A Fairy Tale of Home was here related, that in its graceful and fantastic freaks of fancy might have been imagined by the Danish poet, Hans Christian Andersen. In its combination of simple pathos and genial drollery, however, it was a story that no other could by possibility have told than the great English Humorist. If there was something really akin to the genius of Andersen, in the notion of the Cricket with its shrill, sharp, piercing voice resounding through the house, and seeming to twinkle in the outer darkness like a star, Dickens, and no other could, by any chance, have conjured up the forms of either Caleb Plummer, or Gruff-and-Tackleton. The cuckoo on the Dutch clock, now like a spectral voice, now hiccoughing on the assembled company, as if he had got drunk for joy; the little haymaker over the dial mowing down imaginary grass, jerking right and left with his scythe in front of a Moorish palace; the hideous, hairy, red-eyed jacks-in-boxes; the flies in the Noah's arks, that “an't on that scale neither as compared with elephants;” the giant masks, having a certain furtive leer, “safe to destroy the peace of mind of any young gentlemen between the ages of six and eleven, for the whole Christmas or Midsummer vacation,” were all of them like dreams of the Danish poet, coloured into a semblance of life by the grotesque humour of the English Novelist. But dear little Dot, who was rather of the dumpling's shape—“but I don't myself object to that”—and good, lumbering John Peerybingle, her husband, often so near to something or another very clever, according to his own account, and Boxer, the carrier's dog, “with that preposterous nothing of a fag-end of a tail of his, describing circles of barks round the horse, making savage rushes at his mistress, and facetiously bringing himself to sudden stops,”—all bear upon them unmistakably the sign-manual of Boz.

As originally recounted in the Christmas story-book, the whole narrative was comprised within a very few pages, portioned out into three little chirps. Yet the letter-press was illustrated profusely by pencils as eminent as those of Daniel Maclise, of Clarkson Stanfield, of Richard Doyle, of John Leech, of Sir Edwin Landseer. The charming little fairy tale, moreover, was inscribed to Lord Jeffrey. It was a favourite of his, as it still is of many another critic north and south of the Tweed, light, nay trivial, though the materials out of which the homely apologue is composed. It can hardly be wondered at, however, remembering how less than four years prior to its first publication, a literary reviewer, no less formidable than Professor Wilson—while abstaining, in his then capacity as chairman of the public banquet given to Charles Dickens at Edinburgh, from attempting, as he said, anything like “a critical delineation of our illustrious guest”—nevertheless, added emphatically, “I cannot but express in a few ineffectual words the delight which every human bosom feels in the benign spirit which pervades all his creations.” Christopher North thus further expressed his admiration then of the young English Novelist—“How kind and good a man he is,” the great Critic exclaimed, laying aside for a while the crutch with which he had so often, in the Ambrosian Nights, brained many an arrant pretender to the title of genius or of philanthropist, and turning his lion-like eyes, at the moment beaming only with cordiality, on the then youthful face of Dickens,—“How kind and good a man he is I need not say, nor what strength of genius he has acquired by that profound sympathy with his fellow-creatures, whether in prosperity and happiness, or overwhelmed with unfortunate circumstances.” Purely and simply, in his capacity as an imaginative writer, the Novelist had already (then in the June of 1841) impressed thus powerfully the heart and judgment of John Wilson, of Christopher North, of the inexorable Rhadamanthus of Blackwood and the “Noctes.” Afterwards, but a very little more than two years afterwards, came the “Carol.” The following winter rang out the “Chimes.” The Christmas after that was heard the chirping of the “Cricket.”

Four years previously Professor Wilson, on the occasion referred to, had remarked of him most truly,—“He has not been deterred by the aspect of vice and wickedness, and misery and guilt, from seeking a spirit of good in things evil, but has endeavoured by the might of genius to transmute what was base into what is precious as the beaten gold;” observing, indeed, yet further—“He has mingled in the common walks of life; he has made himself familiar with the lower orders of society.” As if in supplementary and conclusive justification of those words, Dickens, within less than five years afterwards, had woven his graceful and pathetic fancies about the homely joys and sorrows of Bob Cratchit, of Toby Veck, and of Caleb Plummer, of a little Clerk, a little Ticket-porter, and a little Toy-maker. His pen at these times was like the wand of Cinderella's fairy godmother, changing the cucumber into a gilded chariot, and the lizards into glittering retainers.

At the commencement of this Reading but very little indeed was said about the Cricket, hardly anything at all about the kettle. Yet, as everybody knows, “the kettle began it” in the story-book. The same right of precedence was accorded to the kettle in the author's delivery of his fairy tale by word of mouth, but otherwise its comfortable purring song was in a manner hushed. One heard nothing about its first appearance on the hearth, when “it would lean forward with a drunken air, and dribble, a very idiot of a kettle,” any more than of its final pÆan, when, after its iron body hummed and stirred upon the fire, the lid itself, the recently rebellious lid, performed a sort of jig, and clattered “like a deaf and dumb young cymbal that had never known the use of its twin brother.” Here, again, in fact, as with so many other of these Readings from his own books by our Novelist, the countless good things scattered abundantly up and down the original descriptions—inimitable touches of humour that had each of them, on the appreciative palate, the effect of that verbal bon-bon, the bon-mot—were sacrificed inexorably, apparently without a qualm, and certainly by wholesale. What the Reader looked to throughout, was the human element in his imaginings when they were to be impersonated.

