumption should not forever be let loose on God's creatures. These are almost Dickens' own words. All these conditions have been so vastly improved that we who are living to-day can hardly realize how much we have for which to be thankful. But there are still in the world wrongs to right and conditions to improve.

Dickens was a great novelist, but he was not a perfect novelist. It is easy to find defects in the books that he wrote, defects of style, faults in the plans of his novels and in the delineation of his characters. But in spite of these defects, his novels are great novels. It is possible that Dickens' characters are more true to life than we have thought they were. He may be one of the greatest delineators of English character in the history of literature. Can you not imagine Sam Weller, and Mark Tapley, yes, and Tom Pinch, and Ham Peggotty, Tupman, Winkle and Snodgrass, fighting in the trenches in France and Flanders, with bravery, jokes and indomitable perseverance, while Boffin, Mr. Pickwick, Miss Betsey Trotwood and Susan Nipper are busy with work at home? One of the best ways, and certainly one of the most delightful ways, to study the character and the genius of the people of England is to read the novels of Charles Dickens.

CHAPTER IV

THE WAVERLEY NOVELS

You have heard at times a strain of music far away. A band, perhaps, is playing the air of some martial song that you know well. The music comes nearer, nearer. You can almost imagine that you see the players marching down the street. And here they are. As stirring, as romantic, as beautiful as the distant music, are the spirit, scenes, and happenings of The Waverley Novels by Sir Walter Scott.

Scott did not begin by writing novels; his first writing was poetical; he wrote stories in verse. If you do not already know these poetical stories, you probably will some day soon, because they are charming and delightful, and so easy to read that one almost feels one must have read them before in a dream. The novels are, perhaps, a little more difficult to follow, but not after we once get fairly started. They are wonderful books to read. Some of them are world novels. This means that in many countries, and in many different languages, people may be found reading the Waverley Novels. This statement is true of Dickens' novels also. When we learn to know Dickens' work and Scott's work intimately, we will perceive that there is a difference.

Let us begin with Rob Roy, one of the Waverley Novels which is a great favourite with boys and girls. Francis Osbaldistone is sent by his father to visit his uncle, Sir Hildebrand, at the family seat, Osbaldistone Hall, in the north of England. Frank does not want to go into business and become his father's successor. The visit to Osbaldistone Hall is by way of punishment. His father means to choose one of Frank's six cousins to inherit his place in the business. Frank goes north, meets all the six cousins, his uncle, Sir Hildebrand, Andrew Fairservice, a serving man, who is as notable a character after his own way of life as Sam Weller; and above all he meets a cousin of his cousins, Die Vernon, beautiful, spirited, altogether charming and lovable Die.

Owing to a business matter, Frank has to go further north from Osbaldistone Hall into Scotland. In the city of Glasgow, he is directed to Bailie Nicol Jarvie. He is given a mysterious warning in Glasgow Cathedral, and goes up to the Highlands with Bailie Nicol Jarvie, seeking to recover a debt. Now we are fully set in the midst of the scenes of Sir Walter Scott's enchantment. The wild, romantic, beautiful scenery of Scotland, painted by a master's hand; the Highlanders themselves, proud, devoted, chivalrous, faithful; the cause of the royal Stuarts whose adherents loved them and sacrificed for them without stint; the glamour of old Scots songs; romantic stories of love and conflict, all these delights you will find in Rob Roy and in other of the Waverley Novels. The mysterious Mr. Campbell of the highroad and the drove of cattle, turns out to be Rob Roy MacGregor himself. His wife, Helen, who is as fierce as she is heroic, is the central figure of one of the most dramatic actions of the story. Escape, danger, flight, battle, the allurement of a lost cause, striking characters for whom one forms a romantic attachment, are all gathered within the pages of this novel.

Kenilworth and Ivanhoe will prove themselves as fascinating as Rob Roy. Kenilworth is written of the time of Queen Elizabeth and tells the story of the beautiful, unfortunate Amy Robsart, the wife of the Earl of Leicester, Queen Elizabeth's favourite. Amy, who had made a secret, runaway match, is sought by Tressilian on behalf of her father. She lives in hiding at Cumnor Hall, waited on by Janet Foster and her father, Anthony Foster. Seeking redress for Amy, we go with Tressilian to find Leicester at the great castle of Kenilworth to which Elizabeth makes one of her royal progresses. On the way we meet Wayland Smith, and Flibbertigibbet, and we learn what black magic means.

