Chapter V: Part 5

The animation of Dickens's look would attract the attention of any one, anywhere. His figure was not that of an Adonis, but his brightness made him the centre and pivot of every society he was in. The keenness and vivacity of his eye combined with his inordinate appetite for life to give the unique quality to all that he wrote. His instrument is that of the direct, sinewy English of Smollett, combined with much of the humorous grace of Goldsmith (his two favourite authors), but modernized to a certain extent under the influence of Washington Irving, Sydney Smith, Jeffrey, Lamb, and other writers of the _London Magazine_. He taught himself to speak French and Italian, but he could have read little in any language. His ideas were those of the inchoate and insular liberalism of the 'thirties. His unique force in literature he was to owe to no supreme artistic or intellectual quality, but almost entirely to his inordinate gift of observation, his sympathy with the humble, his power over the emotions and his incomparable endowment of unalloyed human fun. To contemporaries he was not so much a man as an institution, at the very mention of whose name faces were puckered with grins or wreathed in smiles. To many his work was a revelation, the revelation of a new world and one far better than their own. And his influence went further than this in the direction of revolution or revival. It gave what were then universally referred to as "the lower orders" a new sense of self-respect, a new feeling of citizenship. Like the defiance of another Luther, or the Declaration of a new Independence, it emitted a fresh ray of hope across the firmament. He did for the whole English-speaking race what Burns had done for Scotland--he gave it a new conceit of itself. He knew what a people wanted and he told what he knew. He could do this better than anybody else because his mind was theirs. He shared many of their "great useless virtues," among which generosity ranks before justice, and sympathy before truth, even though, true to his middle-class vein, he exalts piety, chastity and honesty in a manner somewhat alien to the mind of the low-bred man. This is what makes Dickens such a demigod and his public success such a marvel, and this also is why any exclusively literary criticism of his work is bound to be so inadequate. It should also help us to make the necessary allowances for the man. Dickens, even the Dickens of legend that we know, is far from perfect. The Dickens of reality to which Time may furnish a nearer approximation is far less perfect. But when we consider the corroding influence of adulation, and the intoxication of unbridled success, we cannot but wonder at the relatively high level of moderation and self-control that Dickens almost invariably observed. Mr G. K. Chesterton remarks suggestively that Dickens had all his life the faults of the little boy who is kept up too late at night. He is overwrought by happiness to the verge of exasperation, and yet as a matter of fact he does keep on the right side of the breaking point. The specific and curative in his case was the work in which he took such anxious pride, and such unmitigated delight. He revelled in punctual and regular work; at his desk he was often in the highest spirits. Behold how he pictured himself, one day at Broadstairs, where he was writing _Chuzzlewit_. "In a bay-window in a one-pair sits, from nine o'clock to one, a gentleman with rather long hair and no neckcloth, who writes and grins, as if he thought he was very funny indeed. At one he disappears, presently emerges from a bathing-machine, and may be seen, a kind of salmon-colour porpoise, splashing about in the ocean. After that, he may be viewed in another bay-window on the ground-floor eating a strong lunch; and after that, walking a dozen miles or so, or lying on his back on the sand reading a book. Nobody bothers him, unless they know he is disposed to be talked to, and I am told he is very comfortable indeed. He's as brown as a berry, and they do say he is as good as a small fortune to the innkeeper, who sells beer and cold punch." Here is the secret of such work as that of Dickens; it is done with delight--done (in a sense) easily, done with the mechanism of mind and body in splendid order. Even so did Scott write; though more rapidly and with less conscious care: his chapter finished before the world had got up to breakfast. Later, Dickens produced novels less excellent with much more of mental strain. The effects of age could not have shown themselves so soon, but for the unfortunate loss of energy involved in his non-literary labours.

While the public were still rejoicing in the first sprightly runnings of the "new humour," the humorist set to work desperately on the grim scenes of _Oliver Twist_, the story of a parish orphan, the nucleus of which had already seen the light in his _Sketches_. The early scenes are of a harrowing reality, despite the germ of forced pathos which the observant reader may detect in the pitiful parting between Oliver and little Dick; but what will strike every reader at once in this book is the directness and power of the English style, so nervous and unadorned: from its unmistakable clearness and vigour Dickens was to travel far as time went on. But the full effect of the old simplicity is felt in such masterpieces of description as the drive of Oliver and Sikes to Chertsey, the condemned-cell ecstasy of Fagin, or the unforgettable first encounter between Oliver and the Artful Dodger. Before November 1837 had ended, Charles Dickens entered on an engagement to write a successor to _Pickwick_ on similar lines of publication. _Oliver Twist_ was then in mid-career; a _Life of Grimaldi_ and _Barnaby Rudge_ were already covenanted for. Dickens forged ahead with the new tale of _Nicholas Nickleby_ and was justified by the results, for its sale far surpassed even that of _Pickwick_. As a conception it is one of his weakest. An unmistakably 18th-century character pervades it. Some of the vignettes are among the most piquant and besetting ever written. Large parts of it are totally unobserved conventional melodrama; but the Portsmouth Theatre and Dotheboys Hall and Mrs Nickleby (based to some extent, it is thought, upon Miss Bates in _Emma_, but also upon the author's Mamma) live for ever as Dickens conceived them in the pages of _Nicholas Nickleby_.

