Grant County herald. [volume] (Lancaster, Wis.) 1850-1968, 1872-01-30
CHARLES DICKENS.
How He was q Man OF Genius aud Had Ncs the
Msnnors OF q Gentleman.

Mennors or Gentteman
Review Of Rorsi.rs frs. volume iH Loadon Tines)
We have faithfully followed Mr..
Forster through his first volume.
We have seen Charles Dickens born
of Leedy though respectable parents,
a precocious, puny boy ill-taught,
ill.fed, ill-cared for. We have beheld
him, as the family affairs went from
bad to worse, sinking into domestic
drudge, degraded by the straits and
carelessness of his father TO the po-
sition of q warehouse boy, but
coming oat Of his trials with con-
science innocent of offence On the
ill-effects OF this period OF trial we
are inclined TO think that Mr. Forster
has laid too much stress. Dickens
was the better for it. After that we
see him placed at one poor school,
transplanted to another very little
better, transformed into an idle at
torney's clerk, and then all at once
rising resolutely to the purpose of
his life, which at 10, however, scared
no higher than the Reporters Gal
lery of the House of Commons. -
Then, all at once divining where his
strength lay, he appears throwing
himself with all the energy OF his
nature into new style Of humorous
fiction never rising to sketch the
highest ranks of the community
except in ideal portraits, which were
almost always so mistaken as to be
ridiculous, but delighting rather in
depicting the virtues and vices, the
humors and the amusemeB OF thai
lower class, which whether In middle
or in humble life, form the backbone
of English life. We forgive him for
failing in the former point just as
we excuse him for being uneasy in
society, and for lacking, in word,
the manners of gentleman. We
forgive him for all this only that we
may fall down and worship his genius
when it flashes ia genial light on the
joys and sorrows Of the great mass
of the public which consists Of neither
ladies nor gentlemen, but of mere
men and women. Among these, on
his own ground, Dickens is inimit-
able, and with them he will ever be
our moet popular humorist. He was
moral, too, not go much in stunning
the treatment of what is immortal
in itself rs iu pointing moral even
when his tale led him through those
haunts Of wickedness of which this
great metropolis is full. From this
point Of view he was ever the
champion of right and Justice
Before the power of his pen many
an old iniquity, whether it existed in
spite of law, or pleaded an immunity
sanctioned by law for it's continuance
went down aud was extinguished
forever. Where are all the York.
shire schools which starved so many
"Smikes," and where are those Ec
clesiastical Courts under the ermine
of which such legalized injustice was
perpetrated ? They exist no longer,
and to their extinction the humor of
Dickens mainly contributed. There
are things so odious, and at the
same time so ridiculous, that you
have only to point them out and
they cease to exist to mock al
them and they are extinguished
forever. So it was with Dickens.
He pointed them out and they van
ished he Ian rhed at them and the
world beheld hem no more. That
he was often vulgar in manners and
dress, and often overbearing that
he was i'll at ease in his intercourse
with gentlemen that be preferred
being king in very low company !;
that even in his early days he lived
rather in q clique than in society !;
that he was something of Bohemian
in his best moments-all these are
truths affecting the private character
of the man and his social position,
but of little worth when weighed
against the trascendant merit of his
works. Such as he was, we in our
generation are never likely to be-
hold his equal. In this first volume
Mr.. Forster has had no easy task,
though he has fulfilled it worthily
and well. But in the volumes still
to come his work will Increase in
difficulty. AS yet he has shown US
Dickens in all the fun and frolic of
youth, doing the days work Of a
giant; happy in wife, and family,
and friends. There was q time when
he lost some of his intellectual fresh
ness, when quarr,ls arose within and
without his house. But those days
are yet 70 come. Sufficient unto the
day is the good as we'll as the evil
thereof, and in this period of his life
there is little but good to be said of
Dickens, and that good his friend
Mr.. Forster has said both tenderly
and WELL