Of course he read many other authors by slow
degrees; but, until his manhood came, his range was restricted. The
flawless perfection of his work is due mainly to his mother's sedulous
insistence on perfection within strict bounds. Again, and keeping
still to authors, Charles Dickens knew very little about books. His
keen business-like intellect perceived that the study of life and of
the world's forces is worth more than the study of letters, and he
also kept himself clear of scholarly lumber. He read Fielding,
Smollett, Gibbon, and, in his later life, he was passionately fond of
Tennyson's poetry; but his greatest charm as a writer and his success
as a social reformer were both gained through his simple power of
looking at things for himself without interposing the dimness that
falls like a darkening shadow on a mind that is crammed with the
conceptions of other folk. Look at the practical men! Nasmyth scarcely
read at all; Napoleon always spoke of literary persons as
"ideologists;" Stephenson was nineteen before he mastered his Bible;
Mahomet was totally uneducated; Gordon was content with the Bible,
"Pilgrim's Progress," and Thomas a Kempis; Hugh Miller became an
admirable editor without having read twoscore books in his lifetime.
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