15 10 361 https://www.dickenssearch.com/files/original/12/The_Ghost_of_Art/1850-07-20-The_Ghost_of_Art.pdf 7e1829803dd79ca1537491a113d3d25f Journalism Ngram Date Hidden from users and search. All items in a collection need to have the same data in the same format in order to show up in Ngram (either YYYY, YYYYMMDD, or YYYYMMDD). No combinations will work. For journalism, letters and poetry, if there is no month or day, default to the first of the month or January. So a poem with a date of March 1843 would be 18430301. A poem published in 1856 with no month or date information would be 18560101. 18500720 Publication The title of the newspaper/serial (if applicable) Household Words Publication Type E.g. newspaper/serial Weekly newspaper Ngram Text Hidden from users and search. Copy and paste from the Scripto transcription. Then check and uncheck HTML to strip out all formatting. Finally, search and remove any   (which is the HTML for spaces). This will prevent the Ngram picking up on irrelevant HTML. I am a bachelor, residing in rather a dreary set of chambers in the Temple. They are situated in a square court of high houses, which would be a complete well, but for the want of water and the absence of a bucket. I live at the top of the house, among the tiles and sparrows. Like the little man in the nursery-story, I live by myself, and all the bread and cheese I get – which is not much – I put upon a shelf. I need scarcely add, perhaps, that I am in love, and that the father of my charming Julia objects to our union. I mention these little particulars as I might deliver a letter of introduction. The reader is now acquainted with me, and perhaps will condescend to listen to my narrartive. I am naturally of a dreamy turn of mind; and my abundant leisure for I am called to the bar coupled with much lonely listening to the twittering of sparrows, and the pattering of rain, has encouraged that disposition. In my “top set,” I hear the wind howl, on a winter night, when the man on the ground floor believes it is perfectly still weather. The dim lamps with which our Honourable Society (supposed to be as yet unconscious of the new discovery called Gas) make the horrors of the staircase visible, deepen the gloom which generally settles on my soul when I go home at night. I am in the Law, but not of it. I can’t exactly make out what it means. I sit in Westminster Hall sometimes (in character) from ten to four; and when I go out of Court, I don’t know whether I am standing on my wig or my boots. It appears to me (I mention this in confidence) as if there were too much talk and too much law – as if some grains of truth were started overboard into a tempestuous sea of chaff. All this may make me mystical. Still, I am confident that what I am going to describe myself as having seen and heard, I actually did see and hear.  It is necessary that I should observe that I have a great delight in pictures. I am no painter myself, but I have studied pictures and written about them. I have seen all the most famous pictures in the world; my education and reading have been sufficiently general to possess me beforehand with a knowledge of most of the subjects to which a Painter is likely to have recourse; and, although I might be in some doubt as to the rightful fashion of the scabbard of King Lear's sword, for instance, I think I should know King Lear tolerably well, if I happened to meet with him. I go to all the Modern Exhibitions every season, and of course I revere the Royal Academy. I stand by its forty Academical articles almost as firmly as I stand by the thirty-nine Articles of the Church of England. I am convinced that in neither case could there be, by any rightful possibility, one article more or less. It is now exactly three years – three years ago, this very month – since I went from Westminster to the Temple, one Thursday afternoon, in a cheap steam-boat. The sky was black, when I imprudently walked on board. It began to thunder and lighten immediately afterwards, and the rain poured down in torrents. The deck seeming to smoke with the wet, I went below; but so many passengers were there, smoking too, that I came up again, and buttoning my pea-coat, and standing in the shadow of the paddle-box, stood as upright as I could, and made the best of it. It was at this moment that I first beheld the terrible Being, who is the subject of my present recollections. Standing against the funnel, apparently with the intention of drying himself by the heat as fast as he got wet, was a shabby man in threadbare black, and with his hands in his pockets, who fascinated me from the memorable instant when I caught his eye. Where had I caught that eye before? Who was he? Why did I connect him, all at once, with the Vicar of Wakefield, Alfred the Great, Gil Blas, Charles the Second, Joseph and his Brethren, the Fairy Queen, Tom Jones, the Decameron of Boccaccio, Tam O’Shanter, the Marriage of the Doge of Venice with the Adriatic, and the Great Plague of London? Why, when he bent one leg,and placed one hand upon the back of the seat near him, did my mind associate him wildly with the words, “Number one hundred and forty-two, Portrait of a gentleman?” Could it be that I was going mad? I looked at him again, and now I could have taken my affidavit that he belonged to the Vicar of Wakefield’s family. Whether he was the Vicar, or Moses, or Mr. Burchill, or the Squire, or a conglomeration of all four, I knew not; but I was impelled to seize him by the throat, and charge him with being, in some fell way, connected with the Primrose blood. He looked up at the rain, and then – oh Heaven! – he became Saint John. He folded his arms, resigning himself to the weather, and I was frantically inclined to address him as the Spectator, and firmly demand to know what he had done with Sir Roger de Coverley. The frightful suspicion that I was becoming deranged, returned upon me with redoubled force. Meantime, this awful stranger, inexplicably linked to my distress, stood drying himself at the funnel; and ever, as the steam rose from his clothes, diffusing a mist around him, I saw through the ghostly medium all the people I have mentioned, and a score more, sacred and profane. I am conscious of a dreadful inclination that stole upon me, as it thundered and lightened, to grapple with this man, or demon, and plunge him over the side. But, I constrained myself – I know not how – to speak to him, and in a pause of the storm, I crossed the deck, and said: “What are you?” He replied, hoarsely, “A Model.” “A what?” said I. “A Model,” he replied. “I sets to the profession for a bob a-hour.” (All through this narrative I give his own words, which are indelibly imprinted on my memory.) The relief which this disclosure gave me, the exquisite delight of the restoration of my confidence in my own sanity, I cannot describe. I should have fallen on his neck, but for the consciousness of being observed by the man at the wheel. “You then,” said I, shaking him so warmly by the hand, that I wrung the rain out of his coat-cuff, “are the gentleman whom I have so frequently contemplated, in connection with a high-backed chair with a red cushion, and a table with twisted legs.” “I am that Model,” he rejoined moodily, “and I wish I was anything else.” “Say not so,” I returned. “I have seen you in the society of many beautiful young women;” as in truth I had, and always (I now remembered) in the act of making the most of his legs. “No doubt,” said he. “And you’ve seen me along with warses of flowers, and any number of table-kivers, and antique cabinets, and warious gammon.” “Sir?” said I. “And warious gammon,” he repeated, in a louder voice. “You might have seen me in armour, too, if you had looked sharp. Blessed if I ha’n’t stood in half the suits of armour as ever came out of Pratts'’ shop and sat, for weeks together, a eating nothing, out of half the gold and silver dishes as has ever been lent for the purpose out of Storrses, and Mortimerses, or Garrardses, and Davenportseseses.” Excited, as it appeared, by a sense of injury, I thought he never would have found an end for the last word. But, at length it rolled sullenly away with the thunder. “Pardon me,” said I, “you are a well-favored, well-made man, and yet – forgive me – I find, on examining my mind, that I associate you with – that my recollection indistinctly makes you, in short – excuse me – a kind of powerful monster.” “It would be a wonder if it didn’t,” he said. “Do you know what my points are?” “No,” said I. “My throat and my legs,” said he. “When I don’t set for a head, I mostly sets for a throat and a pair of legs. Now, granted you was a painter, and was to work at my throat for a week together, I suppose you’d see a lot of lumps and bumps there, that would never be there at all, if you looked at me, complete, instead of only my throat. Wouldn’t you?” “Probably,” said I, surveying him. “Why, it stands to reason,” said the Model. “Work another week at my legs, and it’ll be the same thing. You'll make ‘em out as knotty and as knobby, at last, as if they was the trunks of two old trees. Then, take and stick my legs and throat on to another man’s body, and you’ll make a reg’lar monster. And that’s the way the public gets their reg’lar monsters, every first Monday in May, when the Royal Academy Exhibition opens.” “You are a critic,” said I, with an air of deference. “I’m in an uncommon ill humour, if that’s it,” rejoined the Model, with great indignation. “As if it warn’t bad enough for a bob a-hour, for a man to be mixing himself up with that there jolly old furniter that one ‘ud think the public know’d the wery nails in by this time – or to be putting on greasy old ats and cloaks, and playing tambourines in the Bay o’ Naples, with Wesuvius a smokin’ according to pattern in the background, and the wines a bearing wonderful in the middle distance – or to be unpolitely kicking up his legs among a lot o’ gals, with no reason whatever in his mind, but to show ‘em – as if this warn’t bad enough, I’m to go and be thrown out of employment too!” “Surely no!” said I. “Surely yes,” said the indignant Model. “BUT I’LL GROW ONE.” The gloomy and threatening manner in which he muttered the last words, can never be effaced from my remembrance. My blood ran cold. I asked of myself, what was it that this desperate Being was resolved to grow? My breast made no response. I ventured to implore him to explain his meaning. With a scornful laugh, he uttered this dark prophecy: “I’LL GROW ONE. AND, MARK MY WORDS, IT SHALL HAUNT YOU!” We parted in the storm, after I had forced half-a-crown on his acceptance, with a trembling hand. I conclude that something supernatural happened to the steam-boat, as it bore his reeking figure down the river; but it never got into the papers. Two years elapsed, during which I followed my profession without any vicissitudes; never holding so much as a motion, of course. At the expiration of that period, I found myself making my way home to the Temple, one night, in precisely such another storm of thunder and lightning as that by which I had been overtaken on board the steam-boat – except that this storm, bursting over the town at midnight, was rendered much more awful by the darkness and the hour. As I turned into my court, I really thought a thunderbolt would fall, and plough the pavement up. Every brick and stone in the place seemed to have an echo of its own for the thunder. The water-spouts were overcharged, and the rain came tearing down from the house-tops as if they had been mountain-tops. Mrs. Parkins, my laundress – wife of Parkins the porter, then newly dead of a dropsy – had particular instructions to place a bedroom candle and a match under the staircase lamp on my landing, in order that I might light my candle there, whenever I came home. Mrs. Parkins invariably disregarding all instructions, they were never there. Thus it happened that on this occasion I groped my way into my sitting-room to find the candle, and came out to light it. What were my emotions when, underneath the staircase lamp, shining with wet as if he had never been dry since our last meeting, stood the mysterious Being whom I had encountered on the steam-boat in a thunderstorm, two years before! His prediction rushed upon my mind, and I turned faint. “I said I’d do it,” he observed, in a hollow voice, “and I have done it. May I come in?” "Misguided creature, what have you done?” I returned. “I’ll let you know,” was his reply, “if you’ll let me in.” Could it be murder that he had done? And had he been so successful that he wanted to do it again, at my expense? I hesitated. “May I come in?” said he. I inclined my head, with as much presence of mind as I could command, and he followed me into my chambers. There, I saw that the lower part of his face was tied up, in what is commonly called a Belcher handkerchief. He slowly removed this bandage, and exposed to view a long dark beard, curling over his upper lip, twisting about the corners of his mouth, and hanging down upon his breast. “What is this?” I exclaimed involuntarily, “and what have you become?” “I am the Ghost of Art!” said he. The effect of these words, slowly uttered in the thunderstorm at midnight, was appalling in the last degree. More dead than alive, I surveyed him in silence. “The German taste came up,” said he, “and threw me out of bread. I am ready for the taste now.” He made his beard a little jagged with his hands, folded his arms, and said, “Severity!” I shuddered. It was so severe. He made his beard flowing, on his breast, and, leaning, both hands on the staff of a carpet-broom which Mrs. Parkins had left among my books, said: “Benevolence.” I stood transfixed. The change of sentiment was entirely in the beard. The man might have left his face alone, or had no face. The beard did everything. He laid down, on his back, on my table, and with that action of his head threw up his beard at the chin. “That’s death!” said he. He got off my table and, looking up at the ceiling, cocked his beard a little awry; at the same time making it stick out before him. “Adoration, or a vow of vengeance,” he observed. He turned his profile to me, making his upper lip very bulgy with the upper part of his beard. “Romantic character,” said he. He looked sideways out of his beard, as if it were an ivy-bush. “Jealousy,” said he. He gave it an ingenious twist in the air, and informed me that he was carousing. He made it shaggy with his fingers – and it was Despair; lank – and it was avarice; tossed it all kinds of ways – and it was rage. The beard did everything. “I am the Ghost of Art,” said he. “Two bob a-day now, and more when its longer! Hair’s the true expression. There is no other. I SAID I’D GROW IT, AND I’VE GROWN IT, AND IT SHALL HAUNT YOU!” He may have tumbled down stairs in the dark, but he never walked down or ran down. I looked over the bannisters, and I was alone with the thunder. Need I add more of my terrific fate? It HAS haunted me ever since. It glares upon me from the walls of the Royal Academy, (except when MACLISE subdues it to his genius,) it fills my soul with terror at the British Institution, it lures young artists on to their destruction. Go where I will, the Ghost of Art, eternally working the passions in hair, and expressing everything by beard, pursues me. The prediction is accomplished, and the Victim has no rest. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 'The Ghost of Art' Description An account of the resource Published in Household Words (20 July 1850) Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Dickens, Charles Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <div id="dublin-core-source" class="element"> <div class="element-text five columns omega"> Household Words, vol. 1, no. 17, 20 July 1850, pp. 385-387. Dickens Journals Online, <a href="https://www.djo.org.uk/household-words/volume-i/page-385.html">https://www.djo.org.uk/household-words/volume-i/page-385.html</a>. </div> </div> <div id="dublin-core-date" class="element"> <div class="field two columns alpha"></div> </div> Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1850-07-20 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Lydia Craig Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Dickens Journals Online, used by permission. Type The nature or genre of the resource Journalism article Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 1850-07-20-The_Ghost_of_Art Bibliographic Citation A bibliographic reference for the resource. Recommended practice is to include sufficient bibliographic detail to identify the resource as unambiguously as possible. Dickens, Charles. 'The Ghost of Art'. Dickens Search. Eds. Emily Middleton and Lydia Craig. Accessed [date]. <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/journalism/1850-07-20-The_Ghost_of_Art">https://dickenssearch.com/journalism/1850-07-20-The_Ghost_of_Art</a>. Scripto Transcription A written representation of a document. I am a bachelor, residing in rather a dreary set of chambers in the Temple. They are situated in a square court of high houses, which would be a complete well, but for the want of water and the absence of a bucket. I live at the top of the house, among the tiles and sparrows. Like the little man in the nursery-story, I live by myself, and all the bread and cheese I get – which is not much – I put upon a shelf. I need scarcely add, perhaps, that I am in love, and that the father of my charming Julia objects to our union. I mention these little particulars as I might deliver a letter of introduction. The reader is now acquainted with me, and perhaps will condescend to listen to my narrartive. I am naturally of a dreamy turn of mind; and my abundant leisure for I am called to the bar coupled with much lonely listening to the twittering of sparrows, and the pattering of rain, has encouraged that disposition. In my “top set,” I hear the wind howl, on a winter night, when the man on the ground floor believes it is perfectly still weather. The dim lamps with which our Honourable Society (supposed to be as yet unconscious of the new discovery called Gas) make the horrors of the staircase visible, deepen the gloom which generally settles on my soul when I go home at night. I am in the Law, but not of it. I can’t exactly make out what it means. I sit in Westminster Hall sometimes (in character) from ten to four; and when I go out of Court, I don’t know whether I am standing on my wig or my boots. It appears to me (I mention this in confidence) as if there were too much talk and too much law – as if some grains of truth were started overboard into a tempestuous sea of chaff. All this may make me mystical. Still, I am confident that what I am going to describe myself as having seen and heard, I actually did see and hear.  It is necessary that I should observe that I have a great delight in pictures. I am no painter myself, but I have studied pictures and written about them. I have seen all the most famous pictures in the world; my education and reading have been sufficiently general to possess me beforehand with a knowledge of most of the subjects to which a Painter is likely to have recourse; and, although I might be in some doubt as to the rightful fashion of the scabbard of King Lear's sword, for instance, I think I should know King Lear tolerably well, if I happened to meet with him. I go to all the Modern Exhibitions every season, and of course I revere the Royal Academy. I stand by its forty Academical articles almost as firmly as I stand by the thirty-nine Articles of the Church of England. I am convinced that in neither case could there be, by any rightful possibility, one article more or less. It is now exactly three years – three years ago, this very month – since I went from Westminster to the Temple, one Thursday afternoon, in a cheap steam-boat. The sky was black, when I imprudently walked on board. It began to thunder and lighten immediately afterwards, and the rain poured down in torrents. The deck seeming to smoke with the wet, I went below; but so many passengers were there, smoking too, that I came up again, and buttoning my pea-coat, and standing in the shadow of the paddle-box, stood as upright as I could, and made the best of it. It was at this moment that I first beheld the terrible Being, who is the subject of my present recollections. Standing against the funnel, apparently with the intention of drying himself by the heat as fast as he got wet, was a shabby man in threadbare black, and with his hands in his pockets, who fascinated me from the memorable instant when I caught his eye. Where had I caught that eye before? Who was he? Why did I connect him, all at once, with the Vicar of Wakefield, Alfred the Great, Gil Blas, Charles the Second, Joseph and his Brethren, the Fairy Queen, Tom Jones, the Decameron of Boccaccio, Tam O’Shanter, the Marriage of the Doge of Venice with the Adriatic, and the Great Plague of London? Why, when he bent one leg,and placed one hand upon the back of the seat near him, did my mind associate him wildly with the words, “Number one hundred and forty-two, Portrait of a gentleman?” Could it be that I was going mad? I looked at him again, and now I could have taken my affidavit that he belonged to the Vicar of Wakefield’s family. Whether he was the Vicar, or Moses, or Mr. Burchill, or the Squire, or a conglomeration of all four, I knew not; but I was impelled to seize him by the throat, and charge him with being, in some fell way, connected with the Primrose blood. He looked up at the rain, and then – oh Heaven! – he became Saint John. He folded his arms, resigning himself to the weather, and I was frantically inclined to address him as the Spectator, and firmly demand to know what he had done with Sir Roger de Coverley. The frightful suspicion that I was becoming deranged, returned upon me with redoubled force. Meantime, this awful stranger, inexplicably linked to my distress, stood drying himself at the funnel; and ever, as the steam rose from his clothes, diffusing a mist around him, I saw through the ghostly medium all the people I have mentioned, and a score more, sacred and profane. I am conscious of a dreadful inclination that stole upon me, as it thundered and lightened, to grapple with this man, or demon, and plunge him over the side. But, I constrained myself – I know not how – to speak to him, and in a pause of the storm, I crossed the deck, and said: “What are you?” He replied, hoarsely, “A Model.” “A what?” said I. “A Model,” he replied. “I sets to the profession for a bob a-hour.” (All through this narrative I give his own words, which are indelibly imprinted on my memory.) The relief which this disclosure gave me, the exquisite delight of the restoration of my confidence in my own sanity, I cannot describe. I should have fallen on his neck, but for the consciousness of being observed by the man at the wheel. “You then,” said I, shaking him so warmly by the hand, that I wrung the rain out of his coat-cuff, “are the gentleman whom I have so frequently contemplated, in connection with a high-backed chair with a red cushion, and a table with twisted legs.” “I am that Model,” he rejoined moodily, “and I wish I was anything else.” “Say not so,” I returned. “I have seen you in the society of many beautiful young women;” as in truth I had, and always (I now remembered) in the act of making the most of his legs. “No doubt,” said he. “And you’ve seen me along with warses of flowers, and any number of table-kivers, and antique cabinets, and warious gammon.” “Sir?” said I. “And warious gammon,” he repeated, in a louder voice. “You might have seen me in armour, too, if you had looked sharp. Blessed if I ha’n’t stood in half the suits of armour as ever came out of Pratts'’ shop and sat, for weeks together, a eating nothing, out of half the gold and silver dishes as has ever been lent for the purpose out of Storrses, and Mortimerses, or Garrardses, and Davenportseseses.” Excited, as it appeared, by a sense of injury, I thought he never would have found an end for the last word. But, at length it rolled sullenly away with the thunder. “Pardon me,” said I, “you are a well-favored, well-made man, and yet – forgive me – I find, on examining my mind, that I associate you with – that my recollection indistinctly makes you, in short – excuse me – a kind of powerful monster.” “It would be a wonder if it didn’t,” he said. “Do you know what my points are?” “No,” said I. “My throat and my legs,” said he. “When I don’t set for a head, I mostly sets for a throat and a pair of legs. Now, granted you was a painter, and was to work at my throat for a week together, I suppose you’d see a lot of lumps and bumps there, that would never be there at all, if you looked at me, complete, instead of only my throat. Wouldn’t you?” “Probably,” said I, surveying him. “Why, it stands to reason,” said the Model. “Work another week at my legs, and it’ll be the same thing. You'll make ‘em out as knotty and as knobby, at last, as if they was the trunks of two old trees. Then, take and stick my legs and throat on to another man’s body, and you’ll make a reg’lar monster. And that’s the way the public gets their reg’lar monsters, every first Monday in May, when the Royal Academy Exhibition opens.” “You are a critic,” said I, with an air of deference. “I’m in an uncommon ill humour, if that’s it,” rejoined the Model, with great indignation. “As if it warn’t bad enough for a bob a-hour, for a man to be mixing himself up with that there jolly old furniter that one ‘ud think the public know’d the wery nails in by this time – or to be putting on greasy old ats and cloaks, and playing tambourines in the Bay o’ Naples, with Wesuvius a smokin’ according to pattern in the background, and the wines a bearing wonderful in the middle distance – or to be unpolitely kicking up his legs among a lot o’ gals, with no reason whatever in his mind, but to show ‘em – as if this warn’t bad enough, I’m to go and be thrown out of employment too!” “Surely no!” said I. “Surely yes,” said the indignant Model. “BUT I’LL GROW ONE.” The gloomy and threatening manner in which he muttered the last words, can never be effaced from my remembrance. My blood ran cold. I asked of myself, what was it that this desperate Being was resolved to grow? My breast made no response. I ventured to implore him to explain his meaning. With a scornful laugh, he uttered this dark prophecy: “I’LL GROW ONE. AND, MARK MY WORDS, IT SHALL HAUNT YOU!” We parted in the storm, after I had forced half-a-crown on his acceptance, with a trembling hand. I conclude that something supernatural happened to the steam-boat, as it bore his reeking figure down the river; but it never got into the papers. Two years elapsed, during which I followed my profession without any vicissitudes; never holding so much as a motion, of course. At the expiration of that period, I found myself making my way home to the Temple, one night, in precisely such another storm of thunder and lightning as that by which I had been overtaken on board the steam-boat – except that this storm, bursting over the town at midnight, was rendered much more awful by the darkness and the hour. As I turned into my court, I really thought a thunderbolt would fall, and plough the pavement up. Every brick and stone in the place seemed to have an echo of its own for the thunder. The water-spouts were overcharged, and the rain came tearing down from the house-tops as if they had been mountain-tops. Mrs. Parkins, my laundress – wife of Parkins the porter, then newly dead of a dropsy – had particular instructions to place a bedroom candle and a match under the staircase lamp on my landing, in order that I might light my candle there, whenever I came home. Mrs. Parkins invariably disregarding all instructions, they were never there. Thus it happened that on this occasion I groped my way into my sitting-room to find the candle, and came out to light it. What were my emotions when, underneath the staircase lamp, shining with wet as if he had never been dry since our last meeting, stood the mysterious Being whom I had encountered on the steam-boat in a thunderstorm, two years before! His prediction rushed upon my mind, and I turned faint. “I said I’d do it,” he observed, in a hollow voice, “and I have done it. May I come in?” "Misguided creature, what have you done?” I returned. “I’ll let you know,” was his reply, “if you’ll let me in.” Could it be murder that he had done? And had he been so successful that he wanted to do it again, at my expense? I hesitated. “May I come in?” said he. I inclined my head, with as much presence of mind as I could command, and he followed me into my chambers. There, I saw that the lower part of his face was tied up, in what is commonly called a Belcher handkerchief. He slowly removed this bandage, and exposed to view a long dark beard, curling over his upper lip, twisting about the corners of his mouth, and hanging down upon his breast. “What is this?” I exclaimed involuntarily, “and what have you become?” “I am the Ghost of Art!” said he. The effect of these words, slowly uttered in the thunderstorm at midnight, was appalling in the last degree. More dead than alive, I surveyed him in silence. “The German taste came up,” said he, “and threw me out of bread. I am ready for the taste now.” He made his beard a little jagged with his hands, folded his arms, and said, “Severity!” I shuddered. It was so severe. He made his beard flowing, on his breast, and, leaning, both hands on the staff of a carpet-broom which Mrs. Parkins had left among my books, said: “Benevolence.” I stood transfixed. The change of sentiment was entirely in the beard. The man might have left his face alone, or had no face. The beard did everything. He laid down, on his back, on my table, and with that action of his head threw up his beard at the chin. “That’s death!” said he. He got off my table and, looking up at the ceiling, cocked his beard a little awry; at the same time making it stick out before him. “Adoration, or a vow of vengeance,” he observed. He turned his profile to me, making his upper lip very bulgy with the upper part of his beard. “Romantic character,” said he. He looked sideways out of his beard, as if it were an ivy-bush. “Jealousy,” said he. He gave it an ingenious twist in the air, and informed me that he was carousing. He made it shaggy with his fingers – and it was Despair; lank – and it was avarice; tossed it all kinds of ways – and it was rage. The beard did everything. “I am the Ghost of Art,” said he. “Two bob a-day now, and more when its longer! Hair’s the true expression. There is no other. I SAID I’D GROW IT, AND I’VE GROWN IT, AND IT SHALL HAUNT YOU!” He may have tumbled down stairs in the dark, but he never walked down or ran down. I looked over the bannisters, and I was alone with the thunder. Need I add more of my terrific fate? It HAS haunted me ever since. It glares upon me from the walls of the Royal Academy, (except when MACLISE subdues it to his genius,) it fills my soul with terror at the British Institution, it lures young artists on to their destruction. Go where I will, the Ghost of Art, eternally working the passions in hair, and expressing everything by beard, pursues me. The prediction is accomplished, and the Victim has no rest. https://www.dickenssearch.com/files/original/3/The_Grateful_Impromptu/1845-10-21_before_i_put_in_a_book.jpg 4ffba5da53d0822ca720ee671338cfd9 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Verse Description An account of the resource <h4>This collection brings together the most complete set of Dickens's verse to date, supplementing the work of existing editions with previously uncollected poems Dickens contributed to albums, or wrote anonymously.