At Kenilworth are stirring scenes. We encounter Raleigh, Spenser, an astrologer, and scores of brightly coloured, romantic figures. We are present at a pageant, and see Elizabeth conferring knighthood on some of Leicester's men. All the while, Amy Robsart is to be vindicated, later Amy is to be saved. But, partly through misunderstanding, yet also by cowardice, cruelty and falsehood, Amy is betrayed. Kenilworth is notable for its scenes from English history, but the story of Amy Robsart, after we read it for the first time, leaves something in our memories that in all likelihood had not been there before, something gentle, full of pity, and precious.

Ivanhoe is more robust and exciting. Read the opening scene between Gurth, the swineherd, and Wamba, the jester. This is Merrie England of long ago, when Saxons and Normans were still hostile and separate, although living together in the heart of England. John had usurped the throne from King Richard, his brother, who had been fighting on Crusade in the Holy Land. Here in the greenwood we meet Friar Tuck, and various knights. We visit Rotherwood, and listen to Cedric, the Saxon master of Gurth and Wamba. We see the beautiful Rowena. We meet the Jew, Isaac of York and his lovely daughter Rebecca. There are great combats for knights to prove their knighthood at Ashby-de-la-Zouche. There is the thrilling siege of the castle, Torquilstone. We discover who the Black Knight is, and, best of all, we encounter, in many disguises and lastly as himself, Robin Hood. Read the account of the archery contest in chapter thirteen. Every word is thrilling. If we could go back through the centuries, we, too, would visit Merrie England, walk in the greenwood and taste the venison pasty in Friar Tuck's cell, watch while Locksley shot his arrows, and with Rebecca on the ramparts, follow the course of the great siege of Torquilstone. But, thanks to the genius of Sir Walter, we can see these happenings in imagination without leaving the twentieth century, although the novel Ivanhoe was published more than a hundred years ago.

Scott wrote more than twenty novels, and other books as well. The chief of the Waverley Novels, beside the three already named, are Waverley, Guy Mannering, The Antiquary, Old Mortality, The Bride of Lammermoor, The Heart of Mid-Lothian, The Fortunes of Nigel, Redgauntlet, Anne of Geierstein, Woodstock, and The Fair Maid of Perth.

Thrilling and romantically beautiful as Rob Roy, Kenilworth and Ivanhoe are, and exciting as it is to read them, Scott has achieved even greater scenes in some of the novels appearing in the list above. Rob Roy, Die Vernon, Locksley, Rebecca of York, are splendid and memorable characters, but they are not as wonderful as Edie Ochiltree in The Antiquary, or as Jeanie Deans in The Heart of Mid-Lothian. We delight in Rob Roy and Locksley and we love Die Vernon dearly, and yet somehow we know that Edie Ochiltree and Jeanie Deans are greater. We respect them profoundly, and think more of human nature because of what they say and do. We wonder why this should be so. Puzzling out the way we feel about Edie Ochiltree and Jeanie Deans, we come to a conclusion somewhat like the following. In the case of the first dearly loved characters, Scott was writing about people he had never met or known. He was in reality describing the beautiful dreams we have of romantic people who do not actually belong to everyday life. But Edie Ochiltree is such a man as Scott himself must have known. He is alive and so vivid in his not too highly coloured perfection, that one can imagine him strolling along a country road in Scotland. Edie is a wandering beggar and wears a blue gown. The neighbours give him food and shelter, and in return he does for them various little services. But Edie at the same time is a remarkable man. When greatness comes in ordinary people, they are greater than it is possible to make a romantic character. We cannot tell why this is so; but so it is.

Turn to chapter seven in The Antiquary and read what Edie says in answer to Sir Arthur Wardour's offer of a reward if he will save his daughter and himself from drowning. Such a character as Edie shows himself to be is an example of Sir Walter's genius at its highest. You will find other remarkable scenes in which Edie speaks in chapter twenty. But from his final appearance in chapter forty-four we must quote a few lines. There is a rumour that the country is to be invaded, and someone says to Edie that he has not much to fight for. Read carefully what follows for it is written in one of the dialects of Scotland, as is the case with a good part of what Sir Walter has written.

"Me no muckle to fight for, sir?—isna there the country to fight for, and the burnsides that I gang daundering beside, and the hearths of the gudewives that gie me my bit bread, and the bits o' weans that come toddling to play wi' me when I come about a landward town?—"

Here love of country and love of people,—little children and men and women—are joined, and Edie's words express the highest feelings for home and country that we have. There is something in every boy and every girl that thrills to this reply of Edie Ochiltree, who had no money and no land, but who was rich in his spirit nevertheless. It is for such reasons as this that we judge Edie's character to be one of Scott's greatest achievements.

