We know, on the evidence of public librarians, that the popularity of Dickens shows no signs of They have been attributed to 2batement—that indeed he is read Shakespeare's carelessness, to his; more to-day than he was in his own lifetime. It is Dickens the indifference, and to his ignorance, humorist who is immortal—certain-jand, of course, are a trump card with those who claim the plays for ly not Dickens the inventor sensational plots. He is read to-[somebody else. Mr. Bostelmann, day for the sake of Pickwick and indeed, knows all about it. Accord-Sam Weller, Sairey Gamp and Tom jing to him the real author was the Pinch, Micawber and Squeers, and {fourth Earl of Rutland, who acted Mark Tapley and Swiveller, and on the tip given him by Bacon, not for his thin, artificial, melo-that if he wished to father the dramatic thrills. plays on Shaxsper he: should make some bad blunders in them: and A Master Story-Tevier. especially that, should he ever One proof of this is that, while write a play about early Rome, he Dickens is widely read, his con-should have ¢locks in it. temporaries, and in his own day his rivals, Charles Reade and All these overlook the simple fact Wilkie Collins, are to a very large that Shakespeare was a dramatist extent neglected. Both were first, second, and third, a school-men of genius. In addition to his teacher afterwards, and a pedant novels with a too evident purpose, never. His aim was to present Charles Reade" wrote in "The stories to his audience in the way Cloister and the Hearth" one of vho that was froest from the friction finest historical novels in English of time. Bound as he was in his literature, and Wilkie Collins was historical plays by facts, he kept a master storyteller. In the aras far as possible the timing in his rangement of his plots he is unown hands. The impression made questionably Dickens's superior. on the audience was his care; not Swinburne said of Wilkie Collins's the instruction of the cultured and novels inquiring reader.
And he knew The most distinctive quality of his best the vast difference there is—and it work is to be sought and found in tle was then even greater than now—construction of an interesting and between that little bit of the past plexing story, well conceived, well con-that we have lived through, and trived, and Well moulded into lifelike and that preceding "dark backward and attractive shape. abysm of time" we know only by A Fetrow-Worker with Dickens. hearsay.
William Wilkie Collins was born in 1824. He was the son of a Royal Tuat Resativity Again Academician, and he was named In "Sulius Cesay'' he was right after his father's friend, the famous to have the striking of a clock-painter, David Wilkie. He spent not the clock itself, that might" four years in the tea trade. He have created friction—to convey to began to write when he was very the audience not the century. but young, and his first book was published in 1847. He met Dickens in the hour of the day, in a manner too familiar to be challenged. He 1851 and became on terms of closest personal friendship with him. was. just as right in saying nothing Collins worked with Dickens for about tobacco. None of his play: "Household Words'? and "All the is "up to date" in the sense in Year Round,' and in this latter which some of Jonson's are, it publication his famous novel The never turns on the moment, tobacco Woman in White" appeared as a had come in within the memory of serial. He died in 1889. his audiences, and the pipe was a In many ways "The Woman in thing of ich they could recall White" is the most distinguished the beginning. To-day, when the his novels.
The story is com-past has been far more fully and mon place. A bold, bad_ baronet accurately charted, it might be} (the type satirized by Gilbert in possible in the theatre to antedate, say, photography by twenty years. But woe to the playwright who would put ten years on to the age of the aeroplane! There is, in short, a law of relativity in these things as in others, and to-day there is no artistic reason why the Falstaff known-to Mistress Ford and Mistress Page should not smoke his pipe, or anyone else's that he can lay hands on.
"Ruddigore') married a sweet young thing for her money. The "sweet young thing (of course be-was a Victorian) had met a hand-fore her marriage—since Collins
some young art master and had fal-: len in love with him. But she "had promised to marry the bold,.bad baronet. It was her duty, and she did. And the handsome young art master properly eliminate ted himself. There was a terrible
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.