</h4> Though such productions receive scant attention from scholars interested in his fiction and journalism, Dickens composed a surprising amount of verse. It was a genre in which he evidently felt much less at home (and financially rewarded) than when writing in prose. However, several poems gained popular favour during his lifetime; that so many were <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=51&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Song">written to be set to music</a> indicates the permeable boundary between metered verse functioning as poem or song in the nineteenth century, and may explain why some of Dickens’s poems were more enduringly popular than others. Notably, <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/verse/1836-05_Pickwick_Papers_The_Ivy_Green">'The Ivy Green'</a> from Pickwick Papers (1837), a story of time’s inexorable passing, was frequently republished in newspapers. Several poems written to young ladies of Dickens’s acquaintance are released on Dickens Search as part of the author’s poetic output for the first time, testifying to the author’s ability to write impromptu poetry and gallantly turn a phrase. Since keeping <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/items/browse?search=&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bjoiner%5D=and&advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=94&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Autograph+Album&collection=&type=&tags=&date_search_term=&submit_search=Search+For+Items">autograph albums</a> was a popular pastime for women in the Victorian era, it is possible that further examples of such activity remain to be discovered in various archives and private collections. When writing <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/items/browse?search=&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bjoiner%5D=and&advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=94&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Letter&collection=3&type=&tags=&date_search_term=&submit_search=Search+For+Items">letters</a> to friends, Dickens occasionally included comedic poems for the recipient. Several of these are included. Considering the enormity of Dickens’s correspondence, likely more instances of this sort of poetic humour will result over time. <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=51&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Epitaph">Epitaphs</a> Dickens wrote for friends and family, whether used or not, are included with Dickens's other verse for the first time. Users can also browse <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=94&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Play">verse from Dickens's plays</a>, including songs removed from The Strange Gentleman and Is She His Wife? Or, Something Singular! before performance. Care is necessary when verifying the accuracy of these poems, as some are misattributed to Dickens. Widespread reprintings of 'Dickens poems' in nineteenth-century newspapers are insufficient evidence for authorial attribution, owing to the mistakes intentionally or inadvertently made in ascribing authorship. An unusual example of a poem that is and is not by Dickens, the lines of 'Little Nell’s Funeral' are taken, with minimal alterations, from Chapter 72 of The Old Curiosity Shop. An instance of the strikingly lyrical quality of Dickens’s sentimental prose, they were divided into metered, unrhymed verse by M.A.H. for the 1849 collection Echoes of Infant Voices. Because Dickens did not intend for this passage to be structured in verse form, the poem is not included in the poetry collection of Dickens Search. <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/poetry-dickens-didnt-write">Read our blog post for more on poetry Dickens didn't write.</a> Occasionally, Dickens will quote a poem by another author, as in his burlesque Is She his Wife? Or, Something Singular! (1836). The character Mr Felix Tapkins launches into a short hunting song beginning 'The wife around her husband throws/Her arms to make him stay'. As William Chappell noted in 1840, this is a well-known variant of 'A Hunting We Will Go' (1777), by Thomas Arne, though he misattributes its composition to Henry Fielding. Previous notable collections of some of Dickens's poetry include The Plays and Poems of Charles Dickens (1882) edited by Richard Herne Shepherd and The Poems and Verses of Charles Dickens (1903) edited by Frederic G. Kitton. In 2025, we published <a href="https://edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-the-verse-of-charles-dickens.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Verse of Charles Dickens</a> (Edinburgh University Press), which includes an introduction and editorial apparatus for this verse.  Caution has been taken when ascertaining that each poem is indeed by Dickens. Please <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/contact">contact us</a> with any errors, corrections, suggestions, or other poems written by Dickens. 1. The Verse of Charles Dickens. Edited by Lydia Craig and Emily Middleton. Edinburgh University Press, 2025; Robert Butterworth. 'The Hymn of the Wiltshire Labourers.' The Dickensian 516.118.1 (Spring 2022): pp. 43-56; Eva-Charlotta Mebius. 'Dreams of Dying Girls: The Poetry of Thomas J. Ouseley and Charles Dickens.' Dickens Quarterly 34.3 (September 2017): pp. 256-261; Robert C. Hanna. 'Before Boz; The Juvenilia and Early Writings of Charles Dickens, 1820-1833'. Dickens Studies Annual 40 (2009): pp. 231-364. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context verse Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Lydia Craig; Emily Middleton Poem Ngram Date Hidden from users and search. All items in a collection need to have the same data in the same format in order to show up in Ngram (either YYYY, YYYYMMDD, or YYYYMMDD). No combinations will work. For journalism, letters and poetry, if there is no month or day, default to the first of the month or January. So a poem with a date of March 1843 would be 18430301. A poem published in 1856 with no month or date information would be 18560101. 18440301 Ngram Text Hidden from users and search. Copy and paste from the Scripto transcription. Then check and uncheck HTML to strip out all formatting. Finally, search and remove any   (which is the HTML for spaces). This will prevent the Ngram picking up on irrelevant HTML. I put in a book once, by hook or by crook, The whole race (as I thought) of a "feller", Who happily pleased the town's taste (much diseased), – And the name of this person was Weller. I find to my cost that one Weller I lost, Cruel Destiny so to arrange it! I love her dear name which has won me some fame, But great Heaven how gladly I'd change it! Publication Type E.g. newspaper/serial Autograph Album TEI File Link to TEI file <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/teibp/dist/content/1844-03_Christiana_Thompson_The_Grateful_Impromptu.xml" target="_blank" rel="noopener">'The Grateful Impromptu' (March 1844).</a> Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 'The Grateful Impromptu' Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Dickens, Charles Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived The Charles Dickens Museum, <a href="http://www.collections.dickensmuseum.com/object-a378" target="_blank" rel="noopener">http://www.collections.dickensmuseum.com/object-a378</a>. British Library Newspapers Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1844-03 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource British Library Newspapers, <a href="https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/viewer/bl/0000035/18990605/064/0002" target="_blank" rel="noopener">https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/viewer/bl/0000035/18990605/064/0002</a>. Some rights reserved. This work permits non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Type The nature or genre of the resource Poem Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 1844-03_Christiana_Thompson_The_Grateful_Impromptu Bibliographic Citation A bibliographic reference for the resource. Recommended practice is to include sufficient bibliographic detail to identify the resource as unambiguously as possible. Dickens, Charles. 'The Grateful Impromptu.' Autograph Album of Christiana Weller (March 1844). Dickens Search. Eds. Emily Middleton and Lydia Craig. Accessed [date]. <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/verse/1844-03_Christiana_Thompson_The_Grateful_Impromptu">https://dickenssearch.com/verse/1844-03_Christiana_Thompson_The_Grateful_Impromptu</a>. Description An account of the resource From the autograph album of Christiana Weller (March 1844). Scripto Transcription A written representation of a document. I put in a book once, by hook or by crook, The whole race (as I thought) of a "feller", Who happily pleased the town's taste (much diseased), – And the name of this person was Weller. I find to my cost that one Weller I lost, Cruel Destiny so to arrange it! I love her dear name which has won me some fame, But great Heaven how gladly I'd change it! https://www.dickenssearch.com/files/original/5/The_Hospital_Patient/1836-08-06-The_Hospital_Patient.pdf d3c78ac353a70e855ed4468cc8bbf419 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Short Fiction Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context short-stories Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Lydia Craig Scripto Transcription A written representation of a document. This collection (still in development) unites various short stories that Dickens wrote throughout his career for various publications, including newspapers and periodicals, and for inclusion in short story collections. Between 1833, when he tentatively submitted “A Dinner at Poplar Walk” for publication in The Monthly Magazine, and his death in 1870, Dickens as ‘BOZ,’ briefly, as ‘TIBBS,’ and as “Charles Dickens” wrote dozens of short stories and ‘sketches,’ which often moved easily between journalism and story. It was as Boz, the late Georgian literary persona, that he first endeared himself to the British reading public in the pages of such newspapers and periodicals as The Evening Chronicle, Bell’s Life in London, and Bentley's Miscellany with a unique blend of comedy and pathos. By turns scathing of observed social and personal injustices, and appreciative of London’s colourful, vibrant culture and the oddities of human nature, Boz followed in the literary footsteps of other recent metropolitan commentators like Charles Lamb (‘ELIA’), Leigh Hunt, Theodore Hook, Robert Surtees, Thomas Hood, and John Poole, and eighteenth-century Picaresque novelists, Tobias Smollett and Henry Fielding. Soon, Dickens established his own unique voice. Prior to and following the ascension of the young Queen Victoria in 1837, Boz became a prescient spectator of both the rising empire’s rapidly developing culture in public spaces and of the domestic dramas enacted in British homes. Global fame arrived with the serial publication of The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club (1837), marking Dickens’s shift to writing novels. In tone, this rambling comedic travelogue owed much to Boz’s voice and incidentally featured several tales unrelated to the main narrative. Dickens would sporadically publish the Mudfog stories in 1836 and 1837, enlarging on them in Sketches by Boz, a collection of many of the sketches and stories first published by John Macrone in two volumes in 1836 and 1837 and illustrated by George Cruikshank. According to Robert L. Patten, ‘When Dickens gathered up previously published writing, anonymous and pseudonymous, for republication, he identified authorship with a particular subset of his journalistic pieces, the ‘sketches’ rather than the tales or portraits of characters, and with his pseudonym. Hence, after mooting several other titles, Dickens settled on Sketches by Boz’ (44). Sketches of Young Gentlemen (1838), a joking response to Rev. Edward Caswell, or “QUIZ’s” recent effort Sketches of Young Ladies (1838), and Sketches of Couples (1840) were published by Chapman and Hall and illustrated by Hablot Knight Browne, better known as ‘PHIZ’. After this point, Dickens’s short stories were published in his periodicals Household Words and All the Year Round, though after 1837 he never published them with any regularity, preferring instead to focus on writing and serialising novels. Occasionally, he contributed several chapters to a jointly authored short story, collection, or series; Christmas numbers of his periodicals provided the opportunity to feature multiple famous writers uniting to weave a Yule-tide yarn, such as The Haunted House (1859). Notably, his collaboration with Wilkie Collins resulted in such works as The Perils of Certain English Prisoners (1857) and No Thoroughfare (1867). Towards the end of his life, Dickens began to publish short stories again in American publications such as The New York Ledger, The Atlantic Monthly, and Our Young Folks. Until now, first printings of Dickens’s earliest short stories published between 1833 and 1836 have been difficult to find for those unable to visit the periodicals and newspaper holdings at eminent institutions such as The British Library. Similarly, the last ones written by Dickens have remained understudied due in part to their obscurity. Twentieth-century editions of the Sketches are generally based on the text of Chapman and Hall’s later 1839 single volume edition, which relies on the reissue serialised between 1837 and 1839, or the 1868 Charles Dickens Edition, which is based on the 1850 cheap (and further revised) edition. Other anthologies, for instance Selected Short Fiction (Penguin, 2005), edited by Deborah A. Thomas, choose excerpts from Dickens’s entire oeuvre in the short fiction genre. Several scholars have explored the drafting, publication, and impact of the early sketches and short stories, with notable studies including Dickens and the Short Story. (University of Philadelphia Press, 1982) by Deborah A. Thomas and Charles Dickens and ‘Boz’: The Birth of the Industrial-Age Author (Cambridge, 2012) by Patten.1 To date, the most comprehensive overview of the sketches is provided by The Oxford Edition of Charles Dickens’s Sketches by Boz (2021) edited by Paul Schlicke with David Hewitt. Others include Dickens's Uncollected Magazine and Newspaper Sketches as Originally Composed and Published 1833–1836 (2012), edited by Robert C. Hanna, and Sketches by Boz and Other Early Papers (1994), edited by Michael Slater. Because Dickens made many alterations, whether significant or incidental, between the first printing of a sketch and successive editions, these changes open up a window into his editorial process and developing intentions for the ‘Boz’ legacy. Now, with this Dickens Search collection, these emendations can be studied with greater ease than ever before. Our transcription field contains text Dickens is believed to have solely authored, though our pdfs of the short story collaborations will be provided in their entirety to facilitate easier engagement and comprehension of how his narrative might interact with those constructed by other writers. Ngram search and other text analysis tools will be applied to Dickens’s words only, to avoid skewing the results. While building this collection, we have consulted, and transcribed scans found on databases such as British Newspaper Archive (BNA), digital archives, and such open-access sites as Hathi Trust, Internet Archive, and Google Books; all items are linked to their original location on the internet. Please contact us with any errors, corrections, and suggestions, or to mention other short stories by Dickens that might have been overlooked. 1. See Dominic Rainsford. ‘“Luller-li-e-te”! Language, Personhood, and Sympathy in Sketches by Boz.’ In Some Keywords in Dickens. Edited by Michael Hollington, Francesca Orestano, and Nathalie Vanfasse. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2021, pp. 117-130; William F. Long. ‘“Our Space is Limited”: Fitting Sketches by Boz into the Morning Chronicle”. Dickens Quarterly 4 (December 2020): pp. 325-348; William F. Long. 'Dickens before Sketches by Boz: Earliest Reactions to his Earliest Works'. Dickensian (2018), 114.505, pp.170-176; Christina Jen. '"Drop the Curtain": Astonishment and the Anxieties of Authorship in Charles Dickens's Sketches by Boz. Dickens Studies Annual 49.2 (2018): pp. 249-278; Dianne F. Sadoff. ‘Boz and Beyond: “Oliver Twist” and the Dickens Legacy’. Dickens Studies Annual 45 (2014): pp. 23-44; Dickens's Uncollected Magazine and Newspaper Sketches, as Originally Composed and Published, 1833–1836, No. 46. Ed. Robert C. Hanna (2012): New York, AMS Press; Danielle Coriale. ‘Sketches by Boz, “So Frail a Machine”. SEL: Studies in English Literature 48.4 (2008): pp. 801-812; Paul Schlicke. ‘“Risen Like a Rocket”: The Impact of Sketches by Boz’. Dickens Quarterly 22.1 (2005): pp. 3-18; Ellen Miller Casey. ‘“Boz has got the Town by the ear”: Dickens and the “Athenæum Critics”’. Dickens Studies Annual 33 (2003): pp. 159-190; Richard Maxwell. ‘Dickens, the Two “Chronicles”, and the Publication of “Sketches by Boz”’. Dickens Studies Annual 9 (1981): pp. 21–32; Angus Easson. “Who is Boz? Dickens and His Sketches”. The Dickensian 18.1.405 (Spring 1985): pp. 13-22; Julian W. Breslow. 'The Narrator in Sketches by Boz.' ELH 44.1 (1977): pp. 127–49. Short Story Publication Type E.g. newspaper/serial Newspaper Publication The title of the newspaper/serial (if applicable) The Carlton Chronicle Pseudonym The name under which the item was published BOZ Ngram Date Hidden from users and search. All items in a collection need to have the same data in the same format in order to show up in Ngram (either YYYY, YYYYMMDD, or YYYYMMDD). No combinations will work. For journalism, letters and poetry, if there is no month or day, default to the first of the month or January. So a poem with a date of March 1843 would be 18430301. A poem published in 1856 with no month or date information would be 18560101. 18360806 Ngram Text Hidden from users and search. Copy and paste from the Scripto transcription. Then check and uncheck HTML to strip out all formatting. Finally, search and remove any   (which is the HTML for spaces). This will prevent the Ngram picking up on irrelevant HTML. In my rambles through the streets of London after evening has set in, I have often paused beneath the windows of some public hospital, and picture to myself the gloomy and mournful scenes that were passing within. The sudden moving of a taper as its feeble ray shot from window after window, until its light gradually disappeared, as if it were carried further back into the room to the bedside of some suffering patient, has been enough to awaken a whole crowd of reflections; the mere glimmering of the low-burning lamps which when all other habitations are wrapped in darkness and slumber, denote the chamber where so many forms are writhing with pain, or wasting with disease, has been sufficient to check the most boisterous merriment. Who can tell the anguish of those weary hours, when the only sound the sick man hears, is the disjointed wanderings of some feverish slumberer near him, the low moan of pain, or perhaps the muttered, long-forgotten prayer of a dying man? Who, but they who have felt it, can imagine the sense of loneliness and desolation which must be the portion of those who in the hour of dangerous illness are left to be tended by strangers,—what hands, be they ever so gentle, can wipe the clammy brow, or smooth the restless bed, like those of mother, wife, or child? Impressed with these thoughts, I have turned away through the nearly-deserted streets; and the sight of the few miserable creatures still hovering about them, has not tended to lessen the pain which such meditations awaken. The hospital is a refuge and resting-place for hundreds, who but for such institutions must die in the streets and doorways; but what can be the feelings of outcasts like these, when they are stretched on the bed of sickness with scarcely a hope of recovery? The wretched woman who lingers about the pavement, hours after midnight, and the miserable shadow of a man—the ghastly remnant that want and drunkenness have left—which crouches beneath a window-ledge, to sleep where there is some shelter from the rain, have little to bind them to life, but what have they to look back upon, in death? What are the unwonted comforts of a roof and a bed to them, when the recollections of a whole life of debasement, stalk before them; when repentance seems a mockery, and sorrow comes too late? About a twelvemonth ago, as I was strolling through Covent Garden (I had been thinking about these things overnight), I was attracted by the very prepossessing appearance of a pickpocket, who having declined to take the trouble of walking to the Police Office, on the ground that he hadn't the slightest wish to go there at all, was being conveyed thither in a wheelbarrow, to the huge delight of a crowd, but apparently not very much to his own individual gratification. Somehow, I never can resist joining a crowd—nature certainly intended me for a vagabond—so I turned back with the mob, and entered the office, in company with my friend the pickpocket, a couple of policemen, and as many dirty-faced spectators as could squeeze their way in. There was a powerful, ill-looking young fellow at the bar, who was undergoing an examination on the very common charge of having, on the previous night, ill-treated a woman with whom he lived in some court hard by. Several witnesses bore testimony to acts of the grossest brutality, and a certificate was read from the house-surgeon of a neighbouring hospital, describing the nature of the injuries the woman had received, and intimating that her recovery was extremely doubtful. Some question appeared to have been raised about the identity of the prisoner; for when it was agreed that the two magistrates should visit the hospital at eight o'clock that evening, to take her deposition, it was settled that the man should be taken there also. He turned deadly pale at this, and I saw him clench the bar very hard when the order was given. He was removed directly afterwards, and he spoke not a word. I felt an irrepressible curiosity to witness this interview, although I can hardly tell why, at this instant, for I knew it must be a painful one. It was no very difficult matter for me to gain permission, and I obtained it. The prisoner, and the officer who had him in custody, were already at the hospital when I reached it, and waiting the arrival of the magistrates in a small room below stairs. The man was handcuffed, and his hat was pulled forward over his eyes. I could tell though, by the livid whiteness of his countenance, and the constant twitching of the muscles of his face, that he dreaded what was to come. After a short interval, the magistrates and clerk were bowed in, by the house-surgeon, and a couple of young men who smelt very strongly of tobacco-smoke—"dressers" I think they call them"—and after one magistrate had complained bitterly of the cold, and the other of the absence of any news in the evening paper, it was announced that the patient was prepared, and we were conducted to the "casualty ward" in which she was lying. The dim light which burnt in the spacious room, increased rather than diminished the ghastly appearance of the hapless creatures in the beds, which were ranged in two long rows on either side. In one bed, lay a child enveloped in bandages, with its body half-consumed by fire; in another, a female, rendered hideous by some dreadful accident, was wildly beating her clenched fists on the coverlet, in an agony of pain; on a third, there lay stretched a young girl, apparently in the heavy stupor which is sometimes the immediate precursor of death: her face was stained with blood, and her breast and arms were bound up in folds of linen. Two or three of the beds were empty, and their recent occupants were sitting beside them, but with faces so wan, and eyes so bright and glassy, that it was fearful to meet their gaze. On every face was stamped the expression of anguish and suffering. The object of the visit was lying at the upper end of the room. She was a fine young woman of about two or three and twenty. Her long black hair had been hastily cut from about the wounds on her head, and streamed over the pillow in jagged and matted locks. Her face bore frightful marks of the ill-usage she had received: her hand was pressed upon her side, as if her chief pain was there, her breathing was short and heavy, and it was plain to see that she was dying fast. She murmured a few words in reply to the magistrate's inquiry, whether she was in great pain: and having been raised on the pillow by the nurse, looked anxiously into the strange countenances that surrounded her bed. The magistrate nodded to the officer, to bring the man forward. He did so, and stationed him at the bedside. The girl looked on with a wild and troubled expression of face, but her sight was dim, and she did not know him. "Take off his hat," said the magistrate. The officer did as he was desired, and the man's features were fully disclosed. The girl started up with an energy quite preternatural; the fire gleamed in her heavy eyes, and the blood rushed to her pale and sunken cheeks. It was a convulsive effort. She fell back upon her pillow, and covering her scarred and bruised face with her hands, burst into tears. The man cast an anxious look towards her, but otherwise appeared wholly unmoved. After a brief pause the nature of the errand was explained, and the oath tendered. "Oh, no, gentlemen," said the girl, raising herself once more, and folding her hands together; "no, gentlemen, for God's sake! I did it myself, it was nobody's fault, it was an accident. He didn't hurt me; he wouldn't for all the world. Jack, dear Jack, you know you wouldn't." Her sight was fast failing her, and her hand groped over the bedclothes in search of his, in vain. Brute as the man was, he was not prepared for this. He turned his face from the bed, and sobbed aloud. The girl's colour changed, and her breathing grew more difficult. She was evidently dying. "We respect the feelings which prompt you to this," said the gentleman who had spoken first "but let me warn you, not to persist in what you know to be untrue, until it is too late. It cannot save him." "Jack," murmured the girl, laying her hand upon his arm. "They shall not persuade me to swear your life away. He didn't do it, gentlemen He never hurt me." She grasped his arm tightly, and added, in a broken whisper, "I hope God Almighty will forgive me all the wrong I have done, and the life I have led. God bless you, Jack. Some kind gentleman take my love to my poor old father. Five years ago, he said he wished I had died a child. Oh, I wish I had! I wish I had!" We turned away; it was no sight for strangers to look upon. The nurse bent over the girl for a few seconds, and then drew the sheet over her face. It covered a corpse. