Meanwhile, in the midst of all that full college life which was becoming more and more definitely a preparation for the political career, he was trying his strength in the field of journalism.
His grandfather had never ceased to impress upon him that every public man should have learned and practised thoroughly the craft of writing. This precept allied itself with the inherited ownership of a great literary journal; and very shortly after old Mr. Dilke's death the undergraduate, as he then was, began to associate himself actively with the work of the Athenaeum. His first published writing in it appeared on October 22nd, 1864, when he reviewed a well-known work on economics by the writer whom the Memoir styles 'that dull Frenchman, Le Play.' [Footnote: French Senator, son-in-law of the celebrated economist Michel Chevalier. He wrote works on the principles of agriculture, the application of chemistry to agriculture, and kindred subjects.] Le Play wrote from Paris to thank Sir Wentworth Dilke for a copy of the article which had been sent him, and had already attracted attention in France:
"On y trouve un sentiment de vrai progrès et une intelligence de la vie pratique qui se rencontrent rarement chez nos critiques."
The British Museum tickets show the course of reading which Charles Dilke was pursuing at this period: Bacon, Filmer, Mandeville, Hume, represent the older English writers on Commonwealths, ideal and actual; Crousaz, Condorcet, Diderot, Linguet, Fénelon, Helvétius, stood for the influences of eighteenth-century France. With them were writers more recondite; the Mundus Alter et Idem of "Britannicus," Barclay his Argenis, Holberg's Journey in the Underworld, Sadeur's Terre Australe Connue, Ned Lane's Excellencie of a Free State, were all out-of-the-way books with an antiquarian flavour. Of recent or contemporary authors, Montalembert was included, with Proudhon, as were men whom Charles Dilke came to know personally—Émile de Girardin, Michel Chevalier, and, a close friend afterwards, Louis Blanc. Works of Mohl and Willick brought in the Germans, and a volume of the Federalist introduced him to that great American commonwealth which he was soon to visit. A sheaf of dockets for works upon the Swedenborgian Association and theories complete this very extensive range of reading, which may be supplemented by the following note of his own:
"Favourite books, 1864 (in themselves—for no object):
"Shakespeare.
"The Bible.
"J. S. Mill: Political Economy; On Liberty; Dissertations.
"Longfellow: Evangeline and Miles Standish.
"Homer: Works.
"Tennyson: nearly all.
"Plato: Republic.
"Sir P. Sidney: Arcadia.
"Claude Adrien Helvétius: Works.
"Victor Hugo: Les Misérables.
"William Godwin: Political Justice."
He notes also in the Memoir that the reading of Mill at this period marked the beginning of Mill's influence over him. This influence was a great factor in Dilke's life, and, when it passed into a personal relation, became almost one of discipleship.
His taste for Victor Hugo led him to write in the Athenaeum a long notice of Les Travailleurs de la Mer in 1866, when that romance appeared; but another article about the same period on international law indicates the main bent of his studies.
As early as the Long Vacation of 1864, in the course of preparing his essay on forms of government, he had found himself tracing 'the future of the Anglo-Saxon race both in the United States and Australasia'; and he thus, without knowing it, laid the foundation lines of Greater Britain. Also, in 1865, 'I had already dreamt of visiting and writing upon Russia, a country which always had a great hold on my imagination.' Another project of these undergraduate years was less his own than his grandfather's. Old Mr. Dilke contemplated a universal catalogue of books, to be prepared by international action. This scheme was completely abandoned, yet it is interesting that the grandson entertained it. The scholar, not merely the lover, but the active servant, of learning, was always present in Charles Dilke's many-sided personality, though never dominant. We approach the central preoccupations of his mind with the History of Prevalent Opinions in Politics, towards which 'a great deal of work' was done by him in the winter of 1864-65. In 1866 the same underlying group of ideas took form in the outline of a treatise on Radicalism.
In working for this he read 'most of the writers upon the theory of politics—Hooker, Montesquieu, Rousseau, Linguet, Locke, Bentham, and many more.' 'Many more' included some very unusual reading; for the plan of his book was in three chapters, 'the first chapter being upon the Radicalism of the days before the coming of Jesus; the second chapter upon the period between the teaching of our Lord and 1789; and the third on Radicalism in modern history.' In the second part he 'gave much space to Arius, Huss, Wyclif, Savonarola, Vane, Roger Williams, Baxter, Fox, Zinzendorf, and other religious reformers.' All this reading taught him the 'extent to which forgotten doctrines come up again, and are known by the names of men who have but revived them'; and, on the other hand, how doctrines change and degenerate while keeping the original name.
'In the sketch of my book, so far as it was worked out, I gave much space to the falling-off in the Church from the Radicalism of primitive Christianity…. It began with a definition of Radicalism as a going to the root of things, which naturally led to the doctrine of the perfectibility of man, and, quoting the gospels freely, I attempted to prove the essential Radicalism of Christ's teaching.'