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Coaching days and coaching ways . most misunderstood. Yes, the feeling wasgeneral, I think, that English literature had suffered an irremediable loss byDickenss death ; andtime has confirmed thefear. We have aban-doned laughter in thesedays for documentaryevidence, psychology,realism, and other pre-scriptions for sleep, andhave entered on a liter-ary era which has lostall touch and sym-pathy with Dickens,and is indeed divinelydull. The above may ap-pear perhaps in acoaching article, aliterary digression, but it is in truth but a resurrectionpie of thoughts which occurred to me—and would occurt
Coaching days and coaching ways . most misunderstood. Yes, the feeling wasgeneral, I think, that English literature had suffered an irremediable loss byDickenss death ; andtime has confirmed thefear. We have aban-doned laughter in thesedays for documentaryevidence, psychology,realism, and other pre-scriptions for sleep, andhave entered on a liter-ary era which has lostall touch and sym-pathy with Dickens,and is indeed divinelydull. The above may ap-pear perhaps in acoaching article, aliterary digression, but it is in truth but a resurrectionpie of thoughts which occurred to me—and would occurto any real lover of Dickens—in the course of that twomile seven furlong walk on the Dover Road betweenGads Hill and Rochester, which the great author usedto cover nearly every other day of his life. For Rochesteris as closely associated with Dickens as Chaucer is withCanterbury, or Shakespeare with Stratford-on-Avon. Inthat great cycle of imaginative prose beginning with thePickwick Papers and ending with Edwin Drood, Roches-. Staircase in the Nuns Houses, Rochester. THE DOVER ROAD 247 ter is written almost on the first page, and almost uponthe last. Is it a wonder then that in the picturesquelybeautiful old town reminiscences of the departed geniusshould haunt one at every step ? The principal productions of Rochester, wrote , appear to be soldiers, sailors, Jews, chalk,shrimps, officers, and dockyard men. But I think the
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1890, bookpublisherlondon, booksubject