Having got rid of _Nicholas Nickleby_ and resigned his editorship of _Bentley's Miscellany_, in which _Oliver Twist_ originally appeared, Dickens conceived the idea of a weekly periodical to be issued as _Master Humphrey's Clock_, to comprise short stories, essays and miscellaneous papers, after the model of Addison's _Spectator_. To make the weekly numbers "go," he introduced Mr Pickwick, Sam Weller and his father in friendly intercourse. But the public requisitioned "a story," and in No. 4 he had to brace himself up to give them one. Thus was commenced _The Old Curiosity Shop_, which was continued with slight interruptions, and followed by _Barnaby Rudge_. For the first time we find Dickens obsessed by a highly complicated plot. The tonality achieved in _The Old Curiosity Shop_ surpassed anything he had attempted in this difficult vein, while the rich humour of Dick Swiveller and the Marchioness, and the vivid portraiture of the wandering Bohemians, attain the very highest level of Dickensian drollery; but in the lamentable tale of Little Nell (though Landor and Jeffrey thought the character-drawing of this infant comparable with that of Cordelia), it is generally admitted that he committed an indecent assault upon the emotions by exhibiting a veritable monster of piety and long-suffering in a child of tender years. In _Barnaby Rudge_ he was manifestly affected by the influence of Scott, whose achievements he always regarded with a touching veneration. The plot, again, is of the utmost complexity, and Edgar Allan Poe (who predicted the conclusion) must be one of the few persons who ever really mastered it. But few of Dickens's books are written in a more admirable style.

_Master Humphrey's Clock_ concluded, Dickens started in 1842 on his first visit to America--an episode hitherto without parallel in English literary history, for he was received everywhere with popular acclamation as the representative of a grand triumph of the English language and imagination, without regard to distinctions of nationality. He offended the American public grievously by a few words of frank description and a few quotations of the advertisement columns of American papers illustrating the essential barbarity of the old slave system (_American Notes_). Dickens was soon pining for home--no English writer is more essentially and insularly English in inspiration and aspiration than he is. He still brooded over the perverseness of America on the copyright question, and in his next book he took the opportunity of uttering a few of his impressions about the objectionable sides of American democracy, the result being that "all Yankee-doodle-dom blazed up like one universal soda bottle," as Carlyle said. _Martin Chuzzlewit_ (1843-1844) is important as closing his great character period. His _seve originale_, as the French would say, was by this time to a considerable extent exhausted, and he had to depend more upon artistic elaboration, upon satires, upon _tours de force_ of description, upon romantic and ingenious contrivances. But all these resources combined proved unequal to his powers as an original observer of popular types, until he reinforced himself by autobiographic reminiscence, as in _David Copperfield_ and _Great Expectations_, the two great books remaining to his later career.

After these two masterpieces and the three wonderful books with which he made his debut, we are inclined to rank _Chuzzlewit_. Nothing in Dickens is more admirably seen and presented than Todgers's, a bit of London particular cut out with a knife. Mr Pecksniff and Mrs Gamp, Betsy Prig and "Mrs Harris" have passed into the national language and life. The coach journey, the windy autumn night, the stealthy trail of Jonas, the undertone of tragedy in the Charity and Mercy and Chuffey episodes suggest a blending of imaginative vision and physical penetration hardly seen elsewhere. Two things are specially notable about this novel--the exceptional care taken over it (as shown by the interlineations in the MS.) and the caprice or nonchalance of the purchasing public, its sales being far lower than those of any of its monthly predecessors.

At the close of 1843, to pay outstanding debts of his now lavish housekeeping, he wrote that pioneer of Christmas numbers, that national benefit as Thackeray called it, _A Christmas Carol_. It failed to realize his pecuniary anticipations, and Dickens resolved upon a drastic policy of retrenchment and reform. He would save expense by living abroad and would punish his publishers by withdrawing his custom from them, at least for a time. Like everything else upon which he ever determined, this resolution was carried out with the greatest possible precision and despatch. In June 1844 he set out for Marseilles with his now rapidly increasing family (the journey cost him L200). In a villa on the outskirts of Genoa he wrote _The Chimes_, which, during a brief excursion to London before Christmas, he read to a select circle of friends (the germ of his subsequent lecture-audiences), including Forster, Carlyle, Stanfield, Dyce, Maclise and Jerrold. He was again in London in 1845, enjoying his favourite diversion of private theatricals; and in January 1846 he experimented briefly as the editor of a London morning paper--the _Daily News_. By early spring he was back at Lausanne, writing his customary vivid letters to his friends, craving as usual for London streets, commencing _Dombey and Son_, and walking his fourteen miles daily. The success of _Dombey and Son_ completely rehabilitated the master's finances, enabled him to return to England, send his son to Eton and to begin to save money. Artistically it is less satisfactory; it contains some of Dickens's prime curios, such as Cuttle, Bunsby, Toots, Blimber, Pipchin, Mrs MacStinger and young Biler; it contains also that masterpiece of sentimentality which trembles upon the borderland of the sublime and the ridiculous, the death of Paul Dombey ("that sweet Paul," as Jeffrey, the "critic laureate," called him), and some grievous and unquestionable blemishes. As a narrative, moreover, it tails off into a highly complicated and exacting plot. It was followed by a long rest at Broadstairs before Dickens returned to the native home of his genius, and early in 1849 "began to prepare for _David Copperfield_."

"Of all my books," Dickens wrote, "I like this the best; like many fond parents I have my favourite child, and his name is David Copperfield." In some respects it stands to Dickens in something of the same relation in which the contemporary _Pendennis_ stands to Thackeray. As in that book, too, the earlier portions are the best. They gained in intensity by the autobiographical form into which they are thrown; as Thackeray observed, there was no writing against such power. The tragedy of Emily and the character of Rosa Dartle are stagey and unreal; Uriah Heep is bad art; Agnes, again, is far less convincing as a consolation than Dickens would have us believe; but these are more than compensated by the wonderful realization of early boyhood in the book, by the picture of Mr Creakle's school, the Peggottys, the inimitable Mr Micawber, Betsy Trotwood and that monument of selfish misery, Mrs Gummidge.