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 'The Hospital Patient' Description An account of the resource Published in The Carlton Chronicle, 6 August 1836, pp. 11. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Dickens, Charles Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Newspaper Archive, <a href="https://newspaperarchive.com/carlton-chronicle-aug-06-1836-p-11/">https://newspaperarchive.com/carlton-chronicle-aug-06-1836-p-11/</a>. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1836-08-06 Type The nature or genre of the resource Short story Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 1836-08-06-The_Hospital_Patient Bibliographic Citation A bibliographic reference for the resource. Recommended practice is to include sufficient bibliographic detail to identify the resource as unambiguously as possible. Dickens, Charles. 'The Hospital Patient' (6 August 1836). Dickens Search. Eds. Emily Middleton and Lydia Craig. Accessed [date]. <a href="https://www.dickenssearch.com/short-stories/1836-08-06-The_Hospital_Patient">https://www.dickenssearch.com/short-stories/1836-08-06-The_Hospital_Patient</a>. References A related resource that is referenced, cited, or otherwise pointed to by the described resource. A brief preface states, 'LEAVES from an unpublished volume. By "BOZ," (which will be torn out once a fortnight). Scripto Transcription A written representation of a document. In my rambles through the streets of London after evening has set in, I have often paused beneath the windows of some public hospital, and picture to myself the gloomy and mournful scenes that were passing within. The sudden moving of a taper as its feeble ray shot from window after window, until its light gradually disappeared, as if it were carried further back into the room to the bedside of some suffering patient, has been enough to awaken a whole crowd of reflections; the mere glimmering of the low-burning lamps which when all other habitations are wrapped in darkness and slumber, denote the chamber where so many forms are writhing with pain, or wasting with disease, has been sufficient to check the most boisterous merriment. Who can tell the anguish of those weary hours, when the only sound the sick man hears, is the disjointed wanderings of some feverish slumberer near him, the low moan of pain, or perhaps the muttered, long-forgotten prayer of a dying man? Who, but they who have felt it, can imagine the sense of loneliness and desolation which must be the portion of those who in the hour of dangerous illness are left to be tended by strangers,—what hands, be they ever so gentle, can wipe the clammy brow, or smooth the restless bed, like those of mother, wife, or child? Impressed with these thoughts, I have turned away through the nearly-deserted streets; and the sight of the few miserable creatures still hovering about them, has not tended to lessen the pain which such meditations awaken. The hospital is a refuge and resting-place for hundreds, who but for such institutions must die in the streets and doorways; but what can be the feelings of outcasts like these, when they are stretched on the bed of sickness with scarcely a hope of recovery? The wretched woman who lingers about the pavement, hours after midnight, and the miserable shadow of a man—the ghastly remnant that want and drunkenness have left—which crouches beneath a window-ledge, to sleep where there is some shelter from the rain, have little to bind them to life, but what have they to look back upon, in death? What are the unwonted comforts of a roof and a bed to them, when the recollections of a whole life of debasement, stalk before them; when repentance seems a mockery, and sorrow comes too late? About a twelvemonth ago, as I was strolling through Covent Garden (I had been thinking about these things overnight), I was attracted by the very prepossessing appearance of a pickpocket, who having declined to take the trouble of walking to the Police Office, on the ground that he hadn't the slightest wish to go there at all, was being conveyed thither in a wheelbarrow, to the huge delight of a crowd, but apparently not very much to his own individual gratification. Somehow, I never can resist joining a crowd—nature certainly intended me for a vagabond—so I turned back with the mob, and entered the office, in company with my friend the pickpocket, a couple of policemen, and as many dirty-faced spectators as could squeeze their way in. There was a powerful, ill-looking young fellow at the bar, who was undergoing an examination on the very common charge of having, on the previous night, ill-treated a woman with whom he lived in some court hard by. Several witnesses bore testimony to acts of the grossest brutality, and a certificate was read from the house-surgeon of a neighbouring hospital, describing the nature of the injuries the woman had received, and intimating that her recovery was extremely doubtful. Some question appeared to have been raised about the identity of the prisoner; for when it was agreed that the two magistrates should visit the hospital at eight o'clock that evening, to take her deposition, it was settled that the man should be taken there also. He turned deadly pale at this, and I saw him clench the bar very hard when the order was given. He was removed directly afterwards, and he spoke not a word. I felt an irrepressible curiosity to witness this interview, although I can hardly tell why, at this instant, for I knew it must be a painful one. It was no very difficult matter for me to gain permission, and I obtained it. The prisoner, and the officer who had him in custody, were already at the hospital when I reached it, and waiting the arrival of the magistrates in a small room below stairs. The man was handcuffed, and his hat was pulled forward over his eyes. I could tell though, by the livid whiteness of his countenance, and the constant twitching of the muscles of his face, that he dreaded what was to come. After a short interval, the magistrates and clerk were bowed in, by the house-surgeon, and a couple of young men who smelt very strongly of tobacco-smoke—"dressers" I think they call them"—and after one magistrate had complained bitterly of the cold, and the other of the absence of any news in the evening paper, it was announced that the patient was prepared, and we were conducted to the "casualty ward" in which she was lying. The dim light which burnt in the spacious room, increased rather than diminished the ghastly appearance of the hapless creatures in the beds, which were ranged in two long rows on either side. In one bed, lay a child enveloped in bandages, with its body half-consumed by fire; in another, a female, rendered hideous by some dreadful accident, was wildly beating her clenched fists on the coverlet, in an agony of pain; on a third, there lay stretched a young girl, apparently in the heavy stupor which is sometimes the immediate precursor of death: her face was stained with blood, and her breast and arms were bound up in folds of linen. Two or three of the beds were empty, and their recent occupants were sitting beside them, but with faces so wan, and eyes so bright and glassy, that it was fearful to meet their gaze. On every face was stamped the expression of anguish and suffering. The object of the visit was lying at the upper end of the room. She was a fine young woman of about two or three and twenty. Her long black hair had been hastily cut from about the wounds on her head, and streamed over the pillow in jagged and matted locks. Her face bore frightful marks of the ill-usage she had received: her hand was pressed upon her side, as if her chief pain was there, her breathing was short and heavy, and it was plain to see that she was dying fast. She murmured a few words in reply to the magistrate's inquiry, whether she was in great pain: and having been raised on the pillow by the nurse, looked anxiously into the strange countenances that surrounded her bed. The magistrate nodded to the officer, to bring the man forward. He did so, and stationed him at the bedside. The girl looked on with a wild and troubled expression of face, but her sight was dim, and she did not know him. "Take off his hat," said the magistrate. The officer did as he was desired, and the man's features were fully disclosed. The girl started up with an energy quite preternatural; the fire gleamed in her heavy eyes, and the blood rushed to her pale and sunken cheeks. It was a convulsive effort. She fell back upon her pillow, and covering her scarred and bruised face with her hands, burst into tears. The man cast an anxious look towards her, but otherwise appeared wholly unmoved. After a brief pause the nature of the errand was explained, and the oath tendered. "Oh, no, gentlemen," said the girl, raising herself once more, and folding her hands together; "no, gentlemen, for God's sake! I did it myself, it was nobody's fault, it was an accident. He didn't hurt me; he wouldn't for all the world. Jack, dear Jack, you know you wouldn't." Her sight was fast failing her, and her hand groped over the bedclothes in search of his, in vain. Brute as the man was, he was not prepared for this. He turned his face from the bed, and sobbed aloud. The girl's colour changed, and her breathing grew more difficult. She was evidently dying. "We respect the feelings which prompt you to this," said the gentleman who had spoken first "but let me warn you, not to persist in what you know to be untrue, until it is too late. It cannot save him." "Jack," murmured the girl, laying her hand upon his arm. "They shall not persuade me to swear your life away. He didn't do it, gentlemen He never hurt me." She grasped his arm tightly, and added, in a broken whisper, "I hope God Almighty will forgive me all the wrong I have done, and the life I have led. God bless you, Jack. Some kind gentleman take my love to my poor old father. Five years ago, he said he wished I had died a child. Oh, I wish I had! I wish I had!" We turned away; it was no sight for strangers to look upon. The nurse bent over the girl for a few seconds, and then drew the sheet over her face. It covered a corpse. https://www.dickenssearch.com/files/original/12/The_Household_Narrative/1850-04-13-The_Household_Narrative.pdf 0d75eaf3386668c47eacb3a8c1e833b3 Journalism Ngram Date Hidden from users and search. All items in a collection need to have the same data in the same format in order to show up in Ngram (either YYYY, YYYYMMDD, or YYYYMMDD). No combinations will work. For journalism, letters and poetry, if there is no month or day, default to the first of the month or January. So a poem with a date of March 1843 would be 18430301. A poem published in 1856 with no month or date information would be 18560101. 18500430 Publication The title of the newspaper/serial (if applicable) Household Words Publication Type E.g. newspaper/serial Weekly magazine Ngram Text Hidden from users and search. Copy and paste from the Scripto transcription. Then check and uncheck HTML to strip out all formatting. Finally, search and remove any   (which is the HTML for spaces). This will prevent the Ngram picking up on irrelevant HTML. We take this opportunity of announcing a design, closely associated with our Household Words, which we have now matured, and which we hope will be acceptable to our readers. We purpose publishing, at the end of each month as a supplementary number to the monthly part of Household Words, a comprehensive Abstract or History of all the occurrences of that month, native and foreign, under the title of THE HOUSEHOLD NARRATIVE OF CURRENT EVENTS. The size and price of each of these numbers will be the same as the size and price of the present number of Household Words. Twelve numbers will necessarily be published in the course of the year one for each month and on the completion of the Annual Volume, a copious Index will appear, and a title-page for the volume; which will then be called THE HOUSEHOLD NARRATIVE of such a year. It will form a complete Chronicle of all that year's events, carefully compiled, thoroughly digested, and systematically arranged for easy reference; presenting a vast mass of information that must be interesting to all, at a price that will render it accessible to the humblest purchasers of books, and at which only our existing machinery in connexion with this Work would enable us to produce it. The first number of THE HOUSEHOLD NARRATIVE will appear as a supplement to the first monthly part of Household Words, published at the end of the present month of APRIL. As the Volume for 1850 would be incomplete (in consequence of our not having commenced this publication at the beginning of a year) without a backward reference to the three months of JANUARY, FEBRUARY, and MARCH, a similar number of THE HOUSEHOLD NARRATIVE for each of those months will be published before the year is out. It is scarcely necessary to explain that it is not proposed to render the purchase of THE HOUSEHOLD NARRATIVE compulsory on the purchasers of Household Words; and that the supplementary number, though always published at the same time as our monthly part, will therefore be detached from it, and published separately. Nor is it necessary for us, we believe, to expatiate on our leading reasons for adding this new undertaking to our present enterprise. The intimate connexion between the facts and realities of the time, and the means by which we aim, in Household Words, to soften what is hard in them, to exalt what is held in little consideration, and to show the latent hope there is in what may seem unpromising, needs not to be pointed out. All that we sought to express in our Preliminary Word, in reference to this work, applies, we think, to its proposed companion. As another humble means of enabling those who accept us for their friend, to bear the world’s rough-cast events to the anvil of courageous duty, and there beat them into shape, we enter on the project, and confide in its success. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 'The Household Narrative' Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Dickens, Charles Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1850-04-13 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Lydia Craig Type The nature or genre of the resource Journalism article Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 1850-04-13-The_Household_Narrative Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Dickens Journals Online. Used by permission. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Household Words, vol.1, no. 3, 13 April 1850, p.49. Dickens Journals Online, <a href="https://www.djo.org.uk/household-words/volume-i/page-49.html">https://www.djo.org.uk/household-words/volume-i/page-49.html</a>. Bibliographic Citation A bibliographic reference for the resource. Recommended practice is to include sufficient bibliographic detail to identify the resource as unambiguously as possible. Dickens, Charles. 'The Household Narrative'. Dickens Search. Eds. Emily Middleton and Lydia Craig. Accessed [date]. <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/journalism/1850-04-13-The_Household_Narrative">https://dickenssearch.com/journalism/1850-04-13-The_Household_Narrative</a>. Description An account of the resource Published in Household Words (13 April 1850) Scripto Transcription A written representation of a document. We take this opportunity of announcing a design, closely associated with our Household Words, which we have now matured, and which we hope will be acceptable to our readers. We purpose publishing, at the end of each month as a supplementary number to the monthly part of Household Words, a comprehensive Abstract or History of all the occurrences of that month, native and foreign, under the title of THE HOUSEHOLD NARRATIVE OF CURRENT EVENTS. The size and price of each of these numbers will be the same as the size and price of the present number of Household Words. Twelve numbers will necessarily be published in the course of the year one for each month and on the completion of the Annual Volume, a copious Index will appear, and a title-page for the volume; which will then be called THE HOUSEHOLD NARRATIVE of such a year. It will form a complete Chronicle of all that year's events, carefully compiled, thoroughly digested, and systematically arranged for easy reference; presenting a vast mass of information that must be interesting to all, at a price that will render it accessible to the humblest purchasers of books, and at which only our existing machinery in connexion with this Work would enable us to produce it. The first number of THE HOUSEHOLD NARRATIVE will appear as a supplement to the first monthly part of Household Words, published at the end of the present month of APRIL. As the Volume for 1850 would be incomplete (in consequence of our not having commenced this publication at the beginning of a year) without a backward reference to the three months of JANUARY, FEBRUARY, and MARCH, a similar number of THE HOUSEHOLD NARRATIVE for each of those months will be published before the year is out. It is scarcely necessary to explain that it is not proposed to render the purchase of THE HOUSEHOLD NARRATIVE compulsory on the purchasers of Household Words; and that the supplementary number, though always published at the same time as our monthly part, will therefore be detached from it, and published separately. Nor is it necessary for us, we believe, to expatiate on our leading reasons for adding this new undertaking to our present enterprise. The intimate connexion between the facts and realities of the time, and the means by which we aim, in Household Words, to soften what is hard in them, to exalt what is held in little consideration, and to show the latent hope there is in what may seem unpromising, needs not to be pointed out. All that we sought to express in our Preliminary Word, in reference to this work, applies, we think, to its proposed companion. As another humble means of enabling those who accept us for their friend, to bear the world’s rough-cast events to the anvil of courageous duty, and there beat them into shape, we enter on the project, and confide in its success. https://www.dickenssearch.com/files/original/3/The_Hymn_of_the_Wiltshire_Labourers/1846-02-14_Daily_News_The_Hymn_of_the_Wiltshire_Labourers.jpeg 922e52225d90210ddad4a0c2a00e7c56 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Verse Description An account of the resource <h4>This collection brings together the most complete set of Dickens's verse to date, supplementing the work of existing editions with previously uncollected poems Dickens contributed to albums, or wrote anonymously.</h4> Though such productions receive scant attention from scholars interested in his fiction and journalism, Dickens composed a surprising amount of verse. It was a genre in which he evidently felt much less at home (and financially rewarded) than when writing in prose. However, several poems gained popular favour during his lifetime; that so many were <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=51&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Song">written to be set to music</a> indicates the permeable boundary between metered verse functioning as poem or song in the nineteenth century, and may explain why some of Dickens’s poems were more enduringly popular than others. Notably, <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/verse/1836-05_Pickwick_Papers_The_Ivy_Green">'The Ivy Green'</a> from Pickwick Papers (1837), a story of time’s inexorable passing, was frequently republished in newspapers. Several poems written to young ladies of Dickens’s acquaintance are released on Dickens Search as part of the author’s poetic output for the first time, testifying to the author’s ability to write impromptu poetry and gallantly turn a phrase. Since keeping <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/items/browse?search=&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bjoiner%5D=and&advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=94&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Autograph+Album&collection=&type=&tags=&date_search_term=&submit_search=Search+For+Items">autograph albums</a> was a popular pastime for women in the Victorian era, it is possible that further examples of such activity remain to be discovered in various archives and private collections. When writing <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/items/browse?search=&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bjoiner%5D=and&advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=94&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Letter&collection=3&type=&tags=&date_search_term=&submit_search=Search+For+Items">letters</a> to friends, Dickens occasionally included comedic poems for the recipient. Several of these are included. Considering the enormity of Dickens’s correspondence, likely more instances of this sort of poetic humour will result over time. <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=51&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Epitaph">Epitaphs</a> Dickens wrote for friends and family, whether used or not, are included with Dickens's other verse for the first time. Users can also browse <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=94&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Play">verse from Dickens's plays</a>, including songs removed from The Strange Gentleman and Is She His Wife? Or, Something Singular! before performance. Care is necessary when verifying the accuracy of these poems, as some are misattributed to Dickens. Widespread reprintings of 'Dickens poems' in nineteenth-century newspapers are insufficient evidence for authorial attribution, owing to the mistakes intentionally or inadvertently made in ascribing authorship. An unusual example of a poem that is and is not by Dickens, the lines of 'Little Nell’s Funeral' are taken, with minimal alterations, from Chapter 72 of The Old Curiosity Shop. An instance of the strikingly lyrical quality of Dickens’s sentimental prose, they were divided into metered, unrhymed verse by M.A.H. for the 1849 collection Echoes of Infant Voices. Because Dickens did not intend for this passage to be structured in verse form, the poem is not included in the poetry collection of Dickens Search. <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/poetry-dickens-didnt-write">Read our blog post for more on poetry Dickens didn't write.</a> Occasionally, Dickens will quote a poem by another author, as in his burlesque Is She his Wife? Or, Something Singular! (1836). The character Mr Felix Tapkins launches into a short hunting song beginning 'The wife around her husband throws/Her arms to make him stay'. As William Chappell noted in 1840, this is a well-known variant of 'A Hunting We Will Go' (1777), by Thomas Arne, though he misattributes its composition to Henry Fielding. Previous notable collections of some of Dickens's poetry include The Plays and Poems of Charles Dickens (1882) edited by Richard Herne Shepherd and The Poems and Verses of Charles Dickens (1903) edited by Frederic G. Kitton. In 2025, we published <a href="https://edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-the-verse-of-charles-dickens.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Verse of Charles Dickens</a> (Edinburgh University Press), which includes an introduction and editorial apparatus for this verse.  Caution has been taken when ascertaining that each poem is indeed by Dickens. Please <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/contact">contact us</a> with any errors, corrections, suggestions, or other poems written by Dickens. 1. The Verse of Charles Dickens. Edited by Lydia Craig and Emily Middleton. Edinburgh University Press, 2025; Robert Butterworth. 'The Hymn of the Wiltshire Labourers.' The Dickensian 516.118.1 (Spring 2022): pp. 43-56; Eva-Charlotta Mebius. 