Let but one of these tid-bits be associated directly with the fanciful beings introduced in the gradual unfolding of the incidents, and it might remain there untouched, Thus, for example, when the Carrier's arrival at his home came to be mentioned, and the Reader related how John Peerybingle, being much taller, as well as much older than his wife, little Dot, “had to stoop a long way down to kiss her”—the words that followed thereupon were happily not omitted: “but she was worth the trouble,—six foot six with the lumbago might have done it.” Several of John's choicest—all-but jokes were also retained. As, where Dot is objecting to be called by that pet diminutive, “'Why, what else are you?' returned John, looking down upon her with a smile, and giving her waist as light a squeeze as his huge hand and arm could give, 'A dot and'—here he glanced at the baby—'a dot and carry'—I won't say it, for fear I should spoil it; but I was very near a joke. I don't know as ever I was nearer.” Tilly Slowboy and her charge, the baby, were, upon every mention of them in the Reading, provocative of abundant laughter. The earliest allusion to Miss Slowboy recording these characteristic circumstances in regard to her costume, that it “was remarkable for the partial development, on all possible and impossible occasions, of some flannel vestment of a singular structure, also for affording glimpses in the region of the back of a pair of stays, in colour a dead green.” On the introduction of the Mysterious Stranger—apparently all but stone deaf—from the Carrier's cart, where he had been forgotten, the comic influence of the Reading became irresistible.

Stranger (on noticing Dot) interrogatively to John.—“Your Daughter?”

Carrier, with the voice of a boatswain.—“Wife.”

Stranger, with his hand to his ear, being not quite certain that he has caught it.—“Niece?”

Carrier, with a roar.—“Wife.”

Satisfied at last upon that point, the stranger asks of John, as a new matter of curiosity to him, “Baby, yours?” Whereupon the Reader, as John, “gave a gigantic nod, equivalent to an answer in the affirmative, delivered through a speaking-trumpet.”

Stranger, still unsatisfied, inquiring,—“Girl?”.—“Bo-o-oy!” was bellowed back by John Peerybingle. It was when Mrs. Peerybingle herself took up the parable, however, that the merriment excited among the audience became fairly irrepressible. Scarcely had the nearly stone-deaf stranger added, in regard to the “Bo-o-oy,”—“Also very young, eh?” (a comment previously applied by him to Dot) when the Reader, as Mrs. Peerybingle, instantly struck in, at the highest pitch of his voice, that is, of her voice (the comic effect of this being simply indescribable)—“Two months and three da-ays! Vaccinated six weeks ago-o! Took very fine-ly! Considered, by the doctor, a remarkably beautiful chi-ild! Equal to the general run of children at five months o-old! Takes notice in a way quite won-der-ful! May seem impossible to you, but feels his feet al-ready!” Directly afterwards, Caleb Plummer appeared upon the scene, little imagining that in the Mysterious-Stranger would be discovered, later on, under the disguise of that nearly stone-deaf old gentleman, his (Caleb's) own dear boy, Edward, supposed to have died in the golden South Americas. Little Caleb's inquiry of Mrs. Peerybingle,—“You couldn't have the goodness to let me pinch Boxer's tail, Mum, for half a moment, could you?” was one of the welcome whimsicalities of the Reading. “Why, Caleb! what a question!” naturally enough was Dot's instant exclamation. “Oh, never mind, Mum!” said the little toy-maker, apologetically, “He mightn't like it perhaps”—adding, by way of explanation—“There's a small order just come in, for barking dogs; and I should wish to go as close to Natur' as I could, for sixpence!” Caleb's employer, Tackleton, in his large green cape and bull-headed looking mahogany tops, was then described as entering pretty much in the manner of what one might suppose to be that of an ogrish toy-merchant. His character came out best perhaps—meaning, in another sense, that is, at its worst—when the fairy spirit of John's house, the Cricket, was heard chirping; and Tackleton asked, grumpily,—“Why don't you kill that cricket? I would! I always do! I hate their noise!” John exclaiming, in amazement,—“You kill your crickets, eh?” “Scrunch 'em, sir!” quoth Tackleton. One of the most wistfully curious thoughts uttered in the whole of the Reading was the allusion to the original founder of the toy-shop of Gruff and Tackleton, where it was remarked (such a quaint epitome of human life!) that under that same crazy roof, beneath which Caleb Plummer and Bertha, his blind daughter, found shelter as their humble home,—“the Gruff before last had, in a small way, made toys for a generation of old boys and girls, who had played with them, and found them out, and broken them, and gone to sleep.” Another wonderfully comic minor character was introduced later on in the eminently ridiculous person of old Mrs. Fielding—in regard to in-door gloves, a foreshadowing of Mrs. Wilfer—in the matter of her imaginary losses through the indigo trade, a spectral precursor, or dim prototype, as one might say, of Mrs. Pipchin and the Peruvian mines. Throughout the chief part of the dreamy, dramatic little story, the various characters, it will be remembered, are involved in a mazy entanglement of cross purposes. Mystery sometimes, pathos often, terror for one brief interval, rose from the Reading of the “Home Fairy-Tale.” There was a subdued tenderness which there was no resisting in the revelation to the blind girl, Bertha, of the illusions in which she had been lapped for years by her sorcerer of a lather, poor little Caleb, the toy-maker. There was at once a tearful and a laughing earnestness that took the Reader's audience captive, not by any means unwillingly, when little Dot was, at the last, represented as “clearing it all up at home” (indirectly, to the great honour of the Cricket's reputation, by the way) to her burly husband—good, stupid, worthy, “clumsy man in general,”—John Peerybingle, the Carrier. The one inconsistent person in the whole story, it must be admitted, was Tackleton, who turned out at the very end to be rather a good fellow than otherwise. Fittingly enough, in the Reading as in the book, when the “Fairy Tale of Home” was related to its close, when Dot and all the rest were spoken of as vanished, a broken child's-toy, we were told, yet lay upon the ground, and still upon the hearth was heard the song of the Cricket.