At the end of March 1850 commenced the new twopenny weekly called _Household Words_, which Dickens planned to form a direct means of communication between himself and his readers, and as a means of collecting around him and encouraging the talents of the younger generation. No one was better qualified than he for this work, whether we consider his complete freedom from literary jealousy or his magical gift of inspiring young authors. Following the somewhat dreary and incoherent _Bleak House_ of 1852, _Hard Times_ (1854)--an anti-Manchester School tract, which Ruskin regarded as Dickens's best work--was the first long story written for _Household Words_. About this time Dickens made his final home at Gad's Hill, near Rochester, and put the finishing touch to another long novel published upon the old plan, _Little Dorrit_ (1855-1857). In spite of the exquisite comedy of the master of the Marshalsea and the final tragedy of the central figure, _Little Dorrit_ is sadly deficient in the old vitality, the humour is often a mock reality, and the repetition of comic catch-words and overstrung similes and metaphors is such as to affect the reader with nervous irritation. The plot and characters ruin each other in this amorphous production. The _Tale of Two Cities_, commenced in _All the Year Round_ (the successor of _Household Words_) in 1859, is much better: the main characters are powerful, the story genuinely tragic, and the atmosphere lurid; but enormous labour was everywhere expended upon the construction of stylistic ornament.

The _Tale of Two Cities_ was followed by two finer efforts at atmospheric delineation, the best things he ever did of this kind: _Great Expectations_ (1861), over which there broods the mournful impression of the foggy marshes of the Lower Thames; and _Our Mutual Friend_ (1864-1865), in which the ooze and mud and slime of Rotherhithe, its boatmen and loafers, are made to pervade the whole book with cumulative effect. The general effect produced by the stories is, however, very different. In the first case, the foreground was supplied by autobiographical material of the most vivid interest, and the lucidity of the creative impulse impelled him to write upon this occasion with the old simplicity, though with an added power. Nothing therefore, in the whole range of Dickens surpassed the early chapters of _Great Expectations_ in perfection of technique or in mastery of all the resources of the novelist's art. To have created Abel Magwitch alone is to be a god indeed, says Mr Swinburne, among the creators of deathless men. Pumblechook is actually better and droller and truer to imaginative life than Pecksniff; Joe Gargery is worthy to have been praised and loved at once by Fielding and by Sterne: Mr Jaggers and his clients, Mr Wemmick and his parent and his bride, are such figures as Shakespeare, when dropping out of poetry, might have created, if his lot had been cast in a later century. "Can as much be said," Mr Swinburne boldly asks, "for the creatures of any other man or god?"

In November 1867 Dickens made a second expedition to America, leaving all the writing that he was ever to complete behind him. He was to make a round sum of money, enough to free him from all embarrassments, by a long series of exhausting readings, commencing at the Tremont Temple, Boston, on the 2nd of December. The strain of Dickens's ordinary life was so tense and so continuous that it is, perhaps, rash to assume that he broke down eventually under this particular stress; for other reasons, however, his persistence in these readings, subsequent to his return, was strongly deprecated by his literary friends, led by the arbitrary and relentless Forster. It is a long testimony to Dickens's self-restraint, even in his most capricious and despotic moments, that he never broke the cord of obligation which bound him to his literary mentor, though sparring matches between them were latterly of frequent occurrence. His farewell reading was given on the 15th of March 1870, at St James's Hall. He then vanished from "those garish lights," as he called them, "for evermore." Of the three brief months that remained to him, his last book, _The Mystery of Edwin Drood_, was the chief occupation. It hardly promised to become a masterpiece (Longfellow's opinion) as did Thackeray's _Denis Duval_, but contained much fine descriptive technique, grouped round a scene of which Dickens had an unrivalled sympathetic knowledge.

In March and April 1870 Dickens, as was his wont, was mixing in the best society; he dined with the prince at Lord Houghton's and was twice at court, once at a long deferred private interview with the queen, who had given him a presentation copy of her _Leaves from a Journal of our Life in the Highlands_ with the inscription "From one of the humblest of authors to one of the greatest"; and who now begged him on his persistent refusal of any other title to accept the nominal distinction of a privy councillor. He took for four months the Milner Gibsons' house at 5 Hyde Park Place, opposite the Marble Arch, where he gave a brilliant reception on the 7th of April. His last public appearance was made at the Royal Academy banquet early in May. He returned to his regular methodical routine of work at Gad's Hill on the 30th of May, and one of the last instalments he wrote of _Edwin Drood_ contained an ominous speculation as to the next two people to die at Cloisterham: "Curious to make a guess at the two, or say at one of the two." Two letters bearing the well-known superscription "Gad's Hill Place, Higham by Rochester, Kent" are dated the 8th of June, and, on the same Thursday, after a long spell of writing in the Chalet where he habitually wrote, he collapsed suddenly at dinner. Startled by the sudden change in the colour and expression of his face, his sister-in-law (Miss Hogarth) asked him if he was ill; he said "Yes, very ill," but added that he would finish dinner and go on afterwards to London. "Come and lie down," she entreated; "Yes, on the ground," he said, very distinctly; these were the last words he spoke, and he slid from her arms and fell upon the floor. He died at 6-10 P.M. on Friday, the 9th of June, and was buried privately in Poets' Corner, Westminster Abbey, in the early morning of the 14th of June. One of the most appealing memorials was the drawing by his "new illustrator" Luke Fildes in the _Graphic_ of "The Empty Chair; Gad's Hill: ninth of June, 1870." "Statesmen, men of science, philanthropists, the acknowledged benefactors of their race, might pass away, and yet not leave the void which will be caused by the death of Charles Dickens" (_The Times_). In his will he enjoined his friends to erect no monument in his honour, and directed his name and dates only to be inscribed on his tomb, adding this proud provision, "I rest my claim to the remembrance of my country on my published works."