'Dreams of Dying Girls: The Poetry of Thomas J. Ouseley and Charles Dickens.' Dickens Quarterly 34.3 (September 2017): pp. 256-261; Robert C. Hanna. 'Before Boz; The Juvenilia and Early Writings of Charles Dickens, 1820-1833'. Dickens Studies Annual 40 (2009): pp. 231-364. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context verse Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Lydia Craig; Emily Middleton Poem Ngram Date Hidden from users and search. All items in a collection need to have the same data in the same format in order to show up in Ngram (either YYYY, YYYYMMDD, or YYYYMMDD). No combinations will work. For journalism, letters and poetry, if there is no month or day, default to the first of the month or January. So a poem with a date of March 1843 would be 18430301. A poem published in 1856 with no month or date information would be 18560101. 18460214 Ngram Text Hidden from users and search. Copy and paste from the Scripto transcription. Then check and uncheck HTML to strip out all formatting. Finally, search and remove any   (which is the HTML for spaces). This will prevent the Ngram picking up on irrelevant HTML. "Don't you all think that we have a great need to Cry to our God to put it in the hearst of our greacious Queen and her Members of Parlerment to grant us free bread." - LUCY SIMPKINS, AT BREMHILL. “Oh GOD, who by thy Prophet’s hand Didst smite the rocky brake, Whence water came, at thy command, They people’s thirst to slake; Strike, now, upon this granite wall, Stern, obdurate, and high; And let some drops of pity fall For us who starve and die! The GOD, who took a little child, And set him in the midst, And promised him His mercy mild, As, by Thy Son, Thou didst: Look down upon our children dear, So gaunt, so cold, so spare, And let their images appear, Where Lords and Genry are! Oh GOD, teach them to feel how we, When our poor infants droop, Are weakened in our trust in Thee, And how our spirits stoop; For, in thy rest, so bright and fair, All tears and sorrows sleep: And their young looks, so full of care, Would make Thine Angels weep! The GOD, who with His finger drew The Judgment coming on, Write, for these men, what must ensure, Ere many years be gone! Oh GOD whose bow is in the sky, Let them not brave and dare, Until they look (too late) on high, And see An Arrow there! Oh GOD remind them! In the bread They break upon the knee, Those sacred words may yet be read, “In memory of Me”! Oh GOD remind them! of His sweet Compassion for the poor, And how He gave them Bread to eat, And went from door to door! CHARLES DICKENS Publication Type E.g. newspaper/serial Newspaper Publication The title of the newspaper/serial (if applicable) Daily News TEI File Link to TEI file <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/teibp/dist/content/1846-02-14_Daily_News_The_Hymn_of_the_Wiltshire_Labourers.xml" target="_blank" rel="noopener">'The Hymn of the Wiltshire Labourers.' Daily News (14 February 1846): p. 5.</a> Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 'The Hymn of the Wiltshire Labourers' Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Dickens, Charles Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1846-02-14 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource British Library Newspapers, <a href="https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/BA3202823099/BNCN?u=loughuni&sid=BNCN&xid=c30600e4" target="_blank" rel="noopener">https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/BA3202823099/BNCN?u=loughuni&sid=BNCN&xid=c30600e4</a>. Some rights reserved. This work permits non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Type The nature or genre of the resource Poem Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 1846-02-14_Daily_News_The_Hymn_of_the_Wiltshire_Labourers Bibliographic Citation A bibliographic reference for the resource. Recommended practice is to include sufficient bibliographic detail to identify the resource as unambiguously as possible. Dickens, Charles. 'The Hymn of the Wiltshire Labourers.' Daily News (14 February 1846): p. 5. Dickens Search. Eds. Emily Middleton and Lydia Craig. Accessed [date]. <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/verse/1846-02-14_Daily_News_The_Hymn_of_the_Wiltshire_Labourers">https://dickenssearch.com/verse/1846-02-14_Daily_News_The_Hymn_of_the_Wiltshire_Labourers</a>. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived British Library Newspapers Description An account of the resource Published in the Daily News (14 February 1846). Scripto Transcription A written representation of a document. "Don't you all think that we have a great need to Cry to our God to put it in the hearst of our greacious Queen and her Members of Parlerment to grant us free bread." - LUCY SIMPKINS, AT BREMHILL. “Oh GOD, who by thy Prophet’s hand Didst smite the rocky brake, Whence water came, at thy command, They people’s thirst to slake; Strike, now, upon this granite wall, Stern, obdurate, and high; And let some drops of pity fall For us who starve and die! The GOD, who took a little child, And set him in the midst, And promised him His mercy mild, As, by Thy Son, Thou didst: Look down upon our children dear, So gaunt, so cold, so spare, And let their images appear, Where Lords and Genry are! Oh GOD, teach them to feel how we, When our poor infants droop, Are weakened in our trust in Thee, And how our spirits stoop; For, in thy rest, so bright and fair, All tears and sorrows sleep: And their young looks, so full of care, Would make Thine Angels weep! The GOD, who with His finger drew The Judgment coming on, Write, for these men, what must ensure, Ere many years be gone! Oh GOD whose bow is in the sky, Let them not brave and dare, Until they look (too late) on high, And see An Arrow there! Oh GOD remind them! In the bread They break upon the knee, Those sacred words may yet be read, “In memory of Me”! Oh GOD remind them! of His sweet  Compassion for the poor, And how He gave them Bread to eat, And went from door to door! CHARLES DICKENS https://www.dickenssearch.com/files/original/3/The_Ivy_Green/1836-05_Pickwick_Papers_The_Ivy_Green.pdf 97b5547e472f158fad633f922f6748db Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Verse Description An account of the resource <h4>This collection brings together the most complete set of Dickens's verse to date, supplementing the work of existing editions with previously uncollected poems Dickens contributed to albums, or wrote anonymously.</h4> Though such productions receive scant attention from scholars interested in his fiction and journalism, Dickens composed a surprising amount of verse. It was a genre in which he evidently felt much less at home (and financially rewarded) than when writing in prose. However, several poems gained popular favour during his lifetime; that so many were <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=51&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Song">written to be set to music</a> indicates the permeable boundary between metered verse functioning as poem or song in the nineteenth century, and may explain why some of Dickens’s poems were more enduringly popular than others. Notably, <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/verse/1836-05_Pickwick_Papers_The_Ivy_Green">'The Ivy Green'</a> from Pickwick Papers (1837), a story of time’s inexorable passing, was frequently republished in newspapers. Several poems written to young ladies of Dickens’s acquaintance are released on Dickens Search as part of the author’s poetic output for the first time, testifying to the author’s ability to write impromptu poetry and gallantly turn a phrase. Since keeping <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/items/browse?search=&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bjoiner%5D=and&advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=94&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Autograph+Album&collection=&type=&tags=&date_search_term=&submit_search=Search+For+Items">autograph albums</a> was a popular pastime for women in the Victorian era, it is possible that further examples of such activity remain to be discovered in various archives and private collections. When writing <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/items/browse?search=&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bjoiner%5D=and&advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=94&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Letter&collection=3&type=&tags=&date_search_term=&submit_search=Search+For+Items">letters</a> to friends, Dickens occasionally included comedic poems for the recipient. Several of these are included. Considering the enormity of Dickens’s correspondence, likely more instances of this sort of poetic humour will result over time. <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=51&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Epitaph">Epitaphs</a> Dickens wrote for friends and family, whether used or not, are included with Dickens's other verse for the first time. Users can also browse <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=94&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Play">verse from Dickens's plays</a>, including songs removed from The Strange Gentleman and Is She His Wife? Or, Something Singular! before performance. Care is necessary when verifying the accuracy of these poems, as some are misattributed to Dickens. Widespread reprintings of 'Dickens poems' in nineteenth-century newspapers are insufficient evidence for authorial attribution, owing to the mistakes intentionally or inadvertently made in ascribing authorship. An unusual example of a poem that is and is not by Dickens, the lines of 'Little Nell’s Funeral' are taken, with minimal alterations, from Chapter 72 of The Old Curiosity Shop. An instance of the strikingly lyrical quality of Dickens’s sentimental prose, they were divided into metered, unrhymed verse by M.A.H. for the 1849 collection Echoes of Infant Voices. Because Dickens did not intend for this passage to be structured in verse form, the poem is not included in the poetry collection of Dickens Search. <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/poetry-dickens-didnt-write">Read our blog post for more on poetry Dickens didn't write.</a> Occasionally, Dickens will quote a poem by another author, as in his burlesque Is She his Wife? Or, Something Singular! (1836). The character Mr Felix Tapkins launches into a short hunting song beginning 'The wife around her husband throws/Her arms to make him stay'. As William Chappell noted in 1840, this is a well-known variant of 'A Hunting We Will Go' (1777), by Thomas Arne, though he misattributes its composition to Henry Fielding. Previous notable collections of some of Dickens's poetry include The Plays and Poems of Charles Dickens (1882) edited by Richard Herne Shepherd and The Poems and Verses of Charles Dickens (1903) edited by Frederic G. Kitton. In 2025, we published <a href="https://edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-the-verse-of-charles-dickens.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Verse of Charles Dickens</a> (Edinburgh University Press), which includes an introduction and editorial apparatus for this verse.  Caution has been taken when ascertaining that each poem is indeed by Dickens. Please <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/contact">contact us</a> with any errors, corrections, suggestions, or other poems written by Dickens. 1. The Verse of Charles Dickens. Edited by Lydia Craig and Emily Middleton. Edinburgh University Press, 2025; Robert Butterworth. 'The Hymn of the Wiltshire Labourers.' The Dickensian 516.118.1 (Spring 2022): pp. 43-56; Eva-Charlotta Mebius. 'Dreams of Dying Girls: The Poetry of Thomas J. Ouseley and Charles Dickens.' Dickens Quarterly 34.3 (September 2017): pp. 256-261; Robert C. Hanna. 'Before Boz; The Juvenilia and Early Writings of Charles Dickens, 1820-1833'. Dickens Studies Annual 40 (2009): pp. 231-364. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context verse Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Lydia Craig; Emily Middleton Poem Ngram Date Hidden from users and search. All items in a collection need to have the same data in the same format in order to show up in Ngram (either YYYY, YYYYMMDD, or YYYYMMDD). No combinations will work. For journalism, letters and poetry, if there is no month or day, default to the first of the month or January. So a poem with a date of March 1843 would be 18430301. A poem published in 1856 with no month or date information would be 18560101. 18360501 Ngram Text Hidden from users and search. Copy and paste from the Scripto transcription. Then check and uncheck HTML to strip out all formatting. Finally, search and remove any   (which is the HTML for spaces). This will prevent the Ngram picking up on irrelevant HTML. Oh, a dainty plant is the Ivy green, That creepeth o’er ruins old! Of right choice food are his meals, I ween, In his cell so lone and cold. The wall must be crumbled, the stone decayed, To pleasure his dainty whim: And the mouldering dust that years have made Is a merry meal for him. Creeping where no life is seen, A rare old plant is the Ivy green. Fast he stealeth on, though he wears no wings, And a staunch old heart has he. How closely he twineth, how tight he clings, To his friend the huge Oak Tree! And slily he traileth along the ground, And his leaves he gently waves, As he joyously hugs and crawleth round The rich mould of dead men’s graves. Creeping where grim death hath been, A rare old plant is the Ivy green. Whole ages have fled and their works decayed, And nations have scattered been; But the stout old Ivy shall never fade, From its hale and hearty green. The brave old plant, in its lonely days, Shall fatten upon the past: For the stateliest building man can raise Is the Ivy’s food at last. Creeping on, where time has been, A rare old plant is the Ivy green. Publication Type E.g. newspaper/serial Serial Publication The title of the newspaper/serial (if applicable) The Pickwick Papers TEI File Link to TEI file <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/teibp/dist/content/1836-05_Pickwick_Papers_The_Ivy_Green.xml" target="_blank" rel="noopener">'The Ivy Green.' The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club. Issue 3, Chapter 6 (May 1836): p. 55.</a> Pseudonym The name under which the item was published Boz Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 'The Ivy Green' Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Dickens, Charles Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club, Chapter 6. Number 3 (May 1836), p. 55. UVic Libraries, <a href="https://vault.library.uvic.ca/concern/generic_works/d9b13cdd-9d78-4f71-947e-5ad5fb7d50e4?">https://vault.library.uvic.ca/concern/generic_works/d9b13cdd-9d78-4f71-947e-5ad5fb7d50e4?</a>. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1836-05 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource UVic Libraries, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial, <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/</a>. Type The nature or genre of the resource Poem Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 1836-05_Pickwick_Papers_The_Ivy_Green Bibliographic Citation A bibliographic reference for the resource. Recommended practice is to include sufficient bibliographic detail to identify the resource as unambiguously as possible. Dickens, Charles. 'The Ivy Green' from The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club. Issue 3, Chapter 6 (May 1836), p. 55. Dickens Search. Eds. Emily Middleton and Lydia Craig. Accessed [date]. <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/verse/1836-05_Pickwick_Papers_The_Ivy_Green">https://dickenssearch.com/verse/1836-05_Pickwick_Papers_The_Ivy_Green</a>. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Chapman and Hall Description An account of the resource From The Pickwick Papers, ch. 6, number 3 (May 1836). Scripto Transcription A written representation of a document. Oh, a dainty plant is the Ivy green, That creepeth o’er ruins old!  Of right choice food are his meals, I ween, In his cell so lone and cold. The wall must be crumbled, the stone decayed, To pleasure his dainty whim: And the mouldering dust that years have made Is a merry meal for him. Creeping where no life is seen, A rare old plant is the Ivy green. Fast he stealeth on, though he wears no wings, And a staunch old heart has he. How closely he twineth, how tight he clings, To his friend the huge Oak Tree!  And slily he traileth along the ground, And his leaves he gently waves, As he joyously hugs and crawleth round The rich mould of dead men’s graves. Creeping where grim death hath been, A rare old plant is the Ivy green.  Whole ages have fled and their works decayed, And nations have scattered been; But the stout old Ivy shall never fade, From its hale and hearty green. The brave old plant, in its lonely days, Shall fatten upon the past: For the stateliest building man can raise Is the Ivy’s food at last. Creeping on, where time has been, A rare old plant is the Ivy green. https://www.dickenssearch.com/files/original/5/The_Lamplighter_s_Story/1851-The_Lamplighters_Story_The_Picnic_Papers.pdf e9184a5c75bf123663b167542207f8ef Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Short Fiction Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context short-stories Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Lydia Craig Scripto Transcription A written representation of a document. This collection (still in development) unites various short stories that Dickens wrote throughout his career for various publications, including newspapers and periodicals, and for inclusion in short story collections. Between 1833, when he tentatively submitted “A Dinner at Poplar Walk” for publication in The Monthly Magazine, and his death in 1870, Dickens as ‘BOZ,’ briefly, as ‘TIBBS,’ and as “Charles Dickens” wrote dozens of short stories and ‘sketches,’ which often moved easily between journalism and story. It was as Boz, the late Georgian literary persona, that he first endeared himself to the British reading public in the pages of such newspapers and periodicals as The Evening Chronicle, Bell’s Life in London, and Bentley's Miscellany with a unique blend of comedy and pathos. By turns scathing of observed social and personal injustices, and appreciative of London’s colourful, vibrant culture and the oddities of human nature, Boz followed in the literary footsteps of other recent metropolitan commentators like Charles Lamb (‘ELIA’), Leigh Hunt, Theodore Hook, Robert Surtees, Thomas Hood, and John Poole, and eighteenth-century Picaresque novelists, Tobias Smollett and Henry Fielding. Soon, Dickens established his own unique voice. Prior to and following the ascension of the young Queen Victoria in 1837, Boz became a prescient spectator of both the rising empire’s rapidly developing culture in public spaces and of the domestic dramas enacted in British homes. Global fame arrived with the serial publication of The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club (1837), marking Dickens’s shift to writing novels. In tone, this rambling comedic travelogue owed much to Boz’s voice and incidentally featured several tales unrelated to the main narrative. Dickens would sporadically publish the Mudfog stories in 1836 and 1837, enlarging on them in Sketches by Boz, a collection of many of the sketches and stories first published by John Macrone in two volumes in 1836 and 1837 and illustrated by George Cruikshank. According to Robert L. Patten, ‘When Dickens gathered up previously published writing, anonymous and pseudonymous, for republication, he identified authorship with a particular subset of his journalistic pieces, the ‘sketches’ rather than the tales or portraits of characters, and with his pseudonym. Hence, after mooting several other titles, Dickens settled on Sketches by Boz’ (44). Sketches of Young Gentlemen (1838), a joking response to Rev. Edward Caswell, or “QUIZ’s” recent effort Sketches of Young Ladies (1838), and Sketches of Couples (1840) were published by Chapman and Hall and illustrated by Hablot Knight Browne, better known as ‘PHIZ’. After this point, Dickens’s short stories were published in his periodicals Household Words and All the Year Round, though after 1837 he never published them with any regularity, preferring instead to focus on writing and serialising novels. Occasionally, he contributed several chapters to a jointly authored short story, collection, or series; Christmas numbers of his periodicals provided the opportunity to feature multiple famous writers uniting to weave a Yule-tide yarn, such as The Haunted House (1859). Notably, his collaboration with Wilkie Collins resulted in such works as The Perils of Certain English Prisoners (1857) and No Thoroughfare (1867). Towards the end of his life, Dickens began to publish short stories again in American publications such as The New York Ledger, The Atlantic Monthly, and Our Young Folks. Until now, first printings of Dickens’s earliest short stories published between 1833 and 1836 have been difficult to find for those unable to visit the periodicals and newspaper holdings at eminent institutions such as The British Library. Similarly, the last ones written by Dickens have remained understudied due in part to their obscurity. Twentieth-century editions of the Sketches are generally based on the text of Chapman and Hall’s later 1839 single volume edition, which relies on the reissue serialised between 1837 and 1839, or the 1868 Charles Dickens Edition, which is based on the 1850 cheap (and further revised) edition. Other anthologies, for instance Selected Short Fiction (Penguin, 2005), edited by Deborah A. Thomas, choose excerpts from Dickens’s entire oeuvre in the short fiction genre. Several scholars have explored the drafting, publication, and impact of the early sketches and short stories, with notable studies including Dickens and the Short Story. (University of Philadelphia Press, 1982) by Deborah A. Thomas and Charles Dickens and ‘Boz’: The Birth of the Industrial-Age Author (Cambridge, 2012) by Patten.1 To date, the most comprehensive overview of the sketches is provided by The Oxford Edition of Charles Dickens’s Sketches by Boz (2021) edited by Paul Schlicke with David Hewitt. Others include Dickens's Uncollected Magazine and Newspaper Sketches as Originally Composed and Published 1833–1836 (2012), edited by Robert C. Hanna, and Sketches by Boz and Other Early Papers (1994), edited by Michael Slater. Because Dickens made many alterations, whether significant or incidental, between the first printing of a sketch and successive editions, these changes open up a window into his editorial process and developing intentions for the ‘Boz’ legacy. Now, with this Dickens Search collection, these emendations can be studied with greater ease than ever before. Our transcription field contains text Dickens is believed to have solely authored, though our pdfs of the short story collaborations will be provided in their entirety to facilitate easier engagement and comprehension of how his narrative might interact with those constructed by other writers. Ngram search and other text analysis tools will be applied to Dickens’s words only, to avoid skewing the results. While building this collection, we have consulted, and transcribed scans found on databases such as British Newspaper Archive (BNA), digital archives, and such open-access sites as Hathi Trust, Internet Archive, and Google Books; all items are linked to their original location on the internet. Please contact us with any errors, corrections, and suggestions, or to mention other short stories by Dickens that might have been overlooked. 1. See Dominic Rainsford. ‘“Luller-li-e-te”! Language, Personhood, and Sympathy in Sketches by Boz.’ In Some Keywords in Dickens. Edited by Michael Hollington, Francesca Orestano, and Nathalie Vanfasse. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2021, pp. 117-130; William F. Long. ‘“Our Space is Limited”: Fitting Sketches by Boz into the Morning Chronicle”. Dickens Quarterly 4 (December 2020): pp. 325-348; William F. Long. 'Dickens before Sketches by Boz: Earliest Reactions to his Earliest Works'. Dickensian (2018), 114.505, pp.170-176; Christina Jen. '"Drop the Curtain": Astonishment and the Anxieties of Authorship in Charles Dickens's Sketches by Boz. Dickens Studies Annual 49.2 (2018): pp. 249-278; Dianne F. Sadoff. ‘Boz and Beyond: “Oliver Twist” and the Dickens Legacy’. Dickens Studies Annual 45 (2014): pp. 23-44; Dickens's Uncollected Magazine and Newspaper Sketches, as Originally Composed and Published, 1833–1836, No. 46. Ed. Robert C. Hanna (2012): New York, AMS Press; Danielle Coriale. ‘Sketches by Boz, “So Frail a Machine”. SEL: Studies in English Literature 48.4 (2008): pp. 801-812; Paul Schlicke. ‘“Risen Like a Rocket”: The Impact of Sketches by Boz’. Dickens Quarterly 22.1 (2005): pp. 3-18; Ellen Miller Casey. ‘“Boz has got the Town by the ear”: Dickens and the “Athenæum Critics”’. Dickens Studies Annual 33 (2003): pp. 159-190; Richard Maxwell. ‘Dickens, the Two “Chronicles”, and the Publication of “Sketches by Boz”’. Dickens Studies Annual 9 (1981): pp. 21–32; Angus Easson. “Who is Boz? Dickens and His Sketches”. The Dickensian 18.1.405 (Spring 1985): pp. 13-22; Julian W. Breslow. 'The Narrator in Sketches by Boz.' ELH 44.1 (1977): pp. 127–49. Short Story Publication Type E.g. newspaper/serial Book Publication The title of the newspaper/serial (if applicable) The Pic-nic Papers Ngram Date Hidden from users and search. All items in a collection need to have the same data in the same format in order to show up in Ngram (either YYYY, YYYYMMDD, or YYYYMMDD). No combinations will work. For journalism, letters and poetry, if there is no month or day, default to the first of the month or January. So a poem with a date of March 1843 would be 18430301. A poem published in 1856 with no month or date information would be 18560101. 