Prescott journal. [volume] (Prescott, Wis.) 1861-1871, 1864-02-27
DICKENS ON THACKERAY.
Graceful and Tauelling Tribute.

-
WA. MAKEPEAcE TEAcKERAY, BY CHARLks
DICKENS, opens the February number of tl4
Cor7asi4 AGgazisss
| ut 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
/ II 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 Athenaum
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 a 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 Pc
RODS is marked in my remembrance of him
by many occasions when he was Supremacy
humorous, when he was irresistibly extrava-
giant, 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 a
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 impulsiye, than / have seen him at
those times. No one can be surer than /, of
the greatness and the goodness of the heart
4 that then disclosed itself. n ~
| "We had our differences of opinion. l
thought that he too much feigned want of
earnestness, and that be 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, twas neververy grave
ly, and 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. zz 4zsa ~ 49, 49,
"When we were associated in remembrance
of the late Mr.. Douglas Jerrold he delivered
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
1 ing him could have doubted his natural gen.
tleness, or his thoroughly unaffected manly
sympathy with the weak and lowly. He read
the paper most pathetically, and with sim
plicity of tenderness that certainly moved
one Of his audience to tears. This was pres
emily after his standing for Oxford, from
which place he had despatched his agent to me,
with a droll note Ito which he afterwards ad-
ded verbal postscript, urging me to come
and make a speech, and tell them who he was,
fol-. 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 ment e1ed, with a reference
to his late electioDeering failure, which was
full of good sense, good spirits and good hu-
NOR. A sri N SIS
"He had particular delight in boys and
en- excellent way with them. / remember
his once, asking me with fantastic gravity,
| when be had been to Elton, where my eldest
boy then was, whether felt as he did, in re-
1 gard of never seeing boy without wanting
| instantly to give him sovereign. Il thought
| of this when / looked down into his grave,
over the shoulder of boy to whom he had
been kind.
"These are slight remembrances 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 lunselfsh
thoughtfulness for others, and his munifcent
hand, may not be told. aetes.gI
81 If, in the reckness vivacity of his youth,
his satirical pen had ever gone astray or done
amiss. he had caused it to prefer its own petit
ton for forgiveness, long before:
I've writ the foolish fancy Of his brain
The amless jest that, striking, hath caused pain;
The idle word that he'd wish back again -
."In no pages shouldI -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
nature, of his delightful playfulness as an es-
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 longroadsof thought
that he was never to traverse, and for shining
goals that ne was never to reach, will be
readily believed The pain, however, that |
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,
far-seeing purpose, character, incident, and a
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, i
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 hand
as loving and tender as ever father caressed
his little child with. There is some young
4 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 of had been foreseen
"The last line he wrote, and the last proot
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 otter
taken them out of his pocket here and there
for patient revision and interlineation. The
last words he corrected in print were,s Ant
my heart throbbed with an exquisite bliss.
God grant that on that Christmas Eve, wbeI