Dickens had no artistic ideals worth speaking about. The sympathy of his readers was the one thing he cared about and, like Cobbett, he went straight for it through the avenue of the emotions. In personality, intensity and range of creative genius he can hardly be said to have any modern rival. His creations live, move and have their being about us constantly, like those of Homer, Virgil, Chaucer, Rabelais, Cervantes, Shakespeare, Bunyan, Moliere and Sir Walter Scott. As to the books themselves, the backgrounds on which these mighty figures are projected, they are manifestly too vast, too chaotic and too unequal ever to become classics. Like most of the novels constructed upon the unreformed model of Smollett and Fielding, those of Dickens are enormous stock-pots into which the author casts every kind of autobiographical experience, emotion, pleasantry, anecdote, adage or apophthegm. The fusion is necessarily very incomplete and the hotch-potch is bound to fall to pieces with time. Dickens's plots, it must be admitted, are strangely unintelligible, the repetitions and stylistic decorations of his work exceed all bounds, the form is unmanageable and insignificant. The diffuseness of the English novel, in short, and its extravagant didacticism cannot fail to be most prejudicial to its perpetuation. In these circumstances there is very little fiction that will stand concentration and condensation so well as that of Dickens.

For these reasons among others our interest in Dickens's novels as integers has diminished and is diminishing. But, on the other hand, our interest and pride in him as a man and as a representative author of his age and nation has been steadily augmented and is still mounting. Much of the old criticism of his work, that it was not up to a sufficiently high level of art, scholarship or gentility, that as an author he is given to caricature, redundancy and a shameless subservience to popular caprice, must now be discarded as irrelevant.

As regards formal excellence it is plain that Dickens labours under the double disadvantage of writing in the least disciplined of all literary genres in the most lawless literary milieu of the modern world, that of Victorian England. In spite of these defects, which are those of masters such as Rabelais, Hugo and Tolstoy, the work of Dickens is more and more instinctively felt to be true, original and ennobling. It is already beginning to undergo a process of automatic sifting, segregation and crystallization, at the conclusion of which it will probably occupy a larger segment in the literary consciousness of the English-spoken race than ever before.

Portraits of Dickens, from the gay and alert "Boz" of Samuel Lawrence, and the self-conscious, rather foppish portrait by Maclise which served as frontispiece to _Nicholas Nickleby_, to the sketch of him as Bobadil by C. R. Leslie, the Drummond and Ary Scheffer portraits of middle age and the haggard and drawn representations of him from photographs after his shattering experiences as a public entertainer from 1856 (the year of his separation from his wife) onwards, are reproduced in Kitton, in Forster and Gissing and in the other biographies. Sketches are also given in most of the books of his successive dwelling places at Ordnance Terrace and 18 St Mary's Place, Chatham; Bayham Street, Camden Town; 15 Furnival's Inn; 48 Doughty Street; 1 Devonshire Terrace, Regent's Park; Tavistock House, Tavistock Square; and Gad's Hill Place. The manuscripts of all the novels, with the exception of the _Tale of Two Cities_ and _Edwin Drood_, were given to Forster, and are now preserved in the Dyce and Forster Museum at South Kensington. The work of Dickens was a prize for which publishers naturally contended both before and after his death. The first collective edition of his works was begun in April 1847, and their number is now very great. The most complete is still that of Messrs Chapman & Hall, the original publishers of _Pickwick_; others of special interest are the Harrap edition, originally edited by F. G. Kitton; Macmillan's edition with original illustrations and introduction by Charles Dickens the younger; and the edition in the World's Classics with introductions by G.K. Chesterton. Of the translations the best known is that done into French by Lorain, Pichot and others, with B.H. Gausseron's excellent _Pages Choisies_ (1903).