18510101 Ngram Text Hidden from users and search. Copy and paste from the Scripto transcription. Then check and uncheck HTML to strip out all formatting. Finally, search and remove any   (which is the HTML for spaces). This will prevent the Ngram picking up on irrelevant HTML. "If you talk of Murphy and Francis Moore, gentlemen," said the lamplighter who was in the chair, "I mean to say that neither of 'em ever had any more to do with the stars than Tom Grig had." "And what had he to do with 'em?" asked the lamplighter who officiated as vice. "Nothing at all," replied the other; "just exactly nothing at all." "Do you mean to say you don't believe in Murphy, then?" demanded the lamplighter who had opened the discussion. "I mean to say I believe in Tom Grig," replied the chairman. "Whether I believe in Murphy, or not, is a matter between me and my conscience; and whether Murphy believes in himself or not, is a matter between him and his conscience. Gentlemen, I drink your healths." The lamplighter who did the company this honour, was seated in the chimney corner of a certain tavern, which has been, time out of mind, the Lamplighters' House of Call. He sat in the midst of a circle of lamplighters, and was the cacique, or chief of the tribe. If any of our readers have had the good fortune to behold a lamplighter's funeral, they will not be surprised to learn that lamplighters are a strange and primitive people; that they rigidly adhere to old ceremonies and customs which have been handed down among them from father to son since the first public lamp was lighted out of doors; that they intermarry, and betroth their children in infancy; that they enter into no plots or conspiracies (for who ever heard of a traitorous lamplighter?); that they commit no crimes against the laws of their country (there being no instance of a murderous or burglarious lamplighter); that they are, in short, notwithstanding their apparently volatile and restless character, a highly moral and reflective people: having among themselves as many traditional observances as the Jews, and being, as a body, if not as old as the hills, at least as old as the streets. It is an article of their creed that the first faint glimmering of true civilisation shone in the first street-light maintained at the public expense. They trace their existence and high position in the public esteem, in a direct line to the heathen mythology; and hold that the history of Prometheus himself is but a pleasant fable, whereof the true hero is a lamplighter. "Gentlemen," said the lamplighter in the chair, "I drink your healths." "And perhaps, sir," said the vice, holding up his glass, and rising a little way off his seat and sitting down again, in token that he recognised and returned the compliment, "perhaps you will add to that condescension by telling us who Tom Grig was, and how he came to be connected in your mind with Francis Moore, Physician." "Hear, hear, hear!" cried the lamplighters generally. "Tom Grig, gentlemen," said the chairman, "was one of us; and it happened to him as it don't often happen to a public character in our line, that he had his what-you-may-call-it cast." "His head?" said the vice. "No," replied the chairman, "not his head." "His face, perhaps?" said the vice. "No, not his face." "His legs?" "No, not his legs." Nor yet his arms, nor his hands, nor his feet, nor his chest—all of which were severally suggested. "His nativity, perhaps?" "That's it," said the chairman, awakening from his thoughtful attitude at the suggestion. "His nativity. That's what Tom had cast, gentlemen." "In plaster?" asked the vice. "I don't rightly know how it's done," returned the chairman. "But I suppose it was." And there he stopped as if that were all he had to say; whereupon there arose a murmur among the company, which at length resolved itself into a request, conveyed through the vice, that he would go on. This being exactly what the chairman wanted, he mused for a little time, performed that agreeable ceremony which is popularly termed wetting one's whistle, and went on thus: "Tom Grig, gentlemen, was, as I have said, one of us; and I may go further, and say he was an ornament to us, and such a one as only the good old times of oil and cotton could have produced. Tom's family, gentlemen, were all lamplighters." "Not the ladies, I hope?" asked the vice. "They had talent enough for it, sir," rejoined the chairman, "and would have been, but for the prejudices of society. Let women have their rights, sir, and the females of Tom's family would have been every one of 'em in office. But that emancipation hasn't come yet, and hadn't then, and consequently they confined themselves to the bosoms of their families, cooked the dinners, mended the clothes, minded the children, comforted their husbands, and attended to the housekeeping generally. It's a hard thing upon the women, gentlemen, that they are limited to such a sphere of action as this; very hard." "I happen to know all about Tom, gentlemen, from the circumstance of his uncle by his mother's side having been my particular friend. His (that's Tom's uncle's) fate was a melancholy one. Gas was the death of him. When it was first talked of, he laughed. He wasn't angry; he laughed at the credulity of human nature. 'They might as well talk,' he says, 'of laying on an everlasting succession of glow-worms;' and then he laughed again, partly at his joke, and partly at poor humanity. "In course of time, however, the thing got ground, the experiment was made, and they lighted up Pall Mall. Tom's uncle went to see it. I've heard that he fell off his ladder fourteen times that night, from weakness, and that he would certainly have gone on falling till he killed himself, if his last tumble hadn't been into a wheelbarrow which was going his way, and humanely took him home. 'I foresee in this,' says Tom's uncle faintly, and taking to his bed as he spoke—'I foresee in this,' he says, 'the breaking up of our profession. There's no more going the rounds to trim by daylight, no more dribbling down of the oil on the hats and bonnets of ladies and gentlemen when one feels in spirits. Any low fellow can light a gas-lamp. And it's all up.' In this state of mind, he petitioned the government for—I want a word again, gentlemen—what do you call that which they give to people when it's found out, at last, that they've never been of any use, and have been paid too much for doing nothing?" "Compensation?" suggested the vice. "That's it," said the chairman. "Compensation. They didn't give it him though, and then he got very fond of his country all at once, and went about saying that gas was a death-blow to his native land, and that it was a plot of the radicals to ruin the country and destroy the oil and cotton trade for ever, and that the whales would go and kill themselves privately, out of sheer spite and vexation at not being caught. At last he got right down cracked; called his tobacco-pipe a gas-pipe; thought his tears were lamp-oil; and went on with all manner of nonsense of that sort, till one night he hung himself on a lamp-iron in Saint Martin's Lane, and there was an end of him. "Tom loved him, gentlemen, but he survived it. He shed a tear over his grave, got very drunk, spoke a funeral oration that night in the watch-house, and was fined five shillings for it, in the morning. Some men are none the worse for this sort of thing. Tom was one of 'em. He went that very afternoon on a new beat: as clear in his head, and as free from fever as Father Mathew himself. "Tom's new beat, gentlemen, was—I can't exactly say where, for that he'd never tell; but I know it was in a quiet part of town, where there were some queer old houses. I have always had it in my head that it must have been somewhere near Canonbury Tower in Islington, but that's a matter of opinion. Wherever it was, he went upon it, with a bran new ladder, a white hat, a brown holland jacket and trowsers, a blue neck-kerchief, and a sprig of full-blown double wall-flower in his button-hole. Tom was always genteel in his appearance, and I have heard from the best judges, that if he had left his ladder at home that afternoon, you might have took him for a lord. "He was always merry, was Tom, and such a singer, that if there was any encouragement for native talent, he'd have been at the opera. He was on his ladder, lighting his first lamp, and singing to himself in a manner more easily to be conceived than described, when he hears the clock strike five, and suddenly sees an old gentleman with a telescope in his hand, throw up a window and look at him very hard. "Tom didn't know what could be passing in this old gentleman's mind. He thought it likely enough that he might be saying within himself, 'Here's a new lamplighter—a good-looking young fellow—shall I stand something to drink?' Thinking this possible, he keeps quite still, pretending to be very particular about the wick, and looks at the old gentleman sideways, seeming to take no notice of him. "Gentlemen, he was one of the strangest and most mysterious-looking files that ever Tom clapped his eyes on. He was dressed all slovenly and untidy, in a great gown of a kind of bed-furniture pattern, with a cap of the same on his head; and a long old flapped waistcoat; with no braces, no strings, very few buttons—in short, with hardly any of those artificial contrivances that hold society together. Tom knew by these signs, and by his not being shaved, and by his not being over-clean, and by a sort of wisdom not quite awake, in his face, that he was a scientific old gentleman. He often told me that if he could have conceived the possibility of the whole Royal Society being boiled down into one man, he should have said the old gentleman's body was that Body. "The old gentleman claps the telescope to his eye, looks all round, sees nobody else in sight, stares at Tom again, and cries out very loud: "'Hal-loa!' "'Halloa, Sir,' says Tom from the ladder; 'and halloa again, if you come to that.' "'Here's an extraordinary fulfilment,' says the old gentleman, 'of a prediction of the planets.' "'Is there?' says Tom. 'I'm very glad to hear it.' "'Young man,' says the old gentleman, 'you don't know me.' "'Sir,' says Tom, 'I have not that honour; but I shall be happy to drink your health, notwithstanding.' "'I read,' cries the old gentleman, without taking any notice of this politeness on Tom's part—'I read what's going to happen, in the stars.' "Tom thanked him for the information, and begged to know if anything particular was going to happen in the stars, in the course of a week or so; but the old gentleman, correcting him, explained that he read in the stars what was going to happen on dry land, and that he was acquainted with all the celestial bodies. "'I hope they're all well, sir,' says Tom,—'everybody.' "'Hush!' cries the old gentleman. 'I have consulted the book of Fate with rare and wonderful success. I am versed in the great sciences of astrology and astronomy. In my house here, I have every description of apparatus for observing the course and motion of the planets. Six months ago, I derived from this source the knowledge that precisely as the clock struck five this afternoon a stranger would present himself— the destined husband of my young and lovely niece—in reality of illustrious and high descent, but whose birth would be enveloped in uncertainty and mystery. Don't tell me yours isn't,' says the old gentleman, who was in such a hurry to speak that he couldn't get the words out fast enough, 'for I know better.' "Gentlemen, Tom was so astonished when he heard him say this, that he could hardly keep his footing on the ladder, and found it necessary to hold on by the lamp-post. There was a mystery about his birth. His mother had always admitted it. Tom had never known who was his father, and some people had gone so far as to say that even she was in doubt. "While he was in this state of amazement, the old gentleman leaves the window, bursts out of the house-door, shakes the ladder, and Tom, like a ripe pumpkin, comes sliding down into his arms. "'Let me embrace you,' he says, folding his arms about him, and nearly lighting up his old bed-furniture gown at Tom's link. 'You're a man of noble aspect. Everything combines to prove the accuracy of my observations. You have had mysterious promptings within you,' he says; 'I know you have had whisperings of greatness, eh?' he says. "'I think I have,' says Tom—Tom was one of those who can persuade themselves to anything they like—'I have often thought I wasn't the small beer I was taken for.' "'You were right,' cries the old gentleman, hugging him again. 'Come in. My niece awaits us.' "'Is the young lady tolerable good-looking, sir?' says Tom, hanging fire rather, as he thought of her playing the piano, and knowing French, and being up to all manner of accomplishments. "'She's beautiful!' cries the old gentleman, who was in such a terrible bustle that he was all in a perspiration. 'She has a graceful carriage, an exquisite shape, a sweet voice, a countenance beaming with animation and expression; and the eye,' he says, rubbing his hands, 'of a startled fawn.'" "Tom supposed this might mean, what was called among his circle of acquaintance, 'a game eye;' and, with a view to this defect, inquired whether the young lady had any cash. "'She has five thousand pounds,' cries the old gentleman. 'But what of that? what of that? A word in your ear. I'm in search of the philosopher's stone. I have very nearly found it —not quite. It turns everything to gold; that's its property.' 'Tom naturally thought it must have a deal of property; and said that when the old gentleman did get it, he hoped he'd be careful to keep it in the family. "'Certainly,' he says, 'of course. Five thousand pounds! What's five thousand pounds to us? What's five million?' he says. 'What's five thousand million? Money will be nothing to us. We shall never be able to spend it fast enough.' "'We'll try what we can do, sir,' says Tom. "'We will,' says the old gentleman. 'Your name?' "'Grig,' says Tom. 'The old gentleman embraced him again, very tight; and without speaking another word, dragged him into the house in such an excited manner, that it was as much as Tom could do to take his link and ladder with him, and put them down in the passage. "Gentlemen, if Tom hadn't been always remarkable for his love of truth, I think you would still have believed him when he said that all this was like a dream. There is no better way for a man to find out whether he is really asleep or awake, than calling for something to eat. If he's in a dream, gentlemen, he'll find something wanting in the flavour, depend upon it. "Tom explained his doubts to the old gentleman, and said that if there was any cold meat in the house, it would ease his mind very much to test himself at once. The old gentleman ordered up a venison pie, a small ham, and a bottle of very old Madeira. At the first mouthful of pie, and the first glass of wine, Tom smacks his lips and cries out, 'I'm awake—wide awake;' and to prove that he was so, gentlemen, he made an end of 'em both. "When Tom had finished his meal (which he never spoke of afterwards without tears in his eyes), the old gentleman hugs him again, and says, 'Noble stranger! let us visit my young and lovely niece.' Tom, who was a little elevated with the wine, replies, 'The noble stranger is agreeable!' At which words the old gentleman took him by the hand, and led him to the parlour; crying as he opened the door, 'Here is Mr. Grig, the favourite of the planets!' "I will not attempt a description of female beauty, gentlemen, for every one of us has a model of his own that suits his own taste best. In this parlour that I'm speaking of, there were two young ladies; and if every gentleman present, will imagine two models of his own in their places, and will be kind enough to polish 'em up to the very highest pitch of perfection, he will then have a faint conception of their uncommon radiance. "Besides these two young ladies, there was their waiting-woman, that under any other circumstances Tom would have looked upon as a Venus; and besides her, there was a tall, thin, dismal-faced young gentleman, half man and half boy, dressed in a childish suit of clothes very much too short in the legs and arms, and looking, according to Tom's comparison, like one of the wax juveniles from a tailor's door, grown up and run to seed. Now, this youngster stamped his foot upon the ground and looked very fierce at Tom, and Tom looked fierce at him—for to tell the truth, gentlemen, Tom more than half suspected that when they entered the room he was kissing one of the young ladies; and for anything Tom knew, you observe, it might be his young lady—which was not pleasant. "'Sir,' says Tom, 'before we proceed any further, will you have the goodness to inform me who this young Salamander'— Tom called him that for aggravation, you perceive, gentlemen—'who this young Salamander may be?' "'That, Mr. Grig,' says the old gentleman, 'is my little boy. He was christened Galileo Isaac Newton Flamstead. Don't mind him. He's a mere child.' "'And a very fine child too,' says Tom—still aggravating, you'll observe—'of his age, and as good as fine, I have no doubt. How do you do, my man?' with which kind and patronising expressions, Tom reached up to pat him on the head, and quoted two lines about little boys, from Doctor Watts's Hymns, which he had learnt at a Sunday School. "It was very easy to see, gentlemen, by this youngster's frowning and by the waiting-maid's tossing her head and turning up her nose, and by the young ladies turning their backs and talking together at the other end of the room, that nobody but the old gentleman took very kindly to the noble stranger. Indeed, Tom plainly heard the waiting-woman say of her master, that so far from being able to read the stars as he pretended, she didn't believe he knew his letters in 'em, or at best that he had got further than words in one syllable; but Tom, not minding this (for he was in spirits after the Madeira), looks with an agreeable air towards the young ladies, and, kissing his hand to both, says to the old gentleman, 'Which is which?' "'This,' says the old gentleman, leading out the handsomest, if one of 'em could possibly be said to be handsomer than the other—'this is my niece, Miss Fanny Barker.' "'If you'll permit me, miss,' says Tom, 'being a noble stranger and a favourite of the planets, I will conduct myself as such.' With these words, he kisses the young lady in a very affable way, turns to the old gentleman, slaps him on the back, and says, 'When's it to come off, my buck?' "The young lady coloured so deep, and her lip trembled so much, gentlemen, that Tom really thought she was going to cry. But she kept her feelings down, and turning to the old gentleman, says, 'Dear uncle, though you have the absolute disposal of my hand and fortune, and though you mean well in disposing of 'em thus, I ask you whether you don't think this is a mistake? Don't you think, dear uncle,' she says, 'that the stars must be in error? Is it not possible that the comet may have put 'em out?' "'The stars,' says the old gentleman, 'couldn't make a mistake if they tried. Emma,' he says to the other young lady. "'Yes, papa,' says she. "'The same day that makes your cousin Mrs. Grig will unite you to the gifted Mooney. No remonstrance—no tears. Now, Mr. Grig, let me conduct you to that hallowed ground, that philosophical retreat, where my friend and partner, the gifted Mooney of whom I have just now spoken, is even now pursuing those discoveries which shall enrich us with the precious metal, and make us masters of the world. Come, Mr. Grig,' he says. "'With all my heart, sir,' replies Tom; 'and luck to the gifted Mooney, say I—not so much on his account as for our worthy selves!' With this sentiment, Tom kissed his hand to the ladies again, and followed him out; having the gratification to perceive, as he looked back, that they were all hanging on by the arms and legs of Galileo Isaac Newton Flamstead, to prevent him from following the noble stranger, and tearing him to pieces. "Gentlemen, Tom's father-in-law that was to be, took him by the hand, and having lighted a little lamp, led him across a paved court-yard at the back of the house, into a very large, dark, gloomy room: filled with all manner of bottles, globes, books, telescopes, crocodiles, alligators, and other scientific instruments of every kind. In the centre of this room was a stove or furnace, with what Tom called a pot, but which in my opinion was a crucible, in full boil. In one corner was a sort of ladder leading through the roof; and up this ladder the old gentleman pointed, as he said in a whisper: "'The observatory. Mr. Mooney is even now watching for the precise time at which we are to come into all the riches of the earth. It will be necessary for he and I, alone in that silent place, to cast your nativity before the hour arrives. Put the day and minute of your birth on this piece of paper, and leave the rest to me.' "'You don't mean to say,' says Tom, doing as he was told and giving him back the paper, 'that I'm to wait here long, do you? It's a precious dismal place.' "'Hush!' says the old gentleman. 'it's hallowed ground. Farewell!' "'Stop a minute,' says Tom. 'What a hurry you're in! What's in that large bottle yonder?' "'It's a child with three heads,' says the old gentleman; 'and everything else in proportion.' "'Why don't you throw him away?' says Tom. 'What do you keep such unpleasant things here for?' "'Throw him away!' cries the old gentleman. 'We use him constantly in astrology. He's a charm.' "'I shouldn't have thought it,' says Tom, 'from his appearance. Must you go, I say?' "The old gentleman makes him no answer, but climbs up the ladder in a greater bustle than ever. Tom looked after his legs till there was nothing of him left, and then sat down to wait; feeling (so he used to say) as comfortable as if he was going to be made a freemason, and they were heating the pokers. "Tom waited so long, gentlemen, that he began to think it must be getting on for midnight at least, and felt more dismal and lonely than ever he had done in all his life. He tried every means of wiling away the time, but it never had seemed to move so slow. First, he took a nearer view of the child with three heads, and thought what a comfort it must have been to his parents. Then he looked up a long telescope which was pointed out of the window, but saw nothing particular, in consequence of the stopper being on at the other end. Then he came to a skeleton in a glass case, labelled, 'Skeleton of a Gentleman—prepared by Mr. Mooney,' —which made him hope that Mr. Mooney might not be in the habit of preparing gentlemen that way without their own consent. A hundred times at least, he looked into the pot where they were boiling the philosopher's stone down to the proper consistency, and wondered whether it was nearly done. 'When it is,' thinks Tom, 'I'll send out for sixpenn'orth of sprats, and turn 'em into gold fish for a first experiment.' Besides which, he made up his mind, gentlemen, to have a country-house and a park; and to plant a bit of it with a double row of gas-lamps a mile long, and go out every night with a French-polished mahogany ladder, and two servants in livery behind him, to light 'em for his own pleasure. "At length and at last, the old gentleman's legs appeared upon the steps leading through the roof, and he came slowly down: bringing along with him the gifted Mooney. This Mooney, gentlemen, was even more scientific in appearance than his friend; and had, as Tom often declared upon his word and honour, the dirtiest face we can possibly know of, in this imperfect state of existence. "Gentlemen, you are all aware that if a scientific man isn't absent in his mind, he's of no good at all. Mr. Mooney was so absent, that when the old gentleman said to him, 'Shake hands with Mr. Grig,' he put out his leg. 'Here's a mind, Mr. Grig!' cries the old gentleman in a rapture. 'Here's philosophy! Here's rumination! Don't disturb him,' he says, "'or this is amazing!' "Tom had no wish to disturb him, having nothing particular to say; but he was so uncommonly amazing, that the old gentleman got impatient, and determined to give him an electric shock to bring him to—'for you must know, Mr. Grig,' he says, 'that we always keep a strongly charged battery, ready for that purpose.' These means being resorted to, gentlemen, the gifted Mooney revived with a loud roar, and he no sooner came to himself than both he and the old gentleman looked at Tom with compassion, and shed tears abundantly. "'My dear friend,' says the old gentleman to the Gifted, 'prepare him.' "'I say,' cries Tom, falling back, 'none of that, you know. No preparing by Mr. Mooney if you please.' "'Alas!' replies the old gentleman, 'you don't understand us. My friend, inform him of his fate.—I can't.' "The Gifted mustered up his voice, after many efforts, and informed Tom that his nativity had been carefully cast, and he would expire at exactly thirty-five minutes, twenty-seven seconds, and five-sixths of a second past nine o'clock, A.M., on that day two months. "Gentlemen, I leave you to judge what were Tom's feelings at this announcement, on the eve of matrimony and endless riches. 'I think,' he says in a trembling voice, 'there must be a mistake in the working of that sum. Will you do me the favour to cast it up again?'—'There is no mistake,' replies the old gentleman, 'it is confirmed by Francis Moore, Physician. Here is the prediction for to-morrow two months.' And he showed him the page, where sure enough were these words—'The decease of a great person may be looked for, about this time.' "'Which,' says the old gentleman, 'is clearly you, Mr. Grig.' "'Too clearly,' cries Tom, sinking into a chair, and giving one hand to the old gentleman, and one to the Gifted. 'The orb of day has set on Thomas Grig for ever!' "At this affecting remark, the Gifted shed tears again, and the other two mingled their tears with his, in a kind—if I may use the expression—of Mooney and Co.'s entire. But the old gentleman recovering first, observed that this was only a reason for hastening the marriage, in order that Tom's distinguished race might be transmitted to posterity; and requesting the Gifted to console Mr. Grig during his temporary absence, he withdrew to settle the preliminaries with his niece immediately. "And now, gentlemen, a very extraordinary and remarkable occurrence took place; for as Tom sat in a melancholy way in one chair, and the Gifted sat in a melancholy way in another, a couple of doors were thrown violently open, the two young ladies rushed in, and one knelt down in a loving attitude at Tom's feet, and the other at the Gifted's. So far, perhaps, as Tom was concerned—as he used to say—you will say there was nothing strange in this; but you will be of a different opinion when you understand that Tom's young lady was kneeling to the Gifted, and the Gifted's young lady was kneeling to Tom. "'Halloa! stop a minute!' cries Tom; 'here's a mistake. I need condoling with by sympathising woman, under my afflicting circumstances; but we're out in the figure. Change partners, Mooney.' "'Monster!' cries Tom's young lady, clinging to the Gifted. "'Miss!' says Tom. 'Is that your manners?' "'I abjure thee!' cries Tom's young lady. 'I renounce thee. I never will be thine. Thou,' she says to the Gifted, 'art the object of my first and all-engrossing passion. Wrapt in thy sublime visions, thou hast not perceived my love; but, driven to despair, I now shake off the woman and avow it. Oh, cruel, cruel man!' With which reproach she laid her head upon the Gifted's breast, and put her arms about him in the tenderest manner possible, gentlemen. "'And I,' says the other young lady, in a sort of ecstasy, that made Tom start—'I hereby abjure my chosen husband too. Hear me, Goblin!'—this was to the Gifted—'Hear me! I hold thee in the deepest detestation. The maddening interview of this one night has filled my soul with love—but not for thee. It is for thee, for thee, young man,' she cries to Tom. 'As Monk Lewis finely observes, Thomas, Thomas, I am thine, Thomas, Thomas, thou art mine: thine for ever, mine for ever!' with which words, she became very tender likewise. "Tom and the Gifted, gentlemen, as you may believe, looked at each other in a very awkward manner, and with thoughts not at all complimentary to the two young ladies. As to the Gifted, I have heard Tom say often, that he was certain he was in a fit, and had it inwardly. "'Speak to me! Oh, speak to me!' cries Tom's young lady to the Gifted. "'I don't want to speak to anybody,' he says, finding his voice at last, and trying to push her away. 'I think I had better go. I'm—I'm frightened,' he says, looking about as if he had lost something. "'Not one look of love!' she cries. 'Hear me while I declare—' "'I don't know how to look a look of love,' he says, all in a maze. 'Don't declare anything. I don't want to hear anybody.' "'That's right!' cries the old gentleman (who it seems had been listening). 