eclipse 149


INDEX 163




LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS.




CHAPTER I.


Education is a kind of lottery in which there are good and evil
chances, and some men draw blanks and other men draw prizes. And in
saying this I do not use the word education in any restricted sense,
as applying exclusively to the course of study in school or college;
nor certainly, when I speak of prizes, am I thinking of scholarships,
exhibitions, fellowships. By education I mean the whole set of
circumstances which go to mould a man's character during the
apprentice years of his life; and I call that a prize when those
circumstances have been such as to develop the man's powers to the
utmost, and to fit him to do best that of which he is best capable.
Looked at in this way, Charles Dickens' education, however untoward
and unpromising it may often have seemed while in the process, must
really be pronounced a prize of value quite inestimable.