BIBLIOGRAPHY.--During his lifetime Dickens's biographer was clearly
indicated in his guide, philosopher and friend, John Forster, who had
known the novelist intimately since the days of his first triumph with
_Pickwick_, who had constituted himself a veritable encyclopaedia of
information about Dickens, and had clung to his subject (in spite of
many rebuffs which his peremptory temper found it hard to digest) as
tightly as ever Boswell had enveloped Johnson. Two volumes of
Forster's _Life of Charles Dickens_ appeared in 1872 and a third in
1874. He relied much on Dickens's letters to himself and produced what
must always remain the authoritative work. The first two volumes are
put together with much art, the portrait as a whole has been regarded
as truthful, and the immediate success was extraordinary. In the
opinion of Carlyle, Forster's book was not unworthy to be named after
that of Boswell. A useful abridgment was carried out in 1903 by the
novelist George Gissing. Gissing also wrote _Charles Dickens: A
Critical Study_ (1898), which ranks with G.K. Chesterton's _Charles
Dickens_(1906) as a commentary inspired by deep insight and adorned by
great literary talent upon the genius of the master-novelist. The
names of other lives, sketches, articles and estimates of Dickens and
his works would occupy a large volume in the mere enumeration. See
R.H. Shepherd, _The Bibliography of Dickens_ (1880); _James Cooke's
Bibliography of the Writings of Charles Dickens_ (1879);
_Dickensiana_, by F. G. Kitton (1886); and _Bibliography_ by J.P.
Anderson, appended to Sir F.T. Marzials's _Life of Charles Dickens_
(1887). Among the earlier sketches may be specially cited the lives by
J. C. Hotten and G. A. Sala (1870), the Anecdote-Biography edited by
the American R. H. Stoddard (1874), Dr A. W. Ward in the English Men
of Letters Series (1878), that by Sir Leslie Stephen in the
_Dictionary of National Biography_, and that by Professor Minto in the
eighth edition of the _Encyclopaedia Britannica_. The _Letters_ were
first issued in two volumes edited by his daughter and sister-in-law
in 1880. For Dickens's connexion with Kent the following books are
specially valuable:--Robert Langton's _Childhood and Youth of Charles
Dickens_ (1883); Langton's _Dickens and Rochester_ (1880); Thomas
Frost's _In Kent with Charles Dickens_ (1880); F. G. Kitton's _The
Dickens Country_ (1905); H. S. Ward's _The Real Dickens Land_ (1904);
R. Allbut's _Rambles in Dickens Land_ (1899 and 1903). For Dickens's
reading tours see G. Dolby's _Charles Dickens as I knew him_ (1884);
J. T. Fields's _In and Out of Doors with Charles Dickens_ (1876);
Charles Kent's _Dickens as a Reader_ (1872). And for other aspects of
his life see M. Dickens's _My Father as I recall him_ (1897); P. H.
Fitzgerald's _Life of C. Dickens as revealed in his Writings_ (1905),
and _Bozland_ (1895); F. G. Kitton's _Charles Dickens, his Life,
Writings and Personality_, a useful compendium (1902); T. E.
Pemberton's _Charles Dickens and the Stage_, and _Dickens's London_
(1876); F. Miltoun's _Dickens's London_ (1904); Kitton's _Dickens and
his Illustrators_; W. Teignmouth Shore's _Charles Dickens and his
Friends_ (1904 and 1909); B. W. Matz, _Story of Dickens's Life and
Work_ (1904), and review of solutions to _Edwin Drood_ in _The
Bookman_ for March 1908; the recollections of Edmund Yates, Trollope,
James Payn, Lehmann, R. H. Horne, Lockwood and many others. _The
Dickensian_, a magazine devoted to Dickensian subjects, was started in
1905; it is the organ of the Dickens Fellowship, and in a sense of the
Boz Club. _A Dickens Dictionary_ (by G. A. Pierce) appeared in 1872
and 1878; another (by A. J. Philip) in 1909; and a _Dickens
Concordance_ by Mary Williams in 1907. (T. SE.)

DICKINSON, ANNA ELIZABETH (1842- ), American author and lecturer, was born, of Quaker parentage, at Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on the 28th of October 1842. She was educated at the Friends' Free School in Philadelphia, and was for a time a teacher. In 1861 she obtained a clerkship in the United States mint, but was removed for criticizing General McClellan at a public meeting. She had gradually become widely known as an eloquent and persuasive public speaker, one of the first of her sex to mount the platform to discuss the burning questions of the hour. Before the Civil War she lectured on anti-slavery topics, during the war she toured the country on behalf of the Sanitary Commission, and also lectured on reconstruction, temperance and woman's rights. She wrote several plays, including _The Crown of Thorns_ (1876); _Mary Tudor_ (1878), in which she appeared in the title role; _Aurelian_ (1878); and _An American Girl_ (1880), successfully acted by Fanny Davenport. She also published a novel, _Which Answer?_ (1868); _A Paying Investment, a Plea for Education_ (1876); and _A Ragged Register of People, Places and Opinions_ (1879).

DICKINSON, JOHN (1732-1808), American statesman and pamphleteer, was born in Talbot county, Maryland, on the 8th of November 1732. He removed with his father to Kent county, Delaware, in 1740, studied under private tutors, read law, and in 1753 entered the Middle Temple, London. Returning to America in 1757, he began the practice of law in Philadelphia, was speaker of the Delaware assembly in 1760, and was a member of the Pennsylvania assembly in 1762-1765 and again in 1770-1776.[1] He represented Pennsylvania in the Stamp Act Congress (1765) and in the Continental Congress from 1774 to 1776, when he was defeated owing to his opposition to the Declaration of Independence. He then retired to Delaware, served for a time as private and later as brigader-general in the state militia, and was again a member of the Continental Congress (from Delaware) in 1779-1780. He was president of the executive council, or chief executive officer, of Delaware in 1781-1782, and of Pennsylvania in 1782-1785, and was a delegate from Delaware to the Annapolis convention of 1786 and the Federal Constitutional convention of 1787. Dickinson has aptly been called the "Penman of the Revolution." No other writer of the day presented arguments so numerous, so timely and so popular. He drafted the "Declaration of Rights" of the Stamp Act Congress, the "Petition to the King" and the "Address to the Inhabitants of Quebec" of the Congress of 1774, and the second "Petition to the King"[2] and the "Articles of Confederation" of the second Congress. Most influential of all, however, were _The Letters of a Farmer in Pennsylvania_, written in 1767-1768 in condemnation of the Townshend Acts of 1767, in which he rejected speculative natural rights theories and appealed to the common sense of the people through simple legal arguments. By opposing the Declaration of Independence, he lost his popularity and was never able entirely to regain it. As the representative of a small state, he championed the principle of state equality in the constitutional convention, but was one of the first to advocate the compromise, which was finally adopted, providing for equal representation, in one house and proportional representation in the other. He was probably influenced by Delaware prejudice against Pennsylvania when he drafted the clause which forbids the creation of a new state by the junction of two or more states or parts of states without the consent of the states concerned as well as of congress. After the adjournment of the convention he defended its work in a series of letters signed "Fabius," which will bear comparison with the best of the Federalist productions. It was largely through his influence that Delaware and Pennsylvania were the first two states to ratify the Constitution. Dickinson's interests were not exclusively political. He helped to found Dickinson College (named in his honour) at Carlisle, Pennsylvania, in 1783, was the first president of its board of trustees, and was for many years its chief benefactor. He died on the 14th of February 1808 and was buried in the Friends' burial ground in Wilmington, Del.

