Charles Dickens as a Reader | Page 6

one or two instances that might be named the assumption
was all but identity. An aptitude of this particular kind, as everyone can
appreciate upon the instant, would by necessity come wonderfully in
aid of the illusive effect produced by readings that were in point of fact
the mere vehicle or medium for a whole crowd of vivid impersonations.
Anyone, moreover, possessing gifts like these, of a very peculiar
description, not only naturally but inevitably enjoys himself every
opportunity that may arise for displaying them to those about him, to
his friends and intimates. "Man is of a companionable, conversing
nature," says Goethe in his novel of The Renunciants, "his delight is
great when he exercises faculties that have been given him, even
though nothing further came of it." Seeing that something further
readily did come of it in the instance of Charles Dickens, it can hardly
be matter for surprise that the readings and impersonations which were
first of all a home delight, should at length quite naturally have opened
up before the popular author what was for him an entirely new, but at
the same time a perfectly legitimate, career professionally.
Recitations or readings of his own works in public by a great writer are,
in point of fact, as old as literature itself. They date back to the very
origin of polite letters, both prose and poetic. It matters nothing
whether there was one Homer, or whether there may have been a score
of Homers, so far as the fact of oral publication applies to the Iliad and
the Odyssey, nearly a thousand years (900) before the foundation of
Christianity. By the lips of a single bard, or of a series of bards,
otherwise of public declaimers or reciters, the world was first
familiarised with the many enthralling tales strung together in those
peerless masterpieces. Again, at a period of very nearly five hundred
years (484) before the epoch of the Redemption, the Father of History
came to lay the foundation, as it were, of the whole fabric of prose
literature in a precisely similar manner--that is to say, by public
readings or recitations. In point of fact, the instance there is more
directly akin to the present argument. A musical cadence, or even
possibly an instrumental accompaniment, may have marked the
Homeric chant about Achilles and Ulysses. Whereas, obviously, in

regard to Herodotus, the readings given by him at the Olympic games
were readings in the modern sense, pure and simple. Lucian has related
the incident, not only succinctly, but picturesquely.
Herodotus, then in his fiftieth year, reflected for a long while seriously
how he might, with the least trouble and in the shortest time, win for
himself and his writings a large amount of glory and reputation.
Shrinking from the fatigue involved in the labour of visiting
successively one after another the chief cities of the Athenians, the
Corinthians, and the Lacedæmonians, he ingeniously hit upon the
notion of appearing in person at the Olympian Games, and of there
addressing himself simultaneously to the very pick and flower of the
whole Greek population. Providing himself beforehand with the
choicest portions or select passages from his great narrative, he there
read or declaimed those fragments of his History to the assembled
multitude from the stage or platform of the theatre. And he did this,
moreover, with such an evident captivation about him, not only in the
style of his composition, but in the very manner of its delivery, that the
applause of his hearers interrupted him repeatedly--the close of these
recitations by the great author-reader being greeted with prolonged and
resounding acclamations. Nay, not only are these particulars related as
to the First Reading recorded as having been given by a Great Author,
but, further than that, there is the charming incident described of
Thucydides, then a boy of fifteen, listening entranced among the
audience to the heroic occurrences recounted by the sonorous and
impassioned voice of the annalist, and at the climax of it all bursting
into tears. Lucian's comment upon that earliest Reading might, with a
change of names, be applied almost word for word to the very latest of
these kinds of intellectual exhibitions. "None were ignorant," he says,
"of the name of Herodotus; nor was there a single person in Greece
who had not either seen him at the Olympics, or heard those speak of
him that came from thence: so that in what place soever he came the
inhabitants pointed with their finger, saying 'This is that Herodotus who
has written the Persian Wars in the Ionic dialect, this is he who has
celebrated our victories.' Thus the harvest which he reaped from his
histories was, the receiving in one assembly the general applause of all
Greece, and the sounding his fame,