The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1870-10-21


leisure) the work which he has done, and
which the world has on its bookshelves, will
be the best of his doing. Should George
Macdonald rise hereafter above this present
point, high and good as it is, he will merit
and receive distinguished praise. And, as a
man hardly at the entrance of middle-life,
there is no reason why this should not be.
His hand has not lost its cunning, and his
eye is still undimmed.
DIR. MA CKENzTE'S LIFE OF DICKENS" ="
The Life of Charles Dickens" by r. Shell
ton Mackenzie, LID, published by 7. B.
Peterson & Brothers, is the best biography of
the deceased novelist that has yet appeared
either in the United States or in England,
and we are glad to be able to announce that
it is meeting with an extensive sale. The
November number of HGrper's Magazine has
the following appreciative notice of this
work.
There is no American author, we hardly
know any English author, whom we would
sooner select to write biography of Charles
Dickens than DIR. Shelton Mackenzie. For
over half a century he has lived in familiar
fellowship with the kterdti of his time He
has that peculiar cast of mind which seizes
upon significant incidents, treasures them up,
and, as needed, reproduces them. He is, too,
literary critic-professionally so-and al
though his criticisms are not and do not as
sumo to be profound, they are pervaded by a
personality, sympathetic appreciation of the
writer's aim and spirit, a knowledge, in short,
of the man, which is, in some sense, the first
condition of either accurate or interesting
criticism. His critical writings, like his
conversational, are always lively, entertain
ing, ,anecdotical. His Life of Charles Dickens"
Ct. B. Peterson & Bros.) might almost be
termed "reminiscences. 1t contains, of course,
great deal we all knew before. The birth,
the parentage, the first captivation of the
public by "Pickwick, the order in which the
subsequent stories followed each other,
their literary qualities and characters
tics; in all this there is nothing with
which the newspapers have not already
familiarized us. Of the great novelist's in
terror life and character, of what he was in
his family and with his children, what in
society and in religious conviction and asso-
citation, what not merely as an author, but as
a man, it tells us but little. OF that unfor-
tunate but still inexplicable separation be-
tween himself and his wife it gives us really
no information, except the scanty and uu-
satisfying information afforded long since by
Charles Dickens public card But of the
novelist as a novelist; of his habits of mind
and methods of composition; of the current
criticism of his day; of the praise and blame
which his succeeding works provoked from
the critics and the public; and especially of
the sources from which Dickens obtained his
power, DIR. Mackenzie tells us good deal.
One secret of Dickens success lay, doubtless,
in the fact that he made real characters sit for
the portraits which he drew, albeit he ideal
lied them in the drawing. This we knew be-
fore; but we did not know how to detect the
originals beneath the disguise. This, in the
most entertaining chapter of the book, DR..
Mackenzie explains to us. Tony Weller was a
coachman who used to drive between London
and Portsmouth. Tracy Tupman-a certain
! Mr. Winters-was q well-known H06Itue of
Hyde Park. The 'fat boy" existed in veri-
table flesh and blood, the servant of gate
keeper in Essex, between London and
| Chelmsford. Mrs. Ann Ellis who kept an
eating house in Doctors Commons, sat for
the portrait of Mrs. Bardell. Mr.. Justice
Stareleigh was hardly a caricature of Sir
Stephen Gaselee. The publication of SOLVER
Twist" with its sharply-cut portraiture of
Mr.. Fang, police magistrate, resulted in the
removal of A. S. Laing, Esq, from the office
which, by his brutality, he disgraced, and
from which no previous pressure had sufhced
to eject him. All the world knew that the
Cheeryble Brothers were the shadows of the
Brothers Grant, cotton spinners and calico
printers near Manchester; but it is new
revelation that the characteristics of Mrs.
John Dickens, Charles mother, are unmlS-
taxable in good, poor, doting, foolish
Mrs. Nickleby while traits less ami.
able, yet that awaken the friendly
feeling more akin to pity than contempt, in
Micawber and Turveydrop, were borrowed
from his father, who struggled throughout
life in perpetual financial difficulty like the
one, but, like the other, never failed to main
tain the dignity of his department. Mr..
Bucket, the detective, passes for Inspector
Field under whose protecting escort the
great author made more than one tour of the
wretched regions he SO graphically described
The rascally but accomplished Mr.. Julius
Slinkton, whose crimes in HUNTED Down
surpass belief, is the exact fac SiasiIe OF
Thomas Griffiths Wainwright, the story OF
whose incredible crimes, penned by Mr..
Dickens himself, forms one of the papers
which help to swell Dr. Mackenzie's volume
to it's goodly size of four hundred and eighty
four pages. DIR. Mackenzie has not altogether
done himself justice. The public demand
a good book now, rather than a better bool
by-and-by. And DIR. Mackenzie, writing tC
supply the demand, has not permitted him
self the necessary time to collect his materia
or to arrange what he had collected. Hi'
whole book, begun, it is said, on the 14th O.
June, was finished on the 23d of July. Blu