See C. J. Stille, _Life and Times of John Dickinson_, and P. L. Ford
(editor), _The Writings of John Dickinson_, in vols. xiii. and xiv.
respectively of the _Memoirs of the Historical Society of
Pennsylvania_ (Philadelphia, 1891 and 1895).

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Being under the same proprietor and the same governor,
Pennsylvania and Delaware were so closely connected before the
Revolution that there was an interchange of public men.

[2] The "Declaration of the United Colonies of North America ...
setting forth the Causes and the Necessity of their Taking up Arms"
(often erroneously attributed to Thomas Jefferson).

DICKSON, SIR ALEXANDER (1777-1840), British artillerist, entered the Royal Military Academy in 1793, passing out as second lieutenant in the Royal Artillery in the following year. As a subaltern he saw service in Minorca in 1798 and at Malta in 1800. As a captain he took part in the unfortunate Montevideo Expedition of 1806-07, and in 1809 he accompanied Howorth to the Peninsular War as brigade-major of the artillery. He soon obtained a command in the Portuguese artillery, and as a lieutenant-colonel of the Portuguese service took part in the various battles of 1810-11. At the two sieges of Budazoz, Ciudad Rodrigo, the Salamanca forts and Burgos, he was entrusted by Wellington (who had the highest opinion of him) with most of the detailed artillery work, and at Salamanca battle he commanded the reserve artillery. In the end he became commander of the whole of the artillery of the allied army, and though still only a substantive captain in the British service he had under his orders some 8000 men. At Vitoria, the Pyrenees battles and Toulouse he directed the movements of the artillery engaged, and at the end of the war received handsome presents from the officers who had served under him, many of whom were his seniors in the army list. He was at the disastrous affair of New Orleans, but returned to Europe in time for the Waterloo campaign. He was present at Quatre Bras and Waterloo on the artillery staff of Wellington's army, and subsequently commanded the British battering train at the sieges of the French fortresses left behind the advancing allies. For the rest of his life he was on home service, principally as a staff officer of artillery. He died, a major-general and G.C.B., in 1840. A memorial was erected at Woolwich in 1847. Dickson was one of the earliest fellows of the Royal Geographical Society.

His diaries kept in the Peninsula were the main source of information
used in Duncan's _History of the Royal Artillery_.

DICKSON, SIR JAMES ROBERT (1832-1901), Australian statesman, was born in Plymouth on the 30th of November 1832. He was brought up in Glasgow, receiving his education at the high school, and became a clerk in the City of Glasgow Bank. In 1854 he emigrated to Victoria, but after some years spent in that colony and in New South Wales, he settled in 1862 in Queensland, where he was connected with many important business enterprises, among them the Royal Bank of Queensland. He entered the Queensland House of Assembly in 1872, and became minister of works (1876), treasurer (1876-1879, and 1883-1887), acting premier (1884), but resigned in 1887 on the question of taxing land. In 1889 he retired from business, and spent three years in Europe before resuming political life. He fought for the introduction of Polynesian labour on the Queensland sugar plantations at the general election of 1892, and was elected to the House of Assembly in that year and again at the elections of 1893 and 1896. He became secretary for railways in 1897, minister for home affairs in 1898, represented Queensland in the federal council of Australia in 1896 and at the postal conference at Hobart in 1898, and in 1898 became premier. His energies were now devoted to the formation of an Australian commonwealth. He secured the reference of the question to a plebiscite, the result of which justified his anticipations. He resigned the premiership in November 1899, but in the ministry of Robert Philp, formed in the next month, he was reappointed to the offices of chief secretary and vice-president of the executive council which he had combined with the office of premier. He represented Queensland in 1900 at the conference held in London to consider the question of Australian unity, and on his return was appointed minister of defence in the first government of the Australian Commonwealth. He did not long survive the accomplishment of his political aims, dying at Sydney on the 10th of January 1901, in the midst of the festivities attending the inauguration of the new state.

DICOTYLEDONS, in botany, the larger of the two great classes of angiosperms, embracing most of the common flower-bearing plants. The name expresses the most universal character of the class, the importance of which was first noticed by John Ray, namely, the presence of a pair of seed-leaves or cotyledons, in the plantlet or embryo contained in the seed. The embryo is generally surrounded by a larger or smaller amount of foodstuff (endosperm) which serves to nourish it in its development to form a seedling when the seed germinates; frequently, however, as in pea or bean and their allies, the whole of the nourishment for future use is stored up in the cotyledons themselves, which then become thick and fleshy. In germination of the seed the root of the embryo (radicle) grows out to get a holdfast for the plant; this is generally followed by the growth of the short stem immediately above the root, the so-called "hypocotyl," which carries up the cotyledons above the ground, where they spread to the light and become the first green leaves of the plant. Protected between the cotyledons and terminating the axis of the plant is the first stem-bud (the plumule of the embryo), by the further growth and development of which the aerial portion of the plant, consisting of stem, leaves and branches, is formed, while the development of the radicle forms the root-system. The size and manner of growth of the adult plant show a great variety, from the small herb lasting for one season only, to the forest tree living for centuries. The arrangement of the conducting tissue in the stem is characteristic; a transverse section of the very young stem shows a number of distinct conducting strands--vascular bundles--arranged in a ring round the pith; these soon become united to form a closed ring of bast and wood, separated by a layer of formative tissue (cambium). In perennials the stem shows a regular increase in thickness each year by the addition of a new ring of wood outside the old one--for details of structure see PLANTS: Anatomy. A similar growth occurs in the root. This increase in the diameter of stem and root is correlated with the increase in leaf-area each season, due to the continued production of new leaf-bearing branches. A characteristic of the class is afforded by the complicated network formed by the leaf-veins,--well seen in a skeleton leaf, from which the soft parts have been removed by maceration. The parts of the flower are most frequently arranged in fives, or multiples of fives; for instance, a common arrangement is as follows,--five sepals, succeeded by five petals, ten stamens in two sets of five, and five or fewer carpels; an arrangement in fours is less frequent, while the arrangement in threes, so common in monocotyledons, is rare in dicotyledons. In some orders the parts are numerous, chiefly in the case of the stamens and the carpels, as in the buttercup and other members of the order Ranunculaceae. There is a very wide range in the general structure and arrangement of the parts of the flower, associated with the means for ensuring the transference of pollen; in the simplest cases the flower consists only of a few stamens or carpels, with no enveloping sepals or petals, as in the willow, while in the more elaborate type each series is represented, the whole forming a complicated structure closely correlated with the size, form and habits of the pollinating agent (see FLOWER). The characters of the fruit and seed and the means for ensuring the dispersal of the seeds are also very varied (see FRUIT).

