Wood County reporter. [volume] (Grand Rapids [i.e. Wisconsin Rapids], Wis.) 1857-1923, 1864-02-25
DICKENS ON THACKERAY.
4 Graceful and Touching Tribute.

! Cor7eitU Magazine
| cit has been desired by some of the per
| sonal friends of the great English writer who
established this magazine, that its brief record
of his having been stricken from among men,
| should be written by the old comrade and
-brother-in-arms who pens these lines, and of
whom he often wrote himself, and always
with the warmest generosity.
Il saw him first, nearly twenty-eight years
| ago, when he proposed to become the illus
traitor of my earliest book. l saw him last,
shortly before Christmas, at the Atheneum
Club, when he told me that he had been in
| bed three days-that, after these attacks he
was troubled with cold shiverings which
quite took the power Of work out of him
and that he had it in his mind to try new
remedy, which he laughingly described He
was very cheerful and looked very bright
| In the night of that day week he died,
"The long interval between those two De-
| riods is marked in my remembrance of him
! by many occasions when he was supremeIv
humorous, when he was irresistibly extrava-
CANT, when he was softened and serious, when
he was charming with children. But, by
none do | recall him more tenderly than by
two Or three that start out of the crowd, when
he unexpectedly presented himself in my
room, announcing how that some passage in
certain book had made him cry yesterday,
and how that he had come to dinner, be
| cause he couldn't help it, and must talk some
| passage over. No one can ever have seen
| him more genial, natural, cordial, fresh and
honestly impulsive, than | have seen him at
those times. No one can be surer than |, of
the greatness and the goodness OF the heart
that then disclosed itself.
We had our differences of opinion I
thought that he too much feigned a want of
earnestness, and that he made pretence of
undertaking his art, which was not good for
the art that he held in trust. But when he
fell upon these topics, it was never very grave
! ly, and 1 have lively image of him in my
mind, twisting both his hands in his hair, and
stamping about, laughing, to make end of the
discussion.
"When we were associated in remembrance
Of the late Mr.. Douglas Jerrold, he delivered
| a public lecture in London, in the course of
which he read his very best contribution to
Punch, describing the grown up cares Of a
poor family of young children. No one hear
ing him could have doubted his natural gen
| tlcness, or his thoroughly unaffected manly
| sympathy with the weak and lowly. He read
the paper most pathetically, and with a sim
plicity of tenderness that certainly moved
one of his audience to tears. This was pres
entity after his standing for Oxford, from
which place he had despatched his agent to me,
with droll note Ito which he afterwards ad
ded verbal postscript, urging me to come
and make speech, and tell them who he was
for he doubted whether more than two of the
electors had ever heard of him, and he
thought there might be as many as six or
eight who had heard of me- He introduced
the lecture just mentioned, with reference
to his late electiopeering failure, which was
full of good sense, good spirits and good hui
NOR
"He had particular delight in boys and
an excellent way with them. | remember
his once asking me with fantastic gravity,
when he had been to Elton, where my eldest
boy then was, whether | felt as he did, in re-
gard of never seeing boy without wanting
instantly to give him sovereign. | thought
of this when | looked down into his grave,
over the shoulder of boy to whom he had
been kind.
"These are slight membranes but it is
to little familiar things suggestive of the
voice, look, manner, never, never more to be
encountered on this earth, that the mind first
turns in a bereavement And greater things
that are known of him, in the way of his warm
affections his quiet endurance, his unselfsh
thoughtfulness for others, and his munifcent
hand, may not be told.
his satirical pen had ever gone astray or done
amiss. he had caused it to prefer it's own petit
ton for forgiveness, long before:
g I've writ the foolish fancy of his brain;
The aimless jest that, striking, hath caused pain;
The idle word that he'd wish back again.
Gin no pages should [ take it upon myself
at this time to discourse of his books, of his
refined knowledge Of character of his subtle
acquaintance with the weakness of human
of loI 1,,1o
sayist, of his quaint and touching ballads, of
his mastery over the English language least
Of all, in these pages, enriched by his bril-
liant qualities from the first of the series, and
beforehand accepted by the public through
| the strength Of his great name.
But, on the table before me, there lies
all that he had written of his latest and last
story. That it would be very sad to any one
that it is inexpressibly so to the writer-in
its evidences of matured designs never to be
accomplished, Of intentions begun to be ex-
ecuted and destined never to be completed
of careful preparation for long roads of thought
that he was never to traverse, and for shining
goals that he was never to reach, will be
readily believed. The pain, however, that I
have felt in perusing it, has not been deeper
than the conviction that he was in the health
lest vigor of his powers when he wrought on
this last labor. In respect of earnest feeling,
r-seeing purpose, character, incident, and
certain loving picturesqueness blending the
whole, | believe it to be much the best of all
his works. That he fully meant it to be so,
that he had become strongly attached to it,
and that he bestowed great pains upon it,
trace in almost every page. 1t contains one
picture which must have cost him extreme
distress, and which is masterpiece. There
are two children in it, touched with a hand
as loving and tender as ever father caressed
his little child with. There is some Young
love, as pure and innocent and pretty as the
truth And it is very remarkable that by
reason of the singular construction Of the
story more than one main incident usually
belonging to the end of such a fiction is an
ticipated in the beginning, and thus there is
an approach to completeness in the fragment,
as to the satisfaction of the readers mind
concerning the most interesting persons
which could hardly have been better attained
if the writer's breaking off had been toreseen
| THE last line he wrote, and the last proof
he corrected, are among these papers through
which | have so Sorrowfully made my way.
| The condition of the little pages of manu-
script where death stopped his hand, shows
that he had carried them about and often
| taken them out of his pocket here and there,
for patient revision and interlineation. The
last words he corrected in print were, And
my heart throbbed with an exquisite bliss
| God grant that on that Christmas Eve, when
he laid his head back on his pillow and threw
up his arms as he had been wont to do when
very weary, some consciousness of duty done
and Christian hope throughout life humbly
cherished, may have caused his own heart so
to throb, when he passed away to his Re-
deemer's rest !
| He uaS foun5 rascafI,1y lviOC ahoyp