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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. THE PRlNCES OP LlTERATURE. When I first settled in London, England was under the sway of a great literary triumvirate: Dickens, Thackeray, and Tennyson. At that time, and for long after, Browning was but the leader of a select few. Even Tennyson's popularity did not equal that of Thackeray and did not come anywhere near that of Dickens. I am not now entering into any comparison or criticism of the men as intellectual forces; I am speaking only of the hold they had on the public mind. Dickens, of course, was by far the most popular of the three; no one since his time has had anything like the same degree of popularity. No one born in the younger generation can easily understand, from any illustration that later years can give him, the immensity of the popular homage which Dickens then enjoyed. I had many opportunities of meeting Dickens, and of course I heard all of his readings and heard him deliver several after- dinner speeches. Let me say at once that he was the very best after-dinner speaker I ever heard; I do not quite know whom I should put second to him.Sometimes I feel inclined to give Mr. James Eussell Lowell that second place, and sometimes my mind impels me to give it to Lowell's countryman, Mr. Chauncey Depew. But, so far as my judgment can go, there is no difficulty about awarding the first place to Dickens. His voice was rich, full, and deep, capable of imparting without effort every tone and half-tone of emotion, pathetic, inspiriting, or humorous, that any spoken words could demand. His deep eyes seemed to flash upon every listener among the audience whom he addressed. I have no doubt that his after-dinner speeches were prepared in some fashion, but they carried with them no hint of preparation. They seemed to come from the very heart of the spe...
| ISBN-13 | 9780217852586 |
|---|---|
| ISBN-10 | 0217852580 |
| Weight | 0.84 Pounds |
| Dimensions | 9.00 x 6.00 x 0.58 In |
| List Price | $21.24 |
| Format | Paperback |
|---|---|
| Pages | 254 pages |
| Publisher | |
| Published On | 2009-08-01 |
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