DICTATOR (from the Lat. _dictare_, frequentative of _dicere_, to speak). In modern usage this term is loosely used for a personal ruler enjoying extraordinary and extra-constitutional power. The etymological sense of one who "dictates"--i.e. one whose word (_dictum_) is law (from which that of one who "dictates," i.e. speaks for some writer to record, is to be distinguished)--has been assisted by the historical use of the term, in ancient times, for an extraordinary magistrate in the Roman commonwealth. It is unknown precisely how the Roman word came into use, though an explanation of the earlier official title, magister populi, throws some light on the subject. That designation may mean "head of the (infantry) host" as opposed to his subordinate, the magister equitum, who was "head of the cavalry." If this explanation be accepted, emphasis was thus laid in early times on the military aspect of the dictatorship, and in fact the office seems to have been instituted for the purpose of meeting a military crisis such as might have proved too serious for the annual consuls with their divided command. Later constitutional theory held that the repression of civil discord was also one of the motives for the institution of a dictatorship. Such is the view expressed by Cicero in the _De legibus_ (iii. 3, 9) and by the emperor Claudius in his extant _Oratio_ (i. 28). This function of the office, although it may not have been contemplated at first, is attested by the internal history of Rome. In the crisis of the agitation that gathered round the Licinian laws (367 B.C.) a dictator was appointed, and in 314 B.C. we have the notice of a dictator created for purposes of criminal jurisdiction (_quaestionibus exercendis_). The dictator appointed to meet the dangers of war, sedition or crime was technically described as "the administrative dictator" (_rei gerundae causa_). Minor, or merely formal, needs of the state might lead to the creation of other types of this office. Thus we find dictators destined to hold the elections, to make out the list of the senate, to celebrate games, to establish festivals, and to drive the nail into the temple of Jupiter--an act of natural magic which was believed to avert pestilence. These dictators appointed for minor purposes were expected to retire from office as soon as their function was completed. The "administrative dictator" held office for at least six months.

The powers of a dictator were a temporary revival of those of the kings; but there were some limitations to his authority. He was never concerned with civil jurisdiction, and was dependent on the senate for supplies of money. His military authority was confined to Italy; and his power of life and death over the citizens was at an early period limited by law. It was probably the _lex Valeria_ of 300 B.C. that made him subject to the right of criminal appeal (_provocatio_) within the limits of the city. But during his tenure of power all the magistrates of the people were regarded as his subordinates; and it was even held that the right of assistance (_auxilium_), furnished by the tribunes of the plebs to members of the citizen body, should not be effectively exercised when the state was under this type of martial law. The dictator was nominated by one of the consuls. But here as elsewhere the senate asserted its authority over the magistrates, and the view was finally held that the senate should not only suggest the need of nomination but also the name of the nominee. After the nomination, the imperium of the dictator was confirmed by a _lex curiata_ (see COMITIA). To emphasize the superiority of this imperium over that of the consuls, the dictator might be preceded by twenty-four lictors, not by the usual twelve; and, at least in the earlier period of the office, these lictors bore the axes, the symbols of life and death, within the city walls.

Tradition represents the dictatorship as having a life of three centuries in the history of the Roman state. The first dictator is said to have been created in 501 B.C.; the last of the "administrative" dictators belongs to the year 216 B.C. It was an office that was incompatible both with the growing spirit of constitutionalism and with the greater security of the city; and the epoch of the Second Punic War was marked by experiments with the office, such as the election of Q. Fabius Maximus by the people, and the co-dictatorship of M. Minucius with Fabius, which heralded its disuse (see PUNIC WARS). The emergency office of the early and middle Republic has few points of contact, except those of the extraordinary position and almost unfettered authority of its holder, with the dictatorship as revised by Sulla and by Caesar. Sulla's dictatorship was the form taken by a provisional government. He was created "for the establishment of the Republic." It is less certain whether the dictatorships held by Caesar were of a consciously provisional character. Since the office represented the only supreme _Imperium_ in Rome, it was the natural resort of the founder of a monarchy (see SULLA and CAESAR). Ostensibly to prevent its further use for such a purpose, M. Antonius in 44 B.C. carried a law abolishing the dictatorship as a part of the constitution.

