THE LATE CHARLES DIOKENS.

Globe, Volume XXII, Issue 1837, 12 January 1880, Page 3

THE LATE CHARLES DIOKENS.

According to the “Daily News” the “Letters of Charles Dickons,” which Messrs Chapman and Hall have just published, under the editorship of his sister-in-law and bis eldest daughter, have oven a greater interest and charm than might have been expected. This collection is intended to form a supplement to Mr Forster’s “ Life of Charles Dickens.” The scheme of that work rendered it unsuitable for the publication of many letters not addressed to t o biographer. The volumes now issued contain selections from Dickens’s personal correspondence, beginning with the very opening of his literary career and coming on to the day before his death in 1870. There are letters to family, to friends, to acquaintances, to unknown correspondents, to all manner of persons. They show the writer in all his moods, and undorthe influence of each new purpose and the exeitem-. nt of each now success. The preface says truly that “no man ever eip'esaed himself more in his letters” than Dickons. No biographer, however capable and sympathetic, could have pictured a man us Dickens stands out pictured by himself in these charming volumes. Perhaps the first thought that will occur to every reader is what an amazing letter writer he was. Dickens knew that he was writing, for the most, part, to persons who wanted, above all things, to know what he was doing and seeing, planning and thinking, aud he writes accordingly, and wo are all thankful to him now for having done so. There are many fresh illustrations in the book of that honest spirit of literary brotherhood to which Dickens met the companions of his craft, and the hard-working, downright earmstness with which he applied himself and would have others apply to any task that happened to be in hand. Assuredly no one will like Dickens the man any the less for anything to be read in these pleasant volumes. Not a few will think Dickens the author a man of even more varied gifts than they thought him before. It has often been said that if he had not be-n a great novelist he might have been a great actor. It may be said, too, that if ho had not been a successful author of fiction ha might have sought and found high place among the famous letter-writers.