'That's right! Don't hear her. Emma shall marry you to-morrow, my friend, whether she likes it or not, and she shall marry Mr. Grig.' "Gentlemen, these words were no sooner out of his mouth than Galileo Isaac Newton Flamstead (who it seems had been listening too) darts in, and spinning round and round, like a young giant's top, cries,'"Let her. Let her. I'm fierce; I'm furious. I give her leave. I'll never marry anybody after this— never. It isn't safe. She is the falsest of the false,' he cries, tearing his hair and gnashing his teeth; 'and I'll live and die a bachelor!' "'The little boy,' observed the Gifted gravely, 'albeit of tender years, has spoken wisdom. I have been led to the contemplation of womankind, and will not adventure on the troubled waters of matrimony.' "'What!' says the old gentleman, 'not marry my daughter! Won't you, Mooney? Not if I make her? Won't you? Won't you?' "'No,' says Mooney, 'I won't. And if anybody asks me any more, I'll run away, and never come back again.' ""Mr. Grig,' says the old gentleman,'"the stars must be obeyed. You have not changed your mind because of a little girlish folly—eh, Mr. Grig?' "Tom, gentlemen, had had his eyes about him, and was pretty sure that all this was a device and trick of the waiting-maid, to put him off his inclination. He had seen her hiding and skipping about the two doors, and had observed that a very little whispering from her pacified the Salamander directly. 'So,' thinks Tom, 'this is a plot—but it won't fit.' "'Eh, Mr. Grig?' says the old gentleman. "'Why, sir,' says Tom, pointing to the crucible, 'if the soup's nearly ready—' "'Another hour beholds the consummation of our labours,' returned the old gentleman. "'Very good,' says Tom, with a mournful air. 'It's only for two months, but I may as well be the richest man in the world even for that time. I'm not particular, I'll take her, sir. I'll take her.' "The old gentleman was in a rapture to find Tom still in the same mind, and drawing the young lady towards him by little and little, was joining their hands by main force, when all of a sudden, gentlemen, the crucible blows up, with a great crash; everybody screams; the room is filled with smoke; and Tom, not knowing what may happen next, throws himself into a Fancy attitude, and says, 'Come on, if you're a man!' without addressing himself to anybody in particular. "'The labours of fifteen years!' says the old gentleman, clasping his hands and looking down upon the Gifted, who was saving the pieces, 'are destroyed in an instant!'—And I am told, gentlemen, by the by, that this same philosopher's stone would have been discovered a hundred times at least, to speak within bounds, if it wasn't for the one unfortunate circumstance that the apparatus always blows up, when it's on the very point of succeeding. "Tom turns pale when he hears the old gentleman expressing himself to this unpleasant effect, and stammers out that if it's quite agreeable to all parties, he would like to know exactly what has happened, and what change has really taken place in the prospects of that company. "'We have failed for the present, Mr. Grig,' says the old gentleman, wiping his forehead. 'And I regret it the more, because I have in fact invested my niece's five thousand pounds in this glorious speculation. But don't be cast down,' he says, anxiously—'in another fifteen years, Mr. Grig—' "'Oh!' cries Tom, letting the young lady's hand fall. 'Were the stars very positive about this union, sir?' "'They were,' says the old gentleman. "'I'm sorry to hear it,' Tom makes answer, 'for it's no go, sir.' "'No what!' cries the old gentleman. "'Go, sir,' says Tom, fiercely. 'I forbid the banns.' And with these words—which are the very words he used—he sat himself down in a chair, and, laying his head upon the table, thought with a secret grief of what was to come to pass on that day two months. "Tom always said, gentlemen, that that waiting-maid was the artfullest minx he had ever seen; and he left it in writing in this country when he went to colonise abroad, that he was certain in his own mind she and the Salamander had blown up the philosopher's stone on purpose, and to cut him out of his property. I believe Tom was in the right, gentlemen; but whether or no, she comes forward at this point, and says, 'May I speak, sir?' and the old gentleman answering, 'Yes, you may,' she goes on to say that 'the stars are no doubt quite right in every respect, but Tom is not the man.' And she says, 'Don't you remember, sir, that when the clock struck five this afternoon, you gave Master Galileo a rap on the head with your telescope, and told him to get out of the way?' 'Yes, I do,' says the old gentleman. 'Then,' says the waiting-maid, 'I say he's the man, and the prophecy is fulfilled.' The old gentleman staggers at this, as if somebody had hit him a blow on the chest, and cries, 'He! why, he's a boy!' Upon that, gentlemen, the Salamander cries out that he'll be twenty-one next Lady-day; and complains that his father has always been so busy with the sun round which the earth revolves, that he has never taken any notice of the son that revolves round him; and that he hasn't had a new suit of clothes since he was fourteen; and that he wasn't even taken out of nankeen frocks and trowsers till he was quite unpleasant in 'em; and touches on a good many more family matters to the same purpose. To make short of a long story, gentlemen, they all talk together, and cry together, and remind the old gentleman that as to the noble family, his own grandfather would have been Lord Mayor if he hadn't died at a dinner the year before; and they show him by all kinds of arguments that if the cousins are married, the prediction comes true every way. At last, the old gentleman being quite convinced, gives in; and joins their hands; and leaves his daughter to marry anybody she likes; and they are all well pleased; and the Gifted as well as any of them. "In the middle of this little family party, gentlemen, sits Tom all the while, as miserable as you like. But, when everything else is arranged, the old gentleman's daughter says, that their strange conduct was a little device of the waiting-maid's to disgust the lovers he had chosen for 'em, and will he forgive her? and if he will, perhaps he might even find her a husband—and when she says that, she looks uncommon hard at Tom. Then the waiting-maid says that, oh dear! she couldn't abear Mr. Grig should think she wanted him to marry her; and that she had even gone so far as to refuse the last lamp-lighter, who was now a literary character (having set up as a bill-sticker); and that she hoped Mr. Grig would not suppose she was on her last legs by any means, for the baker was very strong in his attentions at that moment, and as to the butcher, he was frantic. And I don't know how much more she might have said, gentlemen (for, as you know, this kind of young women are rare ones to talk), if the old gentleman hadn't cut in suddenly, and asked Tom if he'd have her, with ten pounds to recompense him for his loss of time and disappointment, and as a kind of bribe to keep the story secret. "'It don't much matter, sir,' says Tom, 'I ain't long for this world. Eight weeks of marriage, especially with this young woman, might reconcile me to my fate. I think,' he says, 'I could go off easy after that.' With which he embraces her with a very dismal face, and groans in a way that might move a heart of stone—even of philosopher's stone. "'Egad,' says the old gentleman, 'that reminds me—this bustle put it out of my head—there was a figure wrong. He'll live to a green old age—eighty-seven at least!' "'How much, sir?' cries Tom. "'Eighty-seven!' says the old gentleman. "'Without another word, Tom flings himself on the old gentleman's neck; throws up his hat; cuts a caper; defies the waiting-maid; and refers her to the butcher. "'You wont marry her!' says the old gentleman, angrily. "'And live after it!' says Tom. 'I'd sooner marry a mermaid with a small-tooth comb and looking-glass.' "'Then take the consequences,' says the other. "With those words—I beg your kind attention here, gentlemen, for it's worth your notice—the old gentleman wetted the forefinger of his right hand in some of the liquor from the crucible that was spilt on the floor, and drew a small triangle on Tom's forehead. The room swam before his eyes, and he found himself in the watch-house." "Found himself where?" cried the vice, on behalf of the company generally. "In the watch-house," said the chairman. "It was late at night, and he found himself in the very watch-house from which he had been let out that morning." "Did he go home?" asked the vice. "The watch-house people rather objected to that," said the chairman; "so he stopped there that night, and went before the magistrate in the morning. 'Why, you're here again, are you?' says the magistrate, adding insult to injury; 'we'll trouble you for five shillings more, if you can conveniently spare the money.' Tom told him he had been enchanted, but it was of no use. He told the contractors the same, but they wouldn't believe him. It was very hard upon him, gentlemen, as he often said, for was it likely he'd go and invent such a tale? They shook their heads and told him he'd say anything but his prayers—as indeed he would; there's no doubt about that. It was the only imputation on his moral character that ever I heard of." Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 'The Lamplighter's Story' Description An account of the resource Published in The Pic-nic Papers as 'By the Editor'. London: Chapman and Hall, 1851. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Dickens, Charles Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived HathiTrust, <a href="https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/100142129">https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/100142129</a>. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1851 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Illustrated by George Cruikshank and Hablot Knight Browne ('PHIZ') Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Google-digitised. Digitised materials on Google Books published before 1922 are in the public domain. Relation A related resource Based on the 1838 farce by Dickens of the same name. Type The nature or genre of the resource Short story Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 1851-The_Lamplighters_Story_The_Picnic_Papers Bibliographic Citation A bibliographic reference for the resource. Recommended practice is to include sufficient bibliographic detail to identify the resource as unambiguously as possible. Dickens, Charles. 'The Lamplighter's Story' (1851). Dickens Search. Eds. Emily Middleton and Lydia Craig. Accessed [date]. <a href="https://www.dickenssearch.com/short-stories/1851-The_Lamplighters_Story_The_Picnic_Papers">https://www.dickenssearch.com/short-stories/1851-The_Lamplighters_Story_The_Picnic_Papers</a>. Scripto Transcription A written representation of a document. "If you talk of Murphy and Francis Moore, gentlemen," said the lamplighter who was in the chair, "I mean to say that neither of 'em ever had any more to do with the stars than Tom Grig had." "And what had he to do with 'em?" asked the lamplighter who officiated as vice. "Nothing at all," replied the other; "just exactly nothing at all." "Do you mean to say you don't believe in Murphy, then?" demanded the lamplighter who had opened the discussion. "I mean to say I believe in Tom Grig," replied the chairman. "Whether I believe in Murphy, or not, is a matter between me and my conscience; and whether Murphy believes in himself or not, is a matter between him and his conscience. Gentlemen, I drink your healths." The lamplighter who did the company this honour, was seated in the chimney corner of a certain tavern, which has been, time out of mind, the Lamplighters' House of Call. He sat in the midst of a circle of lamplighters, and was the cacique, or chief of the tribe. If any of our readers have had the good fortune to behold a lamplighter's funeral, they will not be surprised to learn that lamplighters are a strange and primitive people; that they rigidly adhere to old ceremonies and customs which have been handed down among them from father to son since the first public lamp was lighted out of doors; that they intermarry, and betroth their children in infancy; that they enter into no plots or conspiracies (for who ever heard of a traitorous lamplighter?); that they commit no crimes against the laws of their country (there being no instance of a murderous or burglarious lamplighter); that they are, in short, notwithstanding their apparently volatile and restless character, a highly moral and reflective people: having among themselves as many traditional observances as the Jews, and being, as a body, if not as old as the hills, at least as old as the streets. It is an article of their creed that the first faint glimmering of true civilisation shone in the first street-light maintained at the public expense. They trace their existence and high position in the public esteem, in a direct line to the heathen mythology; and hold that the history of Prometheus himself is but a pleasant fable, whereof the true hero is a lamplighter. "Gentlemen," said the lamplighter in the chair, "I drink your healths." "And perhaps, sir," said the vice, holding up his glass, and rising a little way off his seat and sitting down again, in token that he recognised and returned the compliment, "perhaps you will add to that condescension by telling us who Tom Grig was, and how he came to be connected in your mind with Francis Moore, Physician." "Hear, hear, hear!" cried the lamplighters generally. "Tom Grig, gentlemen," said the chairman, "was one of us; and it happened to him as it don't often happen to a public character in our line, that he had his what-you-may-call-it cast." "His head?" said the vice. "No," replied the chairman, "not his head." "His face, perhaps?" said the vice. "No, not his face." "His legs?" "No, not his legs." Nor yet his arms, nor his hands, nor his feet, nor his chest—all of which were severally suggested. "His nativity, perhaps?" "That's it," said the chairman, awakening from his thoughtful attitude at the suggestion. "His nativity. That's what Tom had cast, gentlemen." "In plaster?" asked the vice. "I don't rightly know how it's done," returned the chairman. "But I suppose it was." And there he stopped as if that were all he had to say; whereupon there arose a murmur among the company, which at length resolved itself into a request, conveyed through the vice, that he would go on. This being exactly what the chairman wanted, he mused for a little time, performed that agreeable ceremony which is popularly termed wetting one's whistle, and went on thus: "Tom Grig, gentlemen, was, as I have said, one of us; and I may go further, and say he was an ornament to us, and such a one as only the good old times of oil and cotton could have produced. Tom's family, gentlemen, were all lamplighters." "Not the ladies, I hope?" asked the vice. "They had talent enough for it, sir," rejoined the chairman, "and would have been, but for the prejudices of society. Let women have their rights, sir, and the females of Tom's family would have been every one of 'em in office. But that emancipation hasn't come yet, and hadn't then, and consequently they confined themselves to the bosoms of their families, cooked the dinners, mended the clothes, minded the children, comforted their husbands, and attended to the housekeeping generally. It's a hard thing upon the women, gentlemen, that they are limited to such a sphere of action as this; very hard." "I happen to know all about Tom, gentlemen, from the circumstance of his uncle by his mother's side having been my particular friend. His (that's Tom's uncle's) fate was a melancholy one. Gas was the death of him. When it was first talked of, he laughed. He wasn't angry; he laughed at the credulity of human nature. 'They might as well talk,' he says, 'of laying on an everlasting succession of glow-worms;' and then he laughed again, partly at his joke, and partly at poor humanity. "In course of time, however, the thing got ground, the experiment was made, and they lighted up Pall Mall. Tom's uncle went to see it. I've heard that he fell off his ladder fourteen times that night, from weakness, and that he would certainly have gone on falling till he killed himself, if his last tumble hadn't been into a wheelbarrow which was going his way, and humanely took him home. 'I foresee in this,' says Tom's uncle faintly, and taking to his bed as he spoke—'I foresee in this,' he says, 'the breaking up of our profession. There's no more going the rounds to trim by daylight, no more dribbling down of the oil on the hats and bonnets of ladies and gentlemen when one feels in spirits. Any low fellow can light a gas-lamp. And it's all up.' In this state of mind, he petitioned the government for—I want a word again, gentlemen—what do you call that which they give to people when it's found out, at last, that they've never been of any use, and have been paid too much for doing nothing?" "Compensation?" suggested the vice. "That's it," said the chairman. "Compensation. They didn't give it him though, and then he got very fond of his country all at once, and went about saying that gas was a death-blow to his native land, and that it was a plot of the radicals to ruin the country and destroy the oil and cotton trade for ever, and that the whales would go and kill themselves privately, out of sheer spite and vexation at not being caught. At last he got right down cracked; called his tobacco-pipe a gas-pipe; thought his tears were lamp-oil; and went on with all manner of nonsense of that sort, till one night he hung himself on a lamp-iron in Saint Martin's Lane, and there was an end of him. "Tom loved him, gentlemen, but he survived it. He shed a tear over his grave, got very drunk, spoke a funeral oration that night in the watch-house, and was fined five shillings for it, in the morning. Some men are none the worse for this sort of thing. Tom was one of 'em. He went that very afternoon on a new beat: as clear in his head, and as free from fever as Father Mathew himself. "Tom's new beat, gentlemen, was—I can't exactly say where, for that he'd never tell; but I know it was in a quiet part of town, where there were some queer old houses. I have always had it in my head that it must have been somewhere near Canonbury Tower in Islington, but that's a matter of opinion. Wherever it was, he went upon it, with a bran new ladder, a white hat, a brown holland jacket and trowsers, a blue neck-kerchief, and a sprig of full-blown double wall-flower in his button-hole. Tom was always genteel in his appearance, and I have heard from the best judges, that if he had left his ladder at home that afternoon, you might have took him for a lord. "He was always merry, was Tom, and such a singer, that if there was any encouragement for native talent, he'd have been at the opera. He was on his ladder, lighting his first lamp, and singing to himself in a manner more easily to be conceived than described, when he hears the clock strike five, and suddenly sees an old gentleman with a telescope in his hand, throw up a window and look at him very hard. "Tom didn't know what could be passing in this old gentleman's mind. He thought it likely enough that he might be saying within himself, 'Here's a new lamplighter—a good-looking young fellow—shall I stand something to drink?' Thinking this possible, he keeps quite still, pretending to be very particular about the wick, and looks at the old gentleman sideways, seeming to take no notice of him. "Gentlemen, he was one of the strangest and most mysterious-looking files that ever Tom clapped his eyes on. He was dressed all slovenly and untidy, in a great gown of a kind of bed-furniture pattern, with a cap of the same on his head; and a long old flapped waistcoat; with no braces, no strings, very few buttons—in short, with hardly any of those artificial contrivances that hold society together. Tom knew by these signs, and by his not being shaved, and by his not being over-clean, and by a sort of wisdom not quite awake, in his face, that he was a scientific old gentleman. He often told me that if he could have conceived the possibility of the whole Royal Society being boiled down into one man, he should have said the old gentleman's body was that Body. "The old gentleman claps the telescope to his eye, looks all round, sees nobody else in sight, stares at Tom again, and cries out very loud: "'Hal-loa!' "'Halloa, Sir,' says Tom from the ladder; 'and halloa again, if you come to that.' "'Here's an extraordinary fulfilment,' says the old gentleman, 'of a prediction of the planets.' "'Is there?' says Tom. 'I'm very glad to hear it.' "'Young man,' says the old gentleman, 'you don't know me.' "'Sir,' says Tom, 'I have not that honour; but I shall be happy to drink your health, notwithstanding.' "'I read,' cries the old gentleman, without taking any notice of this politeness on Tom's part—'I read what's going to happen, in the stars.' "Tom thanked him for the information, and begged to know if anything particular was going to happen in the stars, in the course of a week or so; but the old gentleman, correcting him, explained that he read in the stars what was going to happen on dry land, and that he was acquainted with all the celestial bodies. "'I hope they're all well, sir,' says Tom,—'everybody.' "'Hush!' cries the old gentleman. 'I have consulted the book of Fate with rare and wonderful success. I am versed in the great sciences of astrology and astronomy. In my house here, I have every description of apparatus for observing the course and motion of the planets. Six months ago, I derived from this source the knowledge that precisely as the clock struck five this afternoon a stranger would present himself— the destined husband of my young and lovely niece—in reality of illustrious and high descent, but whose birth would be enveloped in uncertainty and mystery. Don't tell me yours isn't,' says the old gentleman, who was in such a hurry to speak that he couldn't get the words out fast enough, 'for I know better.' "Gentlemen, Tom was so astonished when he heard him say this, that he could hardly keep his footing on the ladder, and found it necessary to hold on by the lamp-post. There was a mystery about his birth. His mother had always admitted it. Tom had never known who was his father, and some people had gone so far as to say that even she was in doubt. "While he was in this state of amazement, the old gentleman leaves the window, bursts out of the house-door, shakes the ladder, and Tom, like a ripe pumpkin, comes sliding down into his arms. "'Let me embrace you,' he says, folding his arms about him, and nearly lighting up his old bed-furniture gown at Tom's link. 'You're a man of noble aspect. Everything combines to prove the accuracy of my observations. You have had mysterious promptings within you,' he says; 'I know you have had whisperings of greatness, eh?' he says. "'I think I have,' says Tom—Tom was one of those who can persuade themselves to anything they like—'I have often thought I wasn't the small beer I was taken for.' "'You were right,' cries the old gentleman, hugging him again. 'Come in. My niece awaits us.' "'Is the young lady tolerable good-looking, sir?' says Tom, hanging fire rather, as he thought of her playing the piano, and knowing French, and being up to all manner of accomplishments. "'She's beautiful!' cries the old gentleman, who was in such a terrible bustle that he was all in a perspiration. 'She has a graceful carriage, an exquisite shape, a sweet voice, a countenance beaming with animation and expression; and the eye,' he says, rubbing his hands, 'of a startled fawn.'" "Tom supposed this might mean, what was called among his circle of acquaintance, 'a game eye;' and, with a view to this defect, inquired whether the young lady had any cash. "'She has five thousand pounds,' cries the old gentleman. 'But what of that? what of that? A word in your ear. I'm in search of the philosopher's stone. I have very nearly found it —not quite. It turns everything to gold; that's its property.' 'Tom naturally thought it must have a deal of property; and said that when the old gentleman did get it, he hoped he'd be careful to keep it in the family. "'Certainly,' he says, 'of course. Five thousand pounds! What's five thousand pounds to us? What's five million?' he says. 'What's five thousand million? Money will be nothing to us. We shall never be able to spend it fast enough.' "'We'll try what we can do, sir,' says Tom. "'We will,' says the old gentleman. 'Your name?' "'Grig,' says Tom. 