BIBLIOGRAPHY.--Mommsen, _Romisches Staatsrecht_, ii. 141 foll. (3rd
ed., Leipzig, 1887); Herzog, _Geschichte und System der romischen
Staatsverfassung_, i. 718 foll. (Leipzig, 1884); Pauly-Wissowa,
_Realencyclopadie_, v. 370 foll. (new edition, Stuttgart. 1893, &c.);
Lange, _Romische Alterthumer_, i. 542 foll. (Berlin, 1856, &c.);
Daremberg-Saglio, _Dictionnaire des antiquites grecques et romaines_,
ii. 161 foll. (1875, &c.); Haverfield, "The Abolition of the
Dictatorship," in _Classical Review_, iii. 77. (A. H. J. G.)

DICTIONARY.

Definition and history.

In its proper and most usual meaning a dictionary is a book containing a collection of the words of a language, dialect or subject, arranged alphabetically or in some other definite order, and with explanations in the same or some other language. When the words are few in number, being only a small part of those belonging to the subject, or when they are given without explanation, or some only are explained, or the explanations are partial, the work is called a _vocabulary_; and when there is merely a list of explanations of the technical words and expressions in some particular subject, a _glossary_. An alphabetical arrangement of the words of some book or author with references to the places where they occur is called an index (q.v.). When under each word the phrases containing it are added to the references, the work is called a _concordance_. Sometimes, however, these names are given to true dictionaries; thus the great Italian dictionary of the _Accademia della Crusca_, in six volumes folio, is called _Vocabolario_, and Ernesti's dictionary to Cicero is called _Index_. When the words are arranged according to a definite system of classification under heads and subdivisions, according to their nature or their meaning, the book is usually called a classed vocabulary; but when sufficient explanations are given it is often accepted as a dictionary, like the _Onomasticon_ of Julius Pollux, or the native dictionaries of Sanskrit, Manchu and many other languages.

Dictionaries were originally books of reference explaining the words of a language or of some part of it. As the names of things, as well as those of persons and places, are words, and often require explanation even more than other classes of words, they were necessarily included in dictionaries, and often to a very great extent. In time, books were devoted to them alone, and were limited to special subjects, and these have so multiplied, that dictionaries of things now rival in number and variety those of words or of languages, while they often far surpass them in bulk. There are dictionaries of biography and history, real and fictitious, general and special, relating to men of all countries, characters and professions; the English _Dictionary of National Biography_ (see BIOGRAPHY) is a great instance of one form of these; dictionaries of bibliography, relating to all books, or to those of some particular kind or country; dictionaries of geography (sometimes called _gazetteers_) of the whole world, of particular countries, or of small districts, of towns and of villages, of castles, monasteries and other buildings. There are dictionaries of philosophy; of the Bible; of mathematics; of natural history, zoology, botany; of birds, trees, plants and flowers; of chemistry, geology and mineralogy; of architecture, painting and music; of medicine, surgery, anatomy, pathology and physiology; of diplomacy; of law, canon, civil, statutory and criminal; of political and social sciences; of agriculture, rural economy and gardening; of commerce, navigation, horsemanship and the military arts; of mechanics, machines and the manual arts. There are dictionaries of antiquities, of chronology, of dates, of genealogy, of heraldry, of diplomatics, of abbreviations, of useful receipts, of monograms, of adulterations and of very many other subjects. These works are separately referred to in the bibliographies attached to the articles on the separate subjects. And lastly, there are dictionaries of the arts and sciences, and their comprehensive offspring, encyclopaedias (q.v.), which include in themselves every branch of knowledge. Neither under the heading of _dictionary_ nor under that of _encyclopaedia_ do we propose to include a mention of every work of its class, but many of these will be referred to in the separate articles on the subjects to which they pertain. And in this article we confine ourselves to an account of those dictionaries which are primarily word-books. This is practically the most convenient distinction from the subject-book or encyclopaedia; though the two characters are often combined in one work. Thus the _Century Dictionary_ has encyclopaedic features, while the present edition of the _Encyclopaedia Britannica_, restoring its earlier tradition but carrying out the idea more systematically, also embodies dictionary features.

_Dictionarium_ is a word of low or modern Latinity;[1] _dictio_, from which it was formed, was used in medieval Latin to mean a word. _Lexicon_ is a corresponding word of Greek origin, meaning a book of or for words--a dictionary. A _glossary_ is properly a collection of unusual or foreign words requiring explanation. It is the name frequently given to English dictionaries of dialects, which the Germans usually call _idioticon_, and the Italians _vocabolario_. _Worterbuch_, a book of words, was first used among the Germans, according to Grimm, by Kramer (1719), imitated from the Dutch _woordenboek_. From the Germans the Swedes and Danes adopted _ordbok_, _ordbog_. The Icelandic _ordabok_, like the German, contains the genitive plural. The Slavonic nations use _slovar_, _slovnik_, and the southern Slavs _ryetshnik_, from _slovo_, _ryetsh_, a word, formed, like dictionary and lexicon, without composition. Many other names have been given to dictionaries, as _thesaurus_, _Sprachschatz_, _cornucopia_, _gazophylacium_, _comprehensorium_, _catholicon_, to indicate their completeness; _manipulus predicantium_, _promptorium puerorum_, _liber memorialis_, _hortus vocabulorum_, _ionia_ (a violet bed), _alveary_ (a beehive), _kamoos_ (the sea), _haft kulzum_ (the seven seas), _tsze tien_ (a standard of character), _onomasticon_, _nomenclator_, _bibliotheca_, _elucidario_, _Mundart-sammlung_, _clavis_, _scala_, _pharetra_,[2] _La Crusca_ from the great Italian dictionary, and _Calepino_ (in Spanish and Italian) from the Latin dictionary of Calepinus.