Some day you may read in The Heart of Mid-Lothian of how Jeanie Deans walked many weary miles to London to plead with Queen Caroline for the life of her sister. You will learn to admire and reverence Jeanie when at the last she says to the Queen that "when the hour of trouble comes to the mind or to the body ... then it isna what we hae dune for oursells, but what we hae dune for others, that we think on maist pleasantly." Jeanie's is a sad story, and yet it turns out happily. Scott's genius for story telling, as well as for the delineation of character, was singularly rich and ample.

To the contents of these novels, Scott added occasionally a short story, and often beautiful songs. In Redgauntlet, chapter eleven, you will find Wandering Willie's Tale, one of the greatest short stories that ever has been written. The Ballad of the Red Harlaw is in The Antiquary, the same novel in which Edie Ochiltree appears. One of the most beautiful songs in Scottish literature, which is rich in exquisite songs, is "Proud Maisie"; this song is to be found in The Heart of Mid-Lothian, chapter thirty-nine. Those of you who are fond of learning poetry by heart will find time well spent in learning "Proud Maisie". Only when genius is most richly endowed can it be so generous in its giving as Scott is in his novels with his songs.

CHAPTER V

SCOTT'S OWN STORY

Walter Scott was born August 15th, 1771, in a house belonging to his father at the head of the College Wynd in Edinburgh, Scotland. The family was well-to-do and happily situated. But when he was eighteen months old, the little lad had a serious illness which left him a cripple. Every effort was made to cure his lameness. He was sent to live with his grand-parents on the farm at Sandy Knowe, but while he gained strength, he was slow in learning to walk and his left leg remained shrunken. He grew up tall and strong, unusually good looking and attractive. When he was a man he thought nothing of walking thirty miles in a day. Apparently, his lameness had no influence upon his character, except that it helped to make him considerate. His biographer says that he was always tender to those who had any bodily misfortune.

Edinburgh is a beautiful city. Those who belong to it love their romantic town with devotion. But it was fortunate for Walter Scott, and for us also, that he spent some of his early years on a farm. What he saw and learned at that time influenced all his future life. A story is told that when he was three years old, and unable to help himself, because he was so lame, he was left alone in the open air at some distance from the farmhouse, as his aunt often wisely left him. A thunder storm came up and when they hastened to the little fellow they found him lying on his back, clapping his hands at each flash of lightning, and crying out, "Bonny! bonny!" There was never anything lacking in Walter Scott's happy courage, or in his tranquil enjoyment of the beauties he saw in nature or read about in books.

His aunt used to read aloud to him. Like some other boys one has known, he played out by himself the battles described as he imagined they might have been fought. He was fascinated by old tales, old ballads and by history. From his early manhood he had a passion for all kinds of antiquarian research. When he was a lad he was sent to Edinburgh High School, a famous school, and here after school hours and during recess he became known to the other boys as a wonderful adept at relating stories. His audiences were closely attentive and delighted. He says of himself in a short fragment of autobiography that he was not a dunce, "but an incorrigibly idle imp". Perhaps his chief pursuit was reading. Some of the books he read were Ossian, which is compact of Highland myth and story, Spenser, an exquisite English poet, many novelists and other Poets, and the great collection of ballads known as Percy's Reliques of Ancient Poetry. These are all manly books, and stir the reader's blood and imagination, as Sir Philip Sidney said, like the sound of a trumpet.

After Edinburgh High School and Edinburgh University, where boys went at that time when they were very young, Scott became a lawyer. The study of Scots law was to him an unending source of interest. But when he was a young lawyer without much to do, he was in the habit of telling romances to other young lawyers like himself who were waiting for clients. As the boys at school used to be fascinated, so the young lawyers later came under the same spell.

We have by this time the origins of Scott's great work, a natural and unconquerable genius for writing and romance, love for romantic Edinburgh and all Scotland, the farm at Sandy Knowe, ballads, tales and history, Scots law, old customs, the characters and the people whom he knew and loved.

He began by translating songs from other languages, then by editing and publishing old ballads and songs belonging to his own country, what is called minstrelsy, the songs of wandering poets. His first book, Minstrelsy of the Border, was published very early in the nineteenth century. He married, in 1797, Miss Charpentier, the daughter of a refugee from the French Revolution. They lived in a cottage at Lasswade, six miles from Edinburgh. Later, their home was at Ashestiel, also in the country, an old house on the south bank of the Tweed. His own first writing, a poetical story, The Lay of the Last Minstrel, was published in 1805. He held during his life various law offices under the Crown, beginning as Sheriff Depute, then Sheriff, and later a Clerk of the Court of Session. Although he wrote many books he made a point of keeping other employment, so writing might be, as he said, not a bad crutch, but a good staff. But by 1805, it was plain that literature was to be his main occupation.