'The old gentleman embraced him again, very tight; and without speaking another word, dragged him into the house in such an excited manner, that it was as much as Tom could do to take his link and ladder with him, and put them down in the passage. "Gentlemen, if Tom hadn't been always remarkable for his love of truth, I think you would still have believed him when he said that all this was like a dream. There is no better way for a man to find out whether he is really asleep or awake, than calling for something to eat. If he's in a dream, gentlemen, he'll find something wanting in the flavour, depend upon it. "Tom explained his doubts to the old gentleman, and said that if there was any cold meat in the house, it would ease his mind very much to test himself at once. The old gentleman ordered up a venison pie, a small ham, and a bottle of very old Madeira. At the first mouthful of pie, and the first glass of wine, Tom smacks his lips and cries out, 'I'm awake—wide awake;' and to prove that he was so, gentlemen, he made an end of 'em both. "When Tom had finished his meal (which he never spoke of afterwards without tears in his eyes), the old gentleman hugs him again, and says, 'Noble stranger! let us visit my young and lovely niece.' Tom, who was a little elevated with the wine, replies, 'The noble stranger is agreeable!' At which words the old gentleman took him by the hand, and led him to the parlour; crying as he opened the door, 'Here is Mr. Grig, the favourite of the planets!' "I will not attempt a description of female beauty, gentlemen, for every one of us has a model of his own that suits his own taste best. In this parlour that I'm speaking of, there were two young ladies; and if every gentleman present, will imagine two models of his own in their places, and will be kind enough to polish 'em up to the very highest pitch of perfection, he will then have a faint conception of their uncommon radiance. "Besides these two young ladies, there was their waiting-woman, that under any other circumstances Tom would have looked upon as a Venus; and besides her, there was a tall, thin, dismal-faced young gentleman, half man and half boy, dressed in a childish suit of clothes very much too short in the legs and arms, and looking, according to Tom's comparison, like one of the wax juveniles from a tailor's door, grown up and run to seed. Now, this youngster stamped his foot upon the ground and looked very fierce at Tom, and Tom looked fierce at him—for to tell the truth, gentlemen, Tom more than half suspected that when they entered the room he was kissing one of the young ladies; and for anything Tom knew, you observe, it might be his young lady—which was not pleasant. "'Sir,' says Tom, 'before we proceed any further, will you have the goodness to inform me who this young Salamander'— Tom called him that for aggravation, you perceive, gentlemen—'who this young Salamander may be?' "'That, Mr. Grig,' says the old gentleman, 'is my little boy. He was christened Galileo Isaac Newton Flamstead. Don't mind him. He's a mere child.' "'And a very fine child too,' says Tom—still aggravating, you'll observe—'of his age, and as good as fine, I have no doubt. How do you do, my man?' with which kind and patronising expressions, Tom reached up to pat him on the head, and quoted two lines about little boys, from Doctor Watts's Hymns, which he had learnt at a Sunday School. "It was very easy to see, gentlemen, by this youngster's frowning and by the waiting-maid's tossing her head and turning up her nose, and by the young ladies turning their backs and talking together at the other end of the room, that nobody but the old gentleman took very kindly to the noble stranger. Indeed, Tom plainly heard the waiting-woman say of her master, that so far from being able to read the stars as he pretended, she didn't believe he knew his letters in 'em, or at best that he had got further than words in one syllable; but Tom, not minding this (for he was in spirits after the Madeira), looks with an agreeable air towards the young ladies, and, kissing his hand to both, says to the old gentleman, 'Which is which?' "'This,' says the old gentleman, leading out the handsomest, if one of 'em could possibly be said to be handsomer than the other—'this is my niece, Miss Fanny Barker.' "'If you'll permit me, miss,' says Tom, 'being a noble stranger and a favourite of the planets, I will conduct myself as such.' With these words, he kisses the young lady in a very affable way, turns to the old gentleman, slaps him on the back, and says, 'When's it to come off, my buck?' "The young lady coloured so deep, and her lip trembled so much, gentlemen, that Tom really thought she was going to cry. But she kept her feelings down, and turning to the old gentleman, says, 'Dear uncle, though you have the absolute disposal of my hand and fortune, and though you mean well in disposing of 'em thus, I ask you whether you don't think this is a mistake? Don't you think, dear uncle,' she says, 'that the stars must be in error? Is it not possible that the comet may have put 'em out?' "'The stars,' says the old gentleman, 'couldn't make a mistake if they tried. Emma,' he says to the other young lady. "'Yes, papa,' says she. "'The same day that makes your cousin Mrs. Grig will unite you to the gifted Mooney. No remonstrance—no tears. Now, Mr. Grig, let me conduct you to that hallowed ground, that philosophical retreat, where my friend and partner, the gifted Mooney of whom I have just now spoken, is even now pursuing those discoveries which shall enrich us with the precious metal, and make us masters of the world. Come, Mr. Grig,' he says. "'With all my heart, sir,' replies Tom; 'and luck to the gifted Mooney, say I—not so much on his account as for our worthy selves!' With this sentiment, Tom kissed his hand to the ladies again, and followed him out; having the gratification to perceive, as he looked back, that they were all hanging on by the arms and legs of Galileo Isaac Newton Flamstead, to prevent him from following the noble stranger, and tearing him to pieces. "Gentlemen, Tom's father-in-law that was to be, took him by the hand, and having lighted a little lamp, led him across a paved court-yard at the back of the house, into a very large, dark, gloomy room: filled with all manner of bottles, globes, books, telescopes, crocodiles, alligators, and other scientific instruments of every kind. In the centre of this room was a stove or furnace, with what Tom called a pot, but which in my opinion was a crucible, in full boil. In one corner was a sort of ladder leading through the roof; and up this ladder the old gentleman pointed, as he said in a whisper: "'The observatory. Mr. Mooney is even now watching for the precise time at which we are to come into all the riches of the earth. It will be necessary for he and I, alone in that silent place, to cast your nativity before the hour arrives. Put the day and minute of your birth on this piece of paper, and leave the rest to me.' "'You don't mean to say,' says Tom, doing as he was told and giving him back the paper, 'that I'm to wait here long, do you? It's a precious dismal place.' "'Hush!' says the old gentleman. 'it's hallowed ground. Farewell!' "'Stop a minute,' says Tom. 'What a hurry you're in! What's in that large bottle yonder?' "'It's a child with three heads,' says the old gentleman; 'and everything else in proportion.' "'Why don't you throw him away?' says Tom. 'What do you keep such unpleasant things here for?' "'Throw him away!' cries the old gentleman. 'We use him constantly in astrology. He's a charm.' "'I shouldn't have thought it,' says Tom, 'from his appearance. Must you go, I say?' "The old gentleman makes him no answer, but climbs up the ladder in a greater bustle than ever. Tom looked after his legs till there was nothing of him left, and then sat down to wait; feeling (so he used to say) as comfortable as if he was going to be made a freemason, and they were heating the pokers. "Tom waited so long, gentlemen, that he began to think it must be getting on for midnight at least, and felt more dismal and lonely than ever he had done in all his life. He tried every means of wiling away the time, but it never had seemed to move so slow. First, he took a nearer view of the child with three heads, and thought what a comfort it must have been to his parents. Then he looked up a long telescope which was pointed out of the window, but saw nothing particular, in consequence of the stopper being on at the other end. Then he came to a skeleton in a glass case, labelled, 'Skeleton of a Gentleman—prepared by Mr. Mooney,' —which made him hope that Mr. Mooney might not be in the habit of preparing gentlemen that way without their own consent. A hundred times at least, he looked into the pot where they were boiling the philosopher's stone down to the proper consistency, and wondered whether it was nearly done. 'When it is,' thinks Tom, 'I'll send out for sixpenn'orth of sprats, and turn 'em into gold fish for a first experiment.' Besides which, he made up his mind, gentlemen, to have a country-house and a park; and to plant a bit of it with a double row of gas-lamps a mile long, and go out every night with a French-polished mahogany ladder, and two servants in livery behind him, to light 'em for his own pleasure. "At length and at last, the old gentleman's legs appeared upon the steps leading through the roof, and he came slowly down: bringing along with him the gifted Mooney. This Mooney, gentlemen, was even more scientific in appearance than his friend; and had, as Tom often declared upon his word and honour, the dirtiest face we can possibly know of, in this imperfect state of existence. "Gentlemen, you are all aware that if a scientific man isn't absent in his mind, he's of no good at all. Mr. Mooney was so absent, that when the old gentleman said to him, 'Shake hands with Mr. Grig,' he put out his leg. 'Here's a mind, Mr. Grig!' cries the old gentleman in a rapture. 'Here's philosophy! Here's rumination! Don't disturb him,' he says, "'or this is amazing!' "Tom had no wish to disturb him, having nothing particular to say; but he was so uncommonly amazing, that the old gentleman got impatient, and determined to give him an electric shock to bring him to—'for you must know, Mr. Grig,' he says, 'that we always keep a strongly charged battery, ready for that purpose.' These means being resorted to, gentlemen, the gifted Mooney revived with a loud roar, and he no sooner came to himself than both he and the old gentleman looked at Tom with compassion, and shed tears abundantly. "'My dear friend,' says the old gentleman to the Gifted, 'prepare him.' "'I say,' cries Tom, falling back, 'none of that, you know. No preparing by Mr. Mooney if you please.' "'Alas!' replies the old gentleman, 'you don't understand us. My friend, inform him of his fate.—I can't.' "The Gifted mustered up his voice, after many efforts, and informed Tom that his nativity had been carefully cast, and he would expire at exactly thirty-five minutes, twenty-seven seconds, and five-sixths of a second past nine o'clock, A.M., on that day two months. "Gentlemen, I leave you to judge what were Tom's feelings at this announcement, on the eve of matrimony and endless riches. 'I think,' he says in a trembling voice, 'there must be a mistake in the working of that sum. Will you do me the favour to cast it up again?'—'There is no mistake,' replies the old gentleman, 'it is confirmed by Francis Moore, Physician. Here is the prediction for to-morrow two months.' And he showed him the page, where sure enough were these words—'The decease of a great person may be looked for, about this time.' "'Which,' says the old gentleman, 'is clearly you, Mr. Grig.' "'Too clearly,' cries Tom, sinking into a chair, and giving one hand to the old gentleman, and one to the Gifted. 'The orb of day has set on Thomas Grig for ever!' "At this affecting remark, the Gifted shed tears again, and the other two mingled their tears with his, in a kind—if I may use the expression—of Mooney and Co.'s entire. But the old gentleman recovering first, observed that this was only a reason for hastening the marriage, in order that Tom's distinguished race might be transmitted to posterity; and requesting the Gifted to console Mr. Grig during his temporary absence, he withdrew to settle the preliminaries with his niece immediately. "And now, gentlemen, a very extraordinary and remarkable occurrence took place; for as Tom sat in a melancholy way in one chair, and the Gifted sat in a melancholy way in another, a couple of doors were thrown violently open, the two young ladies rushed in, and one knelt down in a loving attitude at Tom's feet, and the other at the Gifted's. So far, perhaps, as Tom was concerned—as he used to say—you will say there was nothing strange in this; but you will be of a different opinion when you understand that Tom's young lady was kneeling to the Gifted, and the Gifted's young lady was kneeling to Tom. "'Halloa! stop a minute!' cries Tom; 'here's a mistake. I need condoling with by sympathising woman, under my afflicting circumstances; but we're out in the figure. Change partners, Mooney.' "'Monster!' cries Tom's young lady, clinging to the Gifted. "'Miss!' says Tom. 'Is that your manners?' "'I abjure thee!' cries Tom's young lady. 'I renounce thee. I never will be thine. Thou,' she says to the Gifted, 'art the object of my first and all-engrossing passion. Wrapt in thy sublime visions, thou hast not perceived my love; but, driven to despair, I now shake off the woman and avow it. Oh, cruel, cruel man!' With which reproach she laid her head upon the Gifted's breast, and put her arms about him in the tenderest manner possible, gentlemen. "'And I,' says the other young lady, in a sort of ecstasy, that made Tom start—'I hereby abjure my chosen husband too. Hear me, Goblin!'—this was to the Gifted—'Hear me! I hold thee in the deepest detestation. The maddening interview of this one night has filled my soul with love—but not for thee. It is for thee, for thee, young man,' she cries to Tom. 'As Monk Lewis finely observes, Thomas, Thomas, I am thine, Thomas, Thomas, thou art mine: thine for ever, mine for ever!' with which words, she became very tender likewise. "Tom and the Gifted, gentlemen, as you may believe, looked at each other in a very awkward manner, and with thoughts not at all complimentary to the two young ladies. As to the Gifted, I have heard Tom say often, that he was certain he was in a fit, and had it inwardly. "'Speak to me! Oh, speak to me!' cries Tom's young lady to the Gifted. "'I don't want to speak to anybody,' he says, finding his voice at last, and trying to push her away. 'I think I had better go. I'm—I'm frightened,' he says, looking about as if he had lost something. "'Not one look of love!' she cries. 'Hear me while I declare—' "'I don't know how to look a look of love,' he says, all in a maze. 'Don't declare anything. I don't want to hear anybody.' "'That's right!' cries the old gentleman (who it seems had been listening). 'That's right! Don't hear her. Emma shall marry you to-morrow, my friend, whether she likes it or not, and she shall marry Mr. Grig.' "Gentlemen, these words were no sooner out of his mouth than Galileo Isaac Newton Flamstead (who it seems had been listening too) darts in, and spinning round and round, like a young giant's top, cries,'"Let her. Let her. I'm fierce; I'm furious. I give her leave. I'll never marry anybody after this— never. It isn't safe. She is the falsest of the false,' he cries, tearing his hair and gnashing his teeth; 'and I'll live and die a bachelor!' "'The little boy,' observed the Gifted gravely, 'albeit of tender years, has spoken wisdom. I have been led to the contemplation of womankind, and will not adventure on the troubled waters of matrimony.' "'What!' says the old gentleman, 'not marry my daughter! Won't you, Mooney? Not if I make her? Won't you? Won't you?' "'No,' says Mooney, 'I won't. And if anybody asks me any more, I'll run away, and never come back again.' ""Mr. Grig,' says the old gentleman,'"the stars must be obeyed. You have not changed your mind because of a little girlish folly—eh, Mr. Grig?' "Tom, gentlemen, had had his eyes about him, and was pretty sure that all this was a device and trick of the waiting-maid, to put him off his inclination. He had seen her hiding and skipping about the two doors, and had observed that a very little whispering from her pacified the Salamander directly. 'So,' thinks Tom, 'this is a plot—but it won't fit.' "'Eh, Mr. Grig?' says the old gentleman. "'Why, sir,' says Tom, pointing to the crucible, 'if the soup's nearly ready—' "'Another hour beholds the consummation of our labours,' returned the old gentleman. "'Very good,' says Tom, with a mournful air. 'It's only for two months, but I may as well be the richest man in the world even for that time. I'm not particular, I'll take her, sir. I'll take her.' "The old gentleman was in a rapture to find Tom still in the same mind, and drawing the young lady towards him by little and little, was joining their hands by main force, when all of a sudden, gentlemen, the crucible blows up, with a great crash; everybody screams; the room is filled with smoke; and Tom, not knowing what may happen next, throws himself into a Fancy attitude, and says, 'Come on, if you're a man!' without addressing himself to anybody in particular. "'The labours of fifteen years!' says the old gentleman, clasping his hands and looking down upon the Gifted, who was saving the pieces, 'are destroyed in an instant!'—And I am told, gentlemen, by the by, that this same philosopher's stone would have been discovered a hundred times at least, to speak within bounds, if it wasn't for the one unfortunate circumstance that the apparatus always blows up, when it's on the very point of succeeding. "Tom turns pale when he hears the old gentleman expressing himself to this unpleasant effect, and stammers out that if it's quite agreeable to all parties, he would like to know exactly what has happened, and what change has really taken place in the prospects of that company. "'We have failed for the present, Mr. Grig,' says the old gentleman, wiping his forehead. 'And I regret it the more, because I have in fact invested my niece's five thousand pounds in this glorious speculation. But don't be cast down,' he says, anxiously—'in another fifteen years, Mr. Grig—' "'Oh!' cries Tom, letting the young lady's hand fall. 'Were the stars very positive about this union, sir?' "'They were,' says the old gentleman. "'I'm sorry to hear it,' Tom makes answer, 'for it's no go, sir.' "'No what!' cries the old gentleman. "'Go, sir,' says Tom, fiercely. 'I forbid the banns.' And with these words—which are the very words he used—he sat himself down in a chair, and, laying his head upon the table, thought with a secret grief of what was to come to pass on that day two months. "Tom always said, gentlemen, that that waiting-maid was the artfullest minx he had ever seen; and he left it in writing in this country when he went to colonise abroad, that he was certain in his own mind she and the Salamander had blown up the philosopher's stone on purpose, and to cut him out of his property. I believe Tom was in the right, gentlemen; but whether or no, she comes forward at this point, and says, 'May I speak, sir?' and the old gentleman answering, 'Yes, you may,' she goes on to say that 'the stars are no doubt quite right in every respect, but Tom is not the man.' And she says, 'Don't you remember, sir, that when the clock struck five this afternoon, you gave Master Galileo a rap on the head with your telescope, and told him to get out of the way?' 'Yes, I do,' says the old gentleman. 'Then,' says the waiting-maid, 'I say he's the man, and the prophecy is fulfilled.' The old gentleman staggers at this, as if somebody had hit him a blow on the chest, and cries, 'He! why, he's a boy!' Upon that, gentlemen, the Salamander cries out that he'll be twenty-one next Lady-day; and complains that his father has always been so busy with the sun round which the earth revolves, that he has never taken any notice of the son that revolves round him; and that he hasn't had a new suit of clothes since he was fourteen; and that he wasn't even taken out of nankeen frocks and trowsers till he was quite unpleasant in 'em; and touches on a good many more family matters to the same purpose. To make short of a long story, gentlemen, they all talk together, and cry together, and remind the old gentleman that as to the noble family, his own grandfather would have been Lord Mayor if he hadn't died at a dinner the year before; and they show him by all kinds of arguments that if the cousins are married, the prediction comes true every way. At last, the old gentleman being quite convinced, gives in; and joins their hands; and leaves his daughter to marry anybody she likes; and they are all well pleased; and the Gifted as well as any of them. "In the middle of this little family party, gentlemen, sits Tom all the while, as miserable as you like. But, when everything else is arranged, the old gentleman's daughter says, that their strange conduct was a little device of the waiting-maid's to disgust the lovers he had chosen for 'em, and will he forgive her? and if he will, perhaps he might even find her a husband—and when she says that, she looks uncommon hard at Tom. Then the waiting-maid says that, oh dear! she couldn't abear Mr. Grig should think she wanted him to marry her; and that she had even gone so far as to refuse the last lamp-lighter, who was now a literary character (having set up as a bill-sticker); and that she hoped Mr. Grig would not suppose she was on her last legs by any means, for the baker was very strong in his attentions at that moment, and as to the butcher, he was frantic. And I don't know how much more she might have said, gentlemen (for, as you know, this kind of young women are rare ones to talk), if the old gentleman hadn't cut in suddenly, and asked Tom if he'd have her, with ten pounds to recompense him for his loss of time and disappointment, and as a kind of bribe to keep the story secret. "'It don't much matter, sir,' says Tom, 'I ain't long for this world. Eight weeks of marriage, especially with this young woman, might reconcile me to my fate. I think,' he says, 'I could go off easy after that.' With which he embraces her with a very dismal face, and groans in a way that might move a heart of stone—even of philosopher's stone. "'Egad,' says the old gentleman, 'that reminds me—this bustle put it out of my head—there was a figure wrong. He'll live to a green old age—eighty-seven at least!' "'How much, sir?' cries Tom. "'Eighty-seven!' says the old gentleman. "'Without another word, Tom flings himself on the old gentleman's neck; throws up his hat; cuts a caper; defies the waiting-maid; and refers her to the butcher. "'You wont marry her!' says the old gentleman, angrily. "'And live after it!' says Tom. 'I'd sooner marry a mermaid with a small-tooth comb and looking-glass.' "'Then take the consequences,' says the other. "With those words—I beg your kind attention here, gentlemen, for it's worth your notice—the old gentleman wetted the forefinger of his right hand in some of the liquor from the crucible that was spilt on the floor, and drew a small triangle on Tom's forehead. The room swam before his eyes, and he found himself in the watch-house." "Found himself where?" cried the vice, on behalf of the company generally. "In the watch-house," said the chairman. "It was late at night, and he found himself in the very watch-house from which he had been let out that morning." "Did he go home?" asked the vice. "The watch-house people rather objected to that," said the chairman; "so he stopped there that night, and went before the magistrate in the morning. 'Why, you're here again, are you?' says the magistrate, adding insult to injury; 'we'll trouble you for five shillings more, if you can conveniently spare the money.' Tom told him he had been enchanted, but it was of no use. He told the contractors the same, but they wouldn't believe him. It was very hard upon him, gentlemen, as he often said, for was it likely he'd go and invent such a tale? They shook their heads and told him he'd say anything but his prayers—as indeed he would; there's no doubt about that. It was the only imputation on his moral character that ever I heard of." https://www.dickenssearch.com/files/original/3/The_Quack_Doctor_s_Proclamation/1841-08-14-The_Examiner_The_Quack_Doctors_Proclamation.pdf b65ff61e81f06b8c780ee564d4fa681d Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Verse Description An account of the resource <h4>This collection brings together the most complete set of Dickens's verse to date, supplementing the work of existing editions with previously uncollected poems Dickens contributed to albums, or wrote anonymously.</h4> Though such productions receive scant attention from scholars interested in his fiction and journalism, Dickens composed a surprising amount of verse. It was a genre in which he evidently felt much less at home (and financially rewarded) than when writing in prose. However, several poems gained popular favour during his lifetime; that so many were <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=51&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Song">written to be set to music</a> indicates the permeable boundary between metered verse functioning as poem or song in the nineteenth century, and may explain why some of Dickens’s poems were more enduringly popular than others. Notably, <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/verse/1836-05_Pickwick_Papers_The_Ivy_Green">'The Ivy Green'</a> from Pickwick Papers (1837), a story of time’s inexorable passing, was frequently republished in newspapers. Several poems written to young ladies of Dickens’s acquaintance are released on Dickens Search as part of the author’s poetic output for the first time, testifying to the author’s ability to write impromptu poetry and gallantly turn a phrase. Since keeping <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/items/browse?search=&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bjoiner%5D=and&advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=94&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Autograph+Album&collection=&type=&tags=&date_search_term=&submit_search=Search+For+Items">autograph albums</a> was a popular pastime for women in the Victorian era, it is possible that further examples of such activity remain to be discovered in various archives and private collections. When writing <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/items/browse?search=&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bjoiner%5D=and&advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=94&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Letter&collection=3&type=&tags=&date_search_term=&submit_search=Search+For+Items">letters</a> to friends, Dickens occasionally included comedic poems for the recipient. Several of these are included. Considering the enormity of Dickens’s correspondence, likely more instances of this sort of poetic humour will result over time. <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=51&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Epitaph">Epitaphs</a> Dickens wrote for friends and family, whether used or not, are included with Dickens's other verse for the first time. Users can also browse <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=94&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Play">verse from Dickens's plays</a>, including songs removed from The Strange Gentleman and Is She His Wife? Or, Something Singular! before performance. Care is necessary when verifying the accuracy of these poems, as some are misattributed to Dickens. Widespread reprintings of 'Dickens poems' in nineteenth-century newspapers are insufficient evidence for authorial attribution, owing to the mistakes intentionally or inadvertently made in ascribing authorship. An unusual example of a poem that is and is not by Dickens, the lines of 'Little Nell’s Funeral' are taken, with minimal alterations, from Chapter 72 of The Old Curiosity Shop. An instance of the strikingly lyrical quality of Dickens’s sentimental prose, they were divided into metered, unrhymed verse by M.A.H. for the 1849 collection Echoes of Infant Voices. Because Dickens did not intend for this passage to be structured in verse form, the poem is not included in the poetry collection of Dickens Search. <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/poetry-dickens-didnt-write">Read our blog post for more on poetry Dickens didn't write.</a> Occasionally, Dickens will quote a poem by another author, as in his burlesque Is She his Wife? Or, Something Singular! (1836). The character Mr Felix Tapkins launches into a short hunting song beginning 'The wife around her husband throws/Her arms to make him stay'. As William Chappell noted in 1840, this is a well-known variant of 'A Hunting We Will Go' (1777), by Thomas Arne, though he misattributes its composition to Henry Fielding. Previous notable collections of some of Dickens's poetry include The Plays and Poems of Charles Dickens (1882) edited by Richard Herne Shepherd and The Poems and Verses of Charles Dickens (1903) edited by Frederic G. Kitton. In 2025, we published <a href="https://edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-the-verse-of-charles-dickens.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Verse of Charles Dickens</a> (Edinburgh University Press), which includes an introduction and editorial apparatus for this verse.  Caution has been taken when ascertaining that each poem is indeed by Dickens. Please <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/contact">contact us</a> with any errors, corrections, suggestions, or other poems written by Dickens. 1. The Verse of Charles Dickens. Edited by Lydia Craig and Emily Middleton. Edinburgh University Press, 2025; Robert Butterworth. 'The Hymn of the Wiltshire Labourers.' The Dickensian 516.118.1 (Spring 2022): pp. 43-56; Eva-Charlotta Mebius. 'Dreams of Dying Girls: The Poetry of Thomas J. Ouseley and Charles Dickens.' Dickens Quarterly 34.3 (September 2017): pp. 256-261; Robert C. Hanna. 'Before Boz; The Juvenilia and Early Writings of Charles Dickens, 1820-1833'. Dickens Studies Annual 40 (2009): pp. 231-364. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context verse Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Lydia Craig; Emily Middleton Poem Pseudonym The name under which the item was published W. Ngram Date Hidden from users and search. All items in a collection need to have the same data in the same format in order to show up in Ngram (either YYYY, YYYYMMDD, or YYYYMMDD). No combinations will work. For journalism, letters and poetry, if there is no month or day, default to the first of the month or January. So a poem with a date of March 1843 would be 18430301. A poem published in 1856 with no month or date information would be 18560101. 18410814 Ngram Text Hidden from users and search. Copy and paste from the Scripto transcription. Then check and uncheck HTML to strip out all formatting. Finally, search and remove any   (which is the HTML for spaces). This will prevent the Ngram picking up on irrelevant HTML. Tune – A Cobbler there was. An astonishing doctor has just come to town, Who will do all the faculty perfectly brown: He knows all diseases, their causes, and ends; And he ‘begs to appeal to his medical friends.’ Tol de rol: Diddle doll: Tol de rol, de dol, Diddle doll Tol de rol doll. He’s a magnetic doctor, and knows how to keep The whole of a Government snoring asleep To popular clamours; till popular pins Are stuck in their midriffs – and then he begins. Tol de rol. He’s a clairvoyant subject, and readily reads His countrymen’s wishes, conditions, and needs, With many more fine things I can’t tell in rhyme – And he keeps both his eyes shut, the whole of the time. Tol de rol. You mustn’t expect him to talk; but you’ll take Most particular notice the doctor’s awake, Though for aught from his words, or his looks that you reap, he Might just as well be most confoundedly sleepy. Tol de rol. Homëopathy too, he has practiced for ages; (You’ll find his prescriptions in Luke Hansard’s pages) Just giving his patient when maddened by pain, - Of Reform the ten thousandeth part of a grain. Tol de rol. He’s a med’cine for Ireland, in portable papers; The infallible cure for political vapours; A neat label round it his ‘prentices tie – ‘Put your trust in the Lord, and keep this powder dry!’ Tol de rol. He’s a corn doctor also, of wonderful skill, – No cutting, no rooting-up, purging, or pill – You’re merely to take, ‘stead of walking or riding, The sweet schoolboy exercise – innocent sliding. Tol de rol. There’s no advice gratis. If high ladies send His legitimate fee, he’s their soft spoken friend. At the great public counter with one hand behind him, And one in his waistcoat, they’re certain to find him. Tol de rol. He has only to add he’s the real Doctor Flam, All others being purely fictitious and sham; The house is a large one, tall, slated, and white, With a lobby; and lights in the passage at night. Tol de rol: Diddle doll: Tol de rol, de doll, Diddle doll Tol de rol doll. Publication Type E.g. newspaper/serial Newspaper Publication The title of the newspaper/serial (if applicable) The Examiner TEI File Link to TEI file <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/teibp/dist/content/1841-08-14_The_Examiner_The_Quack_Doctors_Proclamation.xml" target="_blank" rel="noopener">'The Quack Doctor's Proclamation.' The Examiner (14 August 1841): p. 517.</a> Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 'The Quack Doctor’s Proclamation' Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Dickens, Charles Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived British Newspapers Archive Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1841-08-14 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource British Newspapers Archive, <a href="https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/viewer/bl/0000054/18410814/001/0005">https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/viewer/bl/0000054/18410814/001/0005</a>. Some rights reserved. This work permits non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Type The nature or genre of the resource Poem Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 1841-08-14-The_Examiner_The_Quack_Doctors_Proclamation Bibliographic Citation A bibliographic reference for the resource. Recommended practice is to include sufficient bibliographic detail to identify the resource as unambiguously as possible. Dickens, Charles. 'The Quack Doctor's Proclamation.' The Examiner (14 August 1841): p. 517. Dickens Search. Eds. Emily Middleton and Lydia Craig. Accessed [date]. <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/verse/1841-08-14-The_Examiner_The_Quack_Doctors_Proclamation">https://dickenssearch.com/verse/1841-08-14-The_Examiner_The_Quack_Doctors_Proclamation</a>. Description An account of the resource Published in The Examiner (14 August 1841). Scripto Transcription A written representation of a document. Tune – A Cobbler there was. An astonishing doctor has just come to town, Who will do all the faculty perfectly brown: He knows all diseases, their causes, and ends; And he ‘begs to appeal to his medical friends.’ Tol de rol: Diddle doll: Tol de rol, de dol, Diddle doll Tol de rol doll.   He’s a magnetic doctor, and knows how to keep The whole of a Government snoring asleep To popular clamours; till popular pins Are stuck in their midriffs – and then he begins. Tol de rol.   He’s a clairvoyant subject, and readily reads His countrymen’s wishes, conditions, and needs, With many more fine things I can’t tell in rhyme  – And he keeps both his eyes shut, the whole of the time. Tol de rol.   You mustn’t expect him to talk; but you’ll take Most particular notice the doctor’s awake, Though for aught from his words, or his looks that you reap, he Might just as well be most confoundedly sleepy. Tol de rol.   Homëopathy too, he has practiced for ages; (You’ll find his prescriptions in Luke Hansard’s pages) Just giving his patient when maddened by pain, - Of Reform the ten thousandeth part of a grain. Tol de rol.   He’s a med’cine for Ireland, in portable papers; The infallible cure for political vapours; A neat label round it his ‘prentices tie – ‘Put your trust in the Lord, and keep this powder dry!’ Tol de rol.   He’s a corn doctor also, of wonderful skill, – No cutting, no rooting-up, purging, or pill – You’re merely to take, ‘stead of walking or riding, The sweet schoolboy exercise – innocent sliding. Tol de rol.   There’s no advice gratis. If high ladies send His legitimate fee, he’s their soft spoken friend. At the great public counter with one hand behind him, And one in his waistcoat, they’re certain to find him. Tol de rol.   He has only to add he’s the real Doctor Flam, All others being purely fictitious and sham; The house is a large one, tall, slated, and white, With a lobby; and lights in the passage at night. Tol de rol: Diddle doll: Tol de rol, de doll, Diddle doll Tol de rol doll. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Verse Description An account of the resource <h4>This collection brings together the most complete set of Dickens's verse to date, supplementing the work of existing editions with previously uncollected poems Dickens contributed to albums, or wrote anonymously.</h4> Though such productions receive scant attention from scholars interested in his fiction and journalism, Dickens composed a surprising amount of verse. It was a genre in which he evidently felt much less at home (and financially rewarded) than when writing in prose. However, several poems gained popular favour during his lifetime; that so many were <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=51&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Song">written to be set to music</a> indicates the permeable boundary between metered verse functioning as poem or song in the nineteenth century, and may explain why some of Dickens’s poems were more enduringly popular than others. Notably, <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/verse/1836-05_Pickwick_Papers_The_Ivy_Green">'The Ivy Green'</a> from Pickwick Papers (1837), a story of time’s inexorable passing, was frequently republished in newspapers. Several poems written to young ladies of Dickens’s acquaintance are released on Dickens Search as part of the author’s poetic output for the first time, testifying to the author’s ability to write impromptu poetry and gallantly turn a phrase. Since keeping <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/items/browse?search=&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bjoiner%5D=and&advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=94&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Autograph+Album&collection=&type=&tags=&date_search_term=&submit_search=Search+For+Items">autograph albums</a> was a popular pastime for women in the Victorian era, it is possible that further examples of such activity remain to be discovered in various archives and private collections. When writing <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/items/browse?search=&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bjoiner%5D=and&advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=94&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Letter&collection=3&type=&tags=&date_search_term=&submit_search=Search+For+Items">letters</a> to friends, Dickens occasionally included comedic poems for the recipient. Several of these are included. Considering the enormity of Dickens’s correspondence, likely more instances of this sort of poetic humour will result over time. <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=51&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Epitaph">Epitaphs</a> Dickens wrote for friends and family, whether used or not, are included with Dickens's other verse for the first time. Users can also browse <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=94&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Play">verse from Dickens's plays</a>, including songs removed from The Strange Gentleman and Is She His Wife? Or, Something Singular! before performance. Care is necessary when verifying the accuracy of these poems, as some are misattributed to Dickens. Widespread reprintings of 'Dickens poems' in nineteenth-century newspapers are insufficient evidence for authorial attribution, owing to the mistakes intentionally or inadvertently made in ascribing authorship. An unusual example of a poem that is and is not by Dickens, the lines of 'Little Nell’s Funeral' are taken, with minimal alterations, from Chapter 72 of The Old Curiosity Shop. An instance of the strikingly lyrical quality of Dickens’s sentimental prose, they were divided into metered, unrhymed verse by M.A.H. for the 1849 collection Echoes of Infant Voices. Because Dickens did not intend for this passage to be structured in verse form, the poem is not included in the poetry collection of Dickens Search. <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/poetry-dickens-didnt-write">Read our blog post for more on poetry Dickens didn't write.</a> Occasionally, Dickens will quote a poem by another author, as in his burlesque Is She his Wife? Or, Something Singular! (1836). The character Mr Felix Tapkins launches into a short hunting song beginning 'The wife around her husband throws/Her arms to make him stay'. As William Chappell noted in 1840, this is a well-known variant of 'A Hunting We Will Go' (1777), by Thomas Arne, though he misattributes its composition to Henry Fielding. Previous notable collections of some of Dickens's poetry include The Plays and Poems of Charles Dickens (1882) edited by Richard Herne Shepherd and The Poems and Verses of Charles Dickens (1903) edited by Frederic G. Kitton. In 2025, we published <a href="https://edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-the-verse-of-charles-dickens.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Verse of Charles Dickens</a> (Edinburgh University Press), which includes an introduction and editorial apparatus for this verse.  Caution has been taken when ascertaining that each poem is indeed by Dickens. Please <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/contact">contact us</a> with any errors, corrections, suggestions, or other poems written by Dickens. 1. The Verse of Charles Dickens. Edited by Lydia Craig and Emily Middleton. Edinburgh University Press, 2025; Robert Butterworth. 'The Hymn of the Wiltshire Labourers.' The Dickensian 516.118.1 (Spring 2022): pp. 43-56; Eva-Charlotta Mebius. 'Dreams of Dying Girls: The Poetry of Thomas J. Ouseley and Charles Dickens.' Dickens Quarterly 34.3 (September 2017): pp. 256-261; Robert C. Hanna. 'Before Boz; The Juvenilia and Early Writings of Charles Dickens, 1820-1833'. Dickens Studies Annual 40 (2009): pp. 231-364. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context verse Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Lydia Craig; Emily Middleton Poem Publication Type E.g. newspaper/serial Letter TEI File Link to TEI file <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/teibp/dist/content/1854_Letter_To_W_H_Wills_The_Response.xml" target="_blank" rel="noopener">'The Response' (1854).</a> Ngram Date Hidden from users and search. All items in a collection need to have the same data in the same format in order to show up in Ngram (either YYYY, YYYYMMDD, or YYYYMMDD). No combinations will work. For journalism, letters and poetry, if there is no month or day, default to the first of the month or January. So a poem with a date of March 1843 would be 18430301. A poem published in 1856 with no month or date information would be 18560101. 18540101 Ngram Text Hidden from users and search. Copy and paste from the Scripto transcription. Then check and uncheck HTML to strip out all formatting. Finally, search and remove any   (which is the HTML for spaces). This will prevent the Ngram picking up on irrelevant HTML. Air: “Isabel” At the Hou-ou-sehold Words at ha-alf past fo-our I’ll be found, I’ll be found, I’ll be found When if it don’t blow it will certainly pou-ur I’ll be bound, I’ll be bound, I’ll be bound! But whom you expect besi-i-des Lemming I dont know, I dont know, I dont know But I’ll write to old Stanny R. and Lemming I’ll do so, I’ll do so, I’ll do so. You haven’t got time I sup-po-o-o-ose To walk out to that Blades If you do not produce your old no-o-o-ose I’ll send him a line with all spee-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-eed. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 'The Response' Description An account of the resource From a letter to W. H. Wills (1854). Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Dickens, Charles Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived 'To W. H. Wills.' The Letters of Charles Dickens. The Pilgrim Edition. Edited by Graham Storey, Kathleen Tillotson and Angus Easson. Volume 7 (1853-1855), p. 493. Oxford University Press, 1993. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1854 Type The nature or genre of the resource Song Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 1854_Letter_To_W_H_Wills_The_Response Bibliographic Citation A bibliographic reference for the resource. Recommended practice is to include sufficient bibliographic detail to identify the resource as unambiguously as possible. Dickens, Charles. 'The Response' (1854). Dickens Search. Eds. Emily Middleton and Lydia Craig. Accessed [date]. <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/verse/1854_Letter_To_W_H_Wills_The_Response" target="_blank" rel="noopener">https://dickenssearch.com/verse/1854_Letter_To_W_H_Wills_The_Response</a>. Scripto Transcription A written representation of a document. Air: “Isabel” At the Hou-ou-sehold Words at ha-alf past fo-our I’ll be found, I’ll be found, I’ll be found When if it don’t blow it will certainly pou-ur I’ll be bound, I’ll be bound, I’ll be bound! But whom you expect besi-i-des Lemming I dont know, I dont know, I dont know But I’ll write to old Stanny R. & Lemming I’ll do so, I’ll do so, I’ll do so. You haven’t got time I sup-po-o-o-ose To walk out to that Blades If you do not produce your old no-o-o-ose I’ll send him a line with all spee-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-eed. https://www.dickenssearch.com/files/original/3/The_Song_of_the_Wreck/Song_of_the_Wreck_The_Lighthouse.png 3c74db680ef5437ec3462e4437c19d46 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Verse Description An account of the resource <h4>This collection brings together the most complete set of Dickens's verse to date, supplementing the work of existing editions with previously uncollected poems Dickens contributed to albums, or wrote anonymously.</h4> Though such productions receive scant attention from scholars interested in his fiction and journalism, Dickens composed a surprising amount of verse. It was a genre in which he evidently felt much less at home (and financially rewarded) than when writing in prose. However, several poems gained popular favour during his lifetime; that so many were <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=51&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Song">written to be set to music</a> indicates the permeable boundary between metered verse functioning as poem or song in the nineteenth century, and may explain why some of Dickens’s poems were more enduringly popular than others. Notably, <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/verse/1836-05_Pickwick_Papers_The_Ivy_Green">'The Ivy Green'</a> from Pickwick Papers (1837), a story of time’s inexorable passing, was frequently republished in newspapers. Several poems written to young ladies of Dickens’s acquaintance are released on Dickens Search as part of the author’s poetic output for the first time, testifying to the author’s ability to write impromptu poetry and gallantly turn a phrase. Since keeping <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/items/browse?search=&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bjoiner%5D=and&advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=94&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Autograph+Album&collection=&type=&tags=&date_search_term=&submit_search=Search+For+Items">autograph albums</a> was a popular pastime for women in the Victorian era, it is possible that further examples of such activity remain to be discovered in various archives and private collections. When writing <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/items/browse?search=&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bjoiner%5D=and&advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=94&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Letter&collection=3&type=&tags=&date_search_term=&submit_search=Search+For+Items">letters</a> to friends, Dickens occasionally included comedic poems for the recipient. Several of these are included. Considering the enormity of Dickens’s correspondence, likely more instances of this sort of poetic humour will result over time. <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=51&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Epitaph">Epitaphs</a> Dickens wrote for friends and family, whether used or not, are included with Dickens's other verse for the first time. Users can also browse <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=94&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Play">verse from Dickens's plays</a>, including songs removed from The Strange Gentleman and Is She His Wife? Or, Something Singular! before performance. Care is necessary when verifying the accuracy of these poems, as some are misattributed to Dickens. Widespread reprintings of 'Dickens poems' in nineteenth-century newspapers are insufficient evidence for authorial attribution, owing to the mistakes intentionally or inadvertently made in ascribing authorship. An unusual example of a poem that is and is not by Dickens, the lines of 'Little Nell’s Funeral' are taken, with minimal alterations, from Chapter 72 of The Old Curiosity Shop. An instance of the strikingly lyrical quality of Dickens’s sentimental prose, they were divided into metered, unrhymed verse by M.A.H. for the 1849 collection Echoes of Infant Voices. Because Dickens did not intend for this passage to be structured in verse form, the poem is not included in the poetry collection of Dickens Search. <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/poetry-dickens-didnt-write">Read our blog post for more on poetry Dickens didn't write.</a> Occasionally, Dickens will quote a poem by another author, as in his burlesque Is She his Wife? Or, Something Singular! (1836). The character Mr Felix Tapkins launches into a short hunting song beginning 'The wife around her husband throws/Her arms to make him stay'. As William Chappell noted in 1840, this is a well-known variant of 'A Hunting We Will Go' (1777), by Thomas Arne, though he misattributes its composition to Henry Fielding. Previous notable collections of some of Dickens's poetry include The Plays and Poems of Charles Dickens (1882) edited by Richard Herne Shepherd and The Poems and Verses of Charles Dickens (1903) edited by Frederic G. Kitton. In 2025, we published <a href="https://edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-the-verse-of-charles-dickens.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Verse of Charles Dickens</a> (Edinburgh University Press), which includes an introduction and editorial apparatus for this verse.  Caution has been taken when ascertaining that each poem is indeed by Dickens. Please <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/contact">contact us</a> with any errors, corrections, suggestions, or other poems written by Dickens. 1. The Verse of Charles Dickens. Edited by Lydia Craig and Emily Middleton. Edinburgh University Press, 2025; Robert Butterworth. 'The Hymn of the Wiltshire Labourers.' The Dickensian 516.118.1 (Spring 2022): pp. 43-56; Eva-Charlotta Mebius. 'Dreams of Dying Girls: The Poetry of Thomas J. Ouseley and Charles Dickens.' Dickens Quarterly 34.3 (September 2017): pp. 256-261; Robert C. Hanna. 'Before Boz; The Juvenilia and Early Writings of Charles Dickens, 1820-1833'. Dickens Studies Annual 40 (2009): pp. 231-364. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context verse Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Lydia Craig; Emily Middleton Poem Ngram Date Hidden from users and search. All items in a collection need to have the same data in the same format in order to show up in Ngram (either YYYY, YYYYMMDD, or YYYYMMDD). No combinations will work. For journalism, letters and poetry, if there is no month or day, default to the first of the month or January. So a poem with a date of March 1843 would be 18430301. A poem published in 1856 with no month or date information would be 18560101. 18550501 Ngram Text Hidden from users and search. Copy and paste from the Scripto transcription. Then check and uncheck HTML to strip out all formatting. Finally, search and remove any   (which is the HTML for spaces). This will prevent the Ngram picking up on irrelevant HTML. The wind blew high, the waters raved, A ship drove on the land, A hundred human creatures saved Kneel’d down upon the sand. Three-score were drown’d, three-score were thrown Upon the black rocks wild, And thus among them, left alone, They found one helpless child. A seaman rough, to shipwreck bred, Stood out from all the rest, And gently laid the lonely head Upon his honest breast. And travelling o’er the desert wide It was a solemn joy, To see them, ever side by side, The sailor and the boy. In famine, sickness, hunger, thirst, The two were still but one, Until the strong man droop’d the first And felt his labours done. Then to a trusty friend he spake, ‘Across the desert wide, O take this poor boy for my sake!’ And kiss’d the child and died. Toiling along in weary plight Through heavy jungle, mire, These two came later every night To warm them at the fire. Until the captain said one day, ‘O seaman good and kind, To save thyself now come away, And leave the boy behind!’ The child was slumbering near the blaze: ‘O captain, let him rest Until it sinks, when God’s own ways Shall teach us what is best!” They watch’d the whiten’d ashy heap, They touch’d the child in vain; They did not leave him there asleep, He never woke again. Publication Type E.g. newspaper/serial Play Publication The title of the newspaper/serial (if applicable) The Lighthouse TEI File Link to TEI file <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/teibp/dist/content/1855-05_The_Lighthouse_The_Song_of_the_Wreck.xml" target="_blank" rel="noopener">'The Song of the Wreck.' The Lighthouse (May 1855).</a> Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 'The Song of the Wreck' Description An account of the resource From The Lighthouse (May 1855), co-author Wilkie Collins. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Dickens, Charles Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived "Miscellaneous Papers." Volume 2. The Works of Charles Dickens. Volume 20 (1911). London: Chapman and Hall; 484-485, <a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Works_of_Charles_Dickens/91s4AAAAIAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&bsq=The%20song%20of%20the%20wreck" target="_blank" rel="noopener">https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Works_of_Charles_Dickens/91s4AAAAIAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&bsq=The%20song%20of%20the%20wreck</a>. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Chapman and Hall Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1855-05 Type The nature or genre of the resource Song Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 1855-05_The_Lighthouse_The_Song_of_the_Wreck Bibliographic Citation A bibliographic reference for the resource. Recommended practice is to include sufficient bibliographic detail to identify the resource as unambiguously as possible. Dickens, Charles. 'The Song of the Wreck' from The Lighthouse (May 1855), co-author Wilkie Collins. Printed in Volume 20 of The Works of Charles Dickens (1911). Dickens Search. Eds. Emily Middleton and Lydia Craig. Accessed [date]. <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/verse/1855-05_The_Lighthouse_The_Song_of_the_Wreck">https://dickenssearch.com/verse/1855-05_The_Lighthouse_The_Song_of_the_Wreck</a>. Scripto Transcription A written representation of a document. The wind blew high, the waters raved, A ship drove on the land, A hundred human creatures saved Kneel’d down upon the sand. Three-score were drown’d, three-score were thrown Upon the black rocks wild, And thus among them, left alone, They found one helpless child. A seaman rough, to shipwreck bred, Stood out from all the rest, And gently laid the lonely head Upon his honest breast. And travelling o’er the desert wide It was a solemn joy, To see them, ever side by side, The sailor and the boy. In famine, sickness, hunger, thirst, The two were still but one, Until the strong man droop’d the first And felt his labours done. Then to a trusty friend he spake, ‘Across the desert wide, O take this poor boy for my sake!’ And kiss’d the child and died. Toiling along in weary plight Through heavy jungle, mire, These two came later every night To warm them at the fire. Until the captain said one day, ‘O seaman good and kind, To save thyself now come away, And leave the boy behind!’ The child was slumbering near the blaze: ‘O captain, let him rest Until it sinks, when God’s own ways Shall teach us what is best!” They watch’d the whiten’d ashy heap, They touch’d the child in vain; They did not leave him there asleep, He never woke again.