I have thought it right to offer this small tribute to one who was in his way an interesting and remarkable man. No place has been found for him in the series known as English Men of Letters; and yet, as I have before pointed out, he had a place in literature that somewhat suggests the position of Dr. Johnson. What Forster said, or what Forster did, was at one time of importance to the community. This sort of arbiter is unknown nowadays, and perhaps would not be accepted. He will, however, ever be associated with Charles Dickens, as his friend, adviser, admirer, corrector, and biographer. There is a conventional meaning for the term "men of letters," men, that is, who have written books; but in the stricter sense it is surely one who is "learned in letters," as a lawyer is learned in the law. Johnson is much more thought of in this way than as a writer. Forster had this true instinct, and it was a curious thing one day to note his delight when I showed him a recent purchase: a figure of Johnson, _his_ prototype, wrought in pottery, seated in chair, in an attitude of wisdom, his arms extended and bent, and evidently expatiating. Looking at it, he delivered an acute bit of criticism worthy of the Doctor himself.
"The interest," he said, "of this figure is not in the modelling, which is good, but because it represents Johnson as he was, in the eye of the crowd of his day; who looked on him, not as the writer, but as the grand _argufier_ and layer-down of the law, the 'settler' of any knotty point whatever; with them the Doctor could decide anything. See how his arm is half raised, his fingers outspread, as if about to give his decision. You should show this to Carlyle, who will be delighted with it."
He often recurred to this and to the delight the Sage would have had. I forget whether I followed his advice. On the same occasion he noticed a figure of Washington. "Ah! there he stands," he said, "with his favourite air of state and dignity, and sense of what was due to his position. You will always notice that in the portraits there was a little assumption of the aristocrat." Forster's criticism was always of this kind--instructive and acute.
Forster was the envied possessor of nearly every one of Boz's MSS.--a treasure at the time not thought very much of, even by Dickens himself, but since his death become of extraordinary value. I should say that each was worth some two or three thousand pounds at the least. How amazing has been this appreciation of what dealers call "the Dickens stuff" during these years! It is almost incredible. I mind the day when a Dickens' book, a Dickens' letter, was taken tranquilly. A relation of my own, an old bachelor, had, as we thought, an eccentric _penchant_ for early editions of Boz; and once, on the great man coming to the provincial city where he lived, waited on him to show him what he called his "Old Gold"; to wit, the earlier editions of Pickwick and Nickleby. We all smiled, and I remember Boz speaking to me good-naturedly of this enthusiasm. Not one of the party then--it was in 1865--dreamed that this old bachelor was far wiser than his generation. The original Pickwick, that is bound from the numbers, is indeed a nugget of old gold. I remember once asking Wills, his sub-editor, could I be allowed to have the original MSS. of some of Boz's short stories? He said, "To be sure, that nothing was more easy than to ask him, for the printer sent each back to him after use, carefully sealed up." What became of all these papers I cannot tell; but I doubt if anyone was then _very_ eager about them.