UNKNOWN TO FAME.
263
LITERARY.
UNKNOWN TO FAME.
In the still place of graves memorials tell Of heroes brave and true who fought and fell. There, too, sleep those to country true and God. As even those whose blood has stained the sod; Who sought no mention in the roll of fame Only to leave unspotted a good name.
They lived that other mortal lives might be More sweet and true for their fidelity. In lifting others burdens theirs were less, And blessing others they themselves did bless.
In stars that beamed above their peaceful homes, Brighter than over pinnacles and domes, Radiant they read what their reward would be When mortal put on immortality.
Through good report and ill, thro' cloud and shine. Meekly they sought to serve their Lord divine; And so passed on as pilgrims to the sky. Contented thus to live and thus to die.
W. E. B.
DICKENS.
We of the younger generation cannot remember when the monthly appearance of "Pickwick" or "Copperfield"' delighted the English speaking world, but we know how great was their fame and how wide-spread their readers. Never since the Wizard of the North took the world by storm was any literary success so great and immediate. Though we can not remember this, yet all have felt in some degree the fascination of this most popular modern novelist. We can see his merits, his great sympathy with his own characters, his vivid power of description, his matchless pictures from low life, but of his faults the running reader is apt to be forgetful. And this the
more because he belongs to that class of writers most read by persons who will suffer no analysis of their tastes. That they like him is enough for them.
"Dickens' eye for the forms of things is as accurate as Fielding's but he does not probe so profoundly into the heart of what he sees; and he is often led away from the simplicity of truth by a tricksy spirit of fantastic exaggeration."
This fantastic exaggeration appears often and prominently in many of Dickens' books; in fact, I do not recall one that is entirely free from it. When he champions any cause it is with such vehemence that he most wofully distorts his characters and