a very scant amount of classic lore while under the instruction of Mr. Jones, and not too much lore of any kind. But if he learned little, he observed much. He thoroughly mastered the humours of the place, just as he had mastered the humours of the Marshalsea. He had got to know all about the masters, and all about the boys, and all about the white mice--of which there were many in various stages of civilization. He acquired, in short, a fund of school knowledge that seemed inexhaustible, and on which he drew again and again, with the most excellent results, in "David Copperfield," in "Dombey," in such inimitable short papers as "Old Cheeseman." And while thus, half unconsciously perhaps, assimilating the very life of the school, he was himself a thorough schoolboy, bright, alert, intelligent; taking part in all fun and frolic; amply indemnifying himself for his enforced abstinence from childish games during the dreary warehouse days; good at recitations and mimic plays; and already possessed of a reputation among his peers as a writer of tales. FOOTNOTES: [1] L200 a year "without extras" from 1815 to 1820, and then L350. See "Childhood and Youth of Charles Dickens," by Robert Langton, a very valuable monograph. [2] Mr. Langton appears to doubt whether John Dickens was not imprisoned in the King's Bench. But this seems scarcely a point on which Dickens himself can have been mistaken. [3] According to Mr. Langton's dates, he would still be drawing his pay. [4] See paper entitled "Our School." CHAPTER II.