His usual calm had quite broken down
under it; he had laughed as if he might crumble to pieces, his face
wearing an expression of absolute pain; indeed, the scene was so
strange that it was mirth-provoking to those who were near. But when
we returned home he questioned and pondered much upon Dickens himself.
Finally he said: "I am afraid he has too much talent for his genius;
it is a fearful locomotive to which he is bound, and he can never be
freed from it nor set at rest. You see him quite wrong evidently, and
would persuade me that he is a genial creature, full of sweetness and
amenities, and superior to his talents; but I fear he is harnessed to
them. He is too consummate an artist to have a thread of nature left.
He daunts me. I have not the key." When Mr. Fields came in he
repeated: "---- would persuade me that Dickens is a man easy to
communicate with, sympathetic and accessible to his friends; but her
eyes do not see clearly in this matter, I am sure!"
The tenor of his way was largely stayed by admiration and appreciation
of others, often far beyond their worth. He gilded his friends with
his own sunshine. He wrote to his publisher: "Give me leave to make
you acquainted with ----" (still unknown to fame), "who has written a
poem which he now thinks of publishing. It is, in my judgment, a
serious and original work of great and various merit, with high
intellectual power in accosting the questions of modern thought, full
of noble sentiment, and especially rich in fancy, and in sensibility
to natural beauty.
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