'So we arraign her; but she,' the Genius of Charles Dickens, how brilliant,
how kindly, how beneficent she is! dwelling by a fountain of laughter
imperishable; though there is something of an alien salt in the neighbouring
fountain of tears. How poor the world of fancy would be, how 'dispeopled of
her dreams,' if, in some ruin of the social system, the books of Dickens were
lost; and if The Dodger, and Charley Bates, and Mr. Crinkle, and Miss Squeers,
and Sam Weller, and Mrs. Gamp, and Dick Swiveller were to perish, or to vanish
with Menander's men and women! We cannot think of our world without them; and,
children of dreams as they are, they seem more essential than great statesmen,
artists, soldiers, who have actually worn flesh and blood, ribbons and orders,
gowns and uniforms. May we not almost welcome 'Free Education'? for every
Englishman who can read, unless he be an Ass, is a reader the more for you.




III.

To Pierre de Ronsard
(Prince of Poets.)



Master and Prince of Poets,--As we know what choice thou madest of a sepulchre
(a choice how ill fulfilled by the jealousy of Fate), so we know well the
manner of thy chosen immortality. In the Plains Elysian, among the heroes and
the ladies of old song, there was thy Love with thee to enjoy her paradise in
an eternal spring.