that we are often less struck by the reality of the object than by the force and singularity of the medium through which it is presented. It might be asserted with some plausibility that the idiosyncrasy of Dickens was the reverse of an artistic one. It overmastered his perceptive powers, keen as these were, casting a shadow that obscured or disturbed what a more limpid nature of inferior gifts would have reflected clearly. On the other hand, it is to this intense individuality that the biography owes its exceeding interest, which seldom flags throughout the present volume. As the years go on the ardor remains unabated, the tenacity of purpose is even more persistent, the struggle against obstacles more determined. Fresh tasks are undertaken where reform seems to be most needed. The labors and fatigues of a public reader are superimposed on those of the author. Thus unsparing of himself, Dickens is exacting in his claims on others. Ever prompt and active in his sympathies, grateful for any kindness or any help that may smooth his way, he cannot endure any obstructions, active or passive, any indifference that might tend to paralyze his energy. Here no doubt is the key to that act of his life which has received, perhaps merited, the most censure—his separation from his wife. Mr. Forster has treated this passage with becoming delicacy; but while he leaves unveiled the details that would merely gratify curiosity, he reveals enough of the deeper causes that furnish the real solution. With more of patient endurance and less of strenuous endeavor, Dickens could not have performed an equal amount of work, but a larger proportion of it might have been worthy of his genius, and the spring would not have snapped so suddenly and soon. The very order and regularity of his habits made the strain more constant and severe. There was nothing fitful in his energy, no interval of dissipation or of lassitude. The flame burnt steadily, and consumed him all the more quickly.
The critical estimate of his writings, so far as it differs from the popular verdict, is not likely to be affected by the chapter in which Mr. Forster has discussed the subject. This is, indeed, the weakest part of the book, and disfigured by a bad taste almost incredible in a writer of such experience. Far from refuting the views set forth by Mr. Lewes, this biography will, we believe, have the effect of confirming them. But in doing so it will redeem the character of Dickens from a suspicion which the caricature and the false pathos frequent in his novels had affixed to it. These, as we can now see, sprang not from a conscious straining after effect or a wanton degradation of powers, but from an intensity of vision that magnified the nearest or most salient objects, a vividness of sensations which Mr. Lent; hardly goes too far in terming "hallucination," and finally the tension under which his faculties were so constantly exercised. A lack of fidelity and of harmony was the inevitable result; but there was no want of the sincerity and the manliness which, whatever its defects, formed the basis of his character.
One takes up this book with the expectation of being instructed, and with a resolute determination not to be bored. What can we expect to find in the history of a woman distinguished as an intellectual phenomenon, and that in a purely scientific department, but much to excite admiration and respect, with nothing to entertain or amuse? But one lays the book down with a sense indeed of having been made to think, and of having learned something worth learning, but chiefly of having been interested and delighted throughout. It might have been readily pardoned to a woman like Mrs. Somerville had she made her aspirations, efforts and achievements the main subject of her recollections; but it is not so: the great intellectual labors and successes of her life are simply recorded with but slight comment, and with the surpassing humility that belongs only to great minds. Born in 1780, and reared in a quiet seaport-town in Scotland, Mary Fairfax received the scantiest imaginable portion of what people now-a-days are pleased to term education. At ten years of age she was sent to school for a year, at the expiration of which she could neither read, write, nor even spell decently well. But her life at Burntisland was an education of another sort than that given by books, and as the best possible preparation for the studies of her later years, she learned to observe natural facts, and to record them intelligently
