knowledge that would tell in a modern competitive examination. For
though in his own account of the school it is implied that he resumed
his interrupted studies with Virgil, and was, before he left, head
boy, and the possessor of many prizes, yet this is not corroborated by
the evidence of his surviving fellow pupils; nor can we, of course, in
the face of their direct counter evidence, treat statements made in a
fictitious or half-fictitious narrative as if made in what professed
to be a sober autobiography. Dickens, I repeat, seems to have acquired
a very scant amount of classic lore while under the instruction of Mr.
Jones, and not too much lore of any kind. But if he learned little, he
observed much. He thoroughly mastered the humours of the place, just
as he had mastered the humours of the Marshalsea. He had got to know
all about the masters, and all about the boys, and all about the white
mice--of which there were many in various stages of civilization. He
acquired, in short, a fund of school knowledge that seemed
inexhaustible, and on which he drew again and again, with the most
excellent results, in "David Copperfield," in "Dombey," in such
inimitable short papers as "Old Cheeseman." And while thus, half
unconsciously perhaps, assimilating the very life of the school, he
was himself a thorough schoolboy, bright, alert, intelligent; taking
part in all fun and frolic; amply indemnifying himself for his
enforced abstinence from childish games during the dreary warehouse
days; good at recitations and mimic plays; and already possessed of a
reputation among his peers as a writer of tales.


FOOTNOTES:

[1] £200 a year "without extras" from 1815 to 1820, and then £350. See
"Childhood and Youth of Charles Dickens," by Robert Langton, a very