PERSONAL REMINISCENCES OF CHARLES READE.
SECOND PAPER.
OF all Reade's contemporaries he yielded the palm to Dickens, and to him alone. Him he always acknowledged as his master. Next for variety and scope came Bulwer. Carlyle, he said, was a Johnsonian pedant, bearish, boorish, and bumptious, egotistical and atrabilious. His Teutonic English was barbarous and cacophonous; yet, notwithstanding, every line he wrote was permeated with vigor and sincerity, and his "Cromwell" is a memorial of two great men,—the hero and the author. Macaulay always posed himself,
As who should say, "I am Sir Oracle,
And when I ope my lips let no dog bark!"
but with this intellectual arrogance he combined a grand rhythmical style, a marvellous learning, and a miraculous memory.
Disraeli was "the most airy and vivacious of literary coxcombs, the most dexterous and dazzling of political harlequins, the most audacious of adventurers, the most lovable of men (when you got on his weak side), and, altogether, the most unique and remarkable personage of the age."
Thackeray he designated "an elegant and accomplished writer." "Esmond," he added, "is worthy of Addison at his best; but some of 'The Yellow-Plush Papers' would be a disgrace to Grub Street, and the miserable personal attacks on Bulwer, who has written the best play, the best comedy, and the best novel of the age, are unworthy of a gentleman and a man of letters.
"Trollope wrote a good deal that was interesting, and a good deal that was—not interesting.
"For literary ingenuity in building up a plot and investing it with mystery, give me dear old Wilkie Collins against the world.
"George Eliot's métier appears to me to consist principally in describing with marvellous accuracy the habits, manners, and customs of animalcula as they are seen under the microscope.
"Victor Hugo is the one great genius of this century; unfortunately, he occasionally has the nightmare. George Sand should have been a man, for she was a most manly woman. Glorious old Alexandre Dumas has never been properly appreciated: he is the prince of dramatists. Walter Scott was one of the world's benefactors."
Reade execrated poetasters, but adored poets, although he maintained that there was no nobler vehicle to give expression to thought than nervous, simple prose,—that prose which he himself cultivated to so true a pitch of art. Tennyson, he alleged, was more pretty than potent. When "The Cup" was produced at the Lyceum, he said, "It might have proved an interesting spectacle if the words had been left out." Browning was a great man, but he gave him too much trouble to understand. Swinburne was a genius, but too erotic. He always harked back to Byron, Shelley, and Scott: the last, however, was his greatest favorite, and he would recite by heart, with fervor, long passages, almost cantos, of "Marmion" and "The Lady of the Lake."
He sometimes complained bitterly of what he called "the Shakespearian craze," stoutly maintaining that the people who talked most of the bard knew least about him. In a more genial mood he frankly admitted the supremacy of the "celestial thief" to all men who came before or after him. If I could only set him going about "Othello,"—the one perfect play through all the ages,—he would discourse "thunder and lightning."
Music was his special delight, but his taste was as exacting as it was cultivated. Italian opera he always maintained was
