We might not now find so much pathos in 'Bingen on
the Rhine,' 'A soldier of the Legion lay dying in Algiers,' or in
'The Soldier's Funeral,' in the declamation of which I was held to
have surpassed myself. 'Robert's voice,' said the master on this
memorable occasion, 'is not strong, but impressive': an opinion
which I was fool enough to carry home to my father; who roasted me
for years in consequence. I am sure one should not be so deliciously
tickled by the humorous pieces:-
'What, crusty? cries Will in a taking,
Who would not be crusty with half a year's baking?'
I think this quip would leave us cold. The 'Isles of Greece' seem
rather tawdry too; but on the 'Address to the Ocean,' or on 'The
Dying Gladiator,' 'time has writ no wrinkle.'
'Tis the morn, but dim and dark,
Whither flies the silent lark?' -
does the reader recall the moment when his eye first fell upon these
lines in the Fourth Reader; and 'surprised with joy, impatient as the
wind,' he plunged into the sequel? And there was another piece, this
time in prose, which none can have forgotten; many like me must have
searched Dickens with zeal to find it again, and in its proper
context, and have perhaps been conscious of some inconsiderable
measure of disappointment, that it was only Tom Pinch who drove, in
such a pomp of poetry, to London.
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