chance upon the stage. Of course he would have succeeded in either capacity, though with a success far less brilliant than fate had in store for him. He did in the end become, if not strictly an actor, at all events a public entertainer whose strongest efforts were produced by the exercise of melodramatic talent; as an amateur, he acted frequently throughout his life. His attempts at dramatic authorship—The Strange Gentleman, a farce played in 1836; The Village Coquettes, a libretto, produced in the same year; and The Lamplighter, a farce written in 1838, but never acted—gave no serious proof of his powers in this direction; they were hurriedly thrown off at the time when his literary fame was already beginning. But in the year or two before he wrote his Sketches, when the consciousness of vague ability and high ambition made him restive in his mechanical calling of shorthand writer, he applied to the manager of Covent Garden Theatre for an opportunity of showing what he could do. The accident of illness interfered with an appointment granted him, and, owing to some start in journalism, the application was not renewed. Plainly Dickens came very near indeed to entering upon the actor's life, and so close throughout is his connection with the theatrical world,
