Dickens has given us some interesting adolescents. Miss Dingwall in "Sketches
by Boz," "very sentimental and romantic"; the tempery young Nickleby, who, at
nineteen, thrashed Squeers; Barnaby Rudge, idiotic and very muscular; Joe
Willet, persistently treated as a boy till he ran away to join the army and married
Dolly Varden, perhaps the most exuberant, good-humored, and beautiful girl in
all the Dickens gallery; Martin Chuzzlewit, who also ran away, as did David
Copperfield, perhaps the most true to adolescence because largely reminiscent of
the author's own life; Steerforth, a stranger from home, and his victim, Little
Emily; and to some extent Sam Weller, Dick Swiveller, the Marchioness, young
Podsnap, the Artful Dodger, and Charley Bates; while Oliver Twist, Little Nell,
and Little Dorrit, Joe and Turveydrop in Bleak House, and Paul Dombey, young
as they were, show the beginning of the pubescent change. Most of his
characters, however, are so overdrawn and caricatured as to be hardly true to
life.[40]
In the "Romance of John Inglesant,"[41] by J. H. Shorthouse, we have a
remarkable picture of an unusually gifted youth, who played an important rôle in
the days of Cromwell and King Charles, and who was long poised in soul
between the Church of Rome and the English party. He was very susceptible to
the fascination of superstition, romance, and day-dreaming, and at eleven
absorbed his master's Rosicrucian theories of spiritual existence where spirits
held converse with each other and with mankind. A mystic Platonism, which
taught that Pindar's story of the Argo was only a recipe for the philosopher's
stone, fascinated him at fourteen. The philosophy of obedience and of the
subjection of reason to authority was early taught him, and he sought to live
from within, hearing only the divine law, as the worshipers of Cybele heard only
the flutes. His twin brother Eustace was an active worldling, and soon he
followed him to court as page to the Queen, but delighted more and more in
wandering apart and building air castles. For a time he was entirely swayed, and
his life directed, by a Jesuit Father, who taught him the crucifix and the rosary.
At sixteen the doctrine of divine illumination fascinated him. He struggled to
find the path of true devotion; abandoned himself to extremely ritualistic forms
of worship; dabbled a little in alchemy and astrology to help develop the divine
nature within him and to attain the beatific vision. Soon he was introduced to the
"Protestant nunnery," as it was called, where the venerable Mr. Ferran, a friend
of George Herbert's, was greatly taken by Inglesant's accomplishments and grace
of manner. Various forms of extremely High Church yet Protestant worship were
celebrated here each day with great devotion, until he became disgusted with
Puritanism and craved to participate in the office of mass. At this point,