Scott had a singularly affectionate nature, which in itself is almost sufficient to make a happy life. With his first fee as a lawyer, he bought a silver taper stand for his mother's desk. Lockhart writes of him, "No man cared less about popular admiration and applause; but for the least chill on the affection of any near and dear to him he had the sensitiveness of a maiden." We find as we learn to know people that powers of affection and love for those who belong to them are marks of the finest natures.

Scott was considerate of the feelings of everyone, and he was greatly loved. He made much money by his writings, first by his romantic verse which took the world by storm, and later by the long series of great novels, which were published at first anonymously, and only acknowledged by Scott as his own with reluctance years after he began publishing them. With his love for beautiful scenery, for Scotland, and for everything belonging to dignified and delightful ways of living, it was natural that Scott, from the result of his labours, should buy an estate and build on it a castle called Abbotsford. Here he lived with his family, dealing bountifully and kindly with many dependents and followers. He had tender care for all his neighbours, gentle and simple, as the old phrase runs. Scott valued what he had because it gave him the power to be good to other people. "Sir Walter speaks to every man as if they were blood relations" was the description given of his manner by one of the men who worked on his estate to an inquirer. Tom Purdie, a personal attendant, had been a salmon poacher, and was one of Scott's great friends.

It is difficult to give a sufficiently convincing picture of his happy, beneficient, affectionate life, spent in beautiful surroundings, in friendliness and family joys, and yet at the same time do justice to Scott's incessant toil. He worked unstintedly, and he loved his work. He was so popular and famous, it seemed all he had to do was to sit down and write a novel and the world would ring with its fame. But Scott was at work generally before six o'clock in the morning. He was a man of remarkable industry as well as of unusual gifts. Yet, those who knew him, noticed first and valued most his kindness and simplicity.

There are two books in which we can find details of the character and the life of Scott. These are The Life of Sir Walter Scott, written by his son-in-law, J. G. Lockhart, and Scott's Journal, written by himself, and meant only for his own reading.

He was a man of great reasonableness and common sense. Lord Cockburn, a distinguished lawyer, who was a friend, said that in his opinion Walter Scott's sense was a still more wonderful thing than his genius. He did not care to talk much about his writing, but rather of what he had done or seen. There was so little made of Scott's writing in his home, either by himself or anyone else, that his children did not know much about it. Someone asked Sophia, his eldest daughter, how she liked one of his books. Her answer was that she had not read it. Walter, the eldest boy, came home from school one day, plainly showing signs of having been in a fight, and said that the other boys had called him a "lassie". One of the boys had said something about The Lady of the Lake, and he was unaware that there was a book of that name written by his father. These incidents are related to show how simple and natural were Scott's ideas of himself and his work. He was a rapid, even at times a careless, writer, but he was incontestably a great writer. He was, however, greater as a man.

No one can read his life without being charmed by Scott's love for his dogs. Cats, too, were favourites in the family circle. All the domestic creatures were as fond of Scott as he was of them. You will find in Lockhart's Life, chapter nine, a description by Washington Irving, the American author, of a visit to Abbotsford, and of Scott and his dogs. It is, perhaps, as vivid a picture as has ever been drawn of Scott.

During the last years of his life, Scott undertook the payment of a heavy debt. He had been partner in a publishing enterprise which was conducted with far too little reasonable caution in entering upon undertakings and expenditure. Although Scott was not an active partner, and unfortunately had not informed himself about the firm's transactions, he was liable for the full amount of the debt. He refused to become a bankrupt and set himself the enormous task of paying every creditor in full. This last labour of his life is a heroic story. Friends, some of them unknown friends, offered him money. His sense of honour was so high that he would allow no mitigation of his task. He laboured single-handed and paid back large sums to his creditors. The final payments were arranged only after his death. He had cut down his way of living at Abbotsford. He allowed himself little rest and no luxury. Any boy who reads this story will learn from it something of the nature of business and of what is wise and right in business dealings. He will learn to love too, as we all may, Sir Walter's radiant sense of the beauty of honour.

We discover at last the true reason why the characters in Scott's novels are great. It is because he is himself great and noble, with such a nobility that in all likelihood the world will keep him always as one of its heroes. His last words to his son-in-law, Lockhart, "My dear, be a good man", come into the minds of many people every now and then as they live their daily lives and bring them help and encouragement. We read Scott's novels because they tell thrilling and romantic stories; and we read them again for their nobility, high-mindedness, dignity and beauty.