described, when we are told how they look and behave. Mad, half-witted, weak, and simple people, again, are adequately represented by their obvious and external qualities; for, as regards the former class, inasmuch as we cannot rely on inferences from the ordinary laws of mind, there is nothing but manner to look to; and as regards the latter class there is a tolerably constant relation betwen what they think and what they say and do. In noting these surface attri butes, Mr. Dickens has shown an exquisite tact. Accordingly in his sketches of animal life, in his description of madness, and in the working out of such characters as Tom Pinch, Dora Spenlow, Esther Summerson, Toots, Smike, and Joe Gargery he is perfectly satisfactory. Mr. Sleary's reflections on the instinct of dogs are alone sufficient to prove how accurately their habits must have been observed. Very excellent, too, is Mr. Garland's pony, Whisker, and the performing dogs in the Old Curiosity Shop. But the best thing of the kind is, without doubt, the raven in Barnaby Rudge. * "Halloa!' cried a hoarse voice in his ear. 'Halloa! halloa! halloa! Bow wow wow, what's the matter here? Hal-loa!" "The speaker who made the locksmith start, as if he had seen some supernatural agent was a large raven, who had perched upon the top of the easy-chair, unseen by him and Edward, and listened with a polite attention and a most extraordinary appearance of comprehending every word, to all they had said up to this point; turning his head from one to the other, as if his office were to judge between them and it were of the very last importance that he should not lose a word. "Look at him,' said Varden, divided between admiration of the bird and a kind of fear of him. Was there ever such a knowing imp as that? Oh, he's a dreadful fel low!' "The raven with his head very much on one side, and his bright eye shining like a diamond, preserved a thoughtful silence for a few sec onds, and then replied in a voice so hoarse and distant, that it seemed to come through his thick feathers, rather than out of his mouth. "Halloa! halloa! halloa! What's the matter here? Keep up your spirits. Never say die. Bow wow wow. I'm a devil, I'm a devil, I'm a devil. Hurrah!' And then, as if exulting in his infernal character, he began to whistle. * Hard Times, p. 344. "Is he old?' said Edward. "A mere boy, sir,' replied the locksmith. 'A hundred and twenty or thereabouts. Call him down, Barnaby, my man.' "Call him!' echoed Barnaby, 'but who "On second thoughts, the bird appeared dis- But For the same reason Mr. Dickens de- 66 as * Barnaby Rudge, vol. i. pp. 54, 5. No one - Blimber's Academy-the solemn politeness, pretension, and weariness of that establishment-is nearly as good as anything in the whole of these volumes. can help remembering the "round of bread, genteelly served on a plate and napkin, and with a silver fork lying crosswise on the top of it," which was to serve for dinner to the disgraced Briggs nor the butler "who gave quite a winey flavor to the table beer; he poured it out so superbly;" nor even the fact that Dr. Blimber's young gentlemen did not "break up," but oozed away semi-annually to their own homes. It is by the finish of these lighter touches that Mr. Dickens has won the high position he occupies. His minor characters are generally good. Mr. Littimer, for example, is only a sketch-but it is a sketch which leaves a far more vivid impression behind than the comparatively labored portrait of Steerforth. So with Mr. Vincent Crummles, young Bailey, Mrs. Skewton, Captain Cuttle, and Mr. Buckett-they are among the happiest things in his books. As an illustration of selfishness, we far prefer the few pages in the Old Curiosity Shop, which describe Messrs. Short and Codlin, to the heavy melodramatic business in Martin Chuzzlewit. It is more natural, more humorous, and, we think, more true. The cautious surliness of Codlin in the first instance, when he is not clear what to make of his fellow travellers; his awkward attempts to ingratiate himself when he suspects money may be made out of them; and the characteristic manner in which he finally takes credit for everything that he had not done, when he is clear that money is to be made, contrast admirably with the simple good-nature of his partner Short: "You said!' returned Mr. Codlin. 'Did I always say that that 'ere blessed child was the most interesting I ever see? Did I always say I loved her, and doated on her? Pretty creetur, I think I hear her now. "Codlin's my friend,' she says with a tear of gratitude a tricklin' down her little eye; "Codlin's my friend," she says, "not Short. Short's very well," she says; "I've no quarrel with Short; he means kind, I dare say; but Codlin," she says, "has the feelings for my money, though he mayn't look it."" 666 'Stay a minute,' said Short. A man of the name of Jerry-you know Jerry, Thomas?' Mr. Codlin. How can I care a pinch of snuff "Oh, don't talk to me of Jerrys,' replied for Jerrys, when I think of that 'ere darling child? "Codlin's my friend," she says, "dear, good, kind Codlin, as is always a devisin' pleas ures for me! I don't object to Short," she says, "but I cotton to Codlin." Once,' said that gentleman reflectively, she called me Father Codlin. I thought I should have bust!'"* But when Mr. Dickens writes on principle, with an object before him, and, above all, when he tries to enlist our sympathy or dislike, he signally fails. We search in vain throughout these sixteen novels for any one man or woman whom we really admire, really fear, or whom we should at all desire to imitate. If the figures in a tailor's shop were to become suddenly animated they would be exceedingly like Mr. Dickens's heroes. Compare Rochester, or Louis Moore, or the Professor, with John Westlock, Nicholas Nickleby, or Walter Gay. While no one reads Miss Brontë's works without a marked feeling one way or other for the principal actors, there is a very general impression that if Mr. Dickens's young men could be got rid of altogether his novels would be greatly improved. They have an admirable choice of words, and express the most unexceptionable opinions in the most correct language, but there is a premature goodness aud an odious prosy morality about them which are quite insufferable. Those little angularities by which character is distinguished are nearly altogether wanting. Nicholas Nickleby, Frank Cheeryble, and John Westlock are each represented under the influence of a strong passion; but they might be shaken up in a bag with Madeleine Bray, Kate Nickleby, and Ruth Pinch, and it would make very little difference either to themselves or the story how the couples were taken out. Whereas Shirley would be quite another book if Rochester had to be substituted for Louis Moore. The reason of this is that Mr. Dickens has trusted not to his observation, but to his imagination, and he has exercised his imagination on a subject of which he has no special knowledge. There is just one ex *Old Curiosity Shop, vol. i. pp. 292, 3. ception to the triviality of his heroes. David Copperfield has some marks of life about him. And it is generally believed that in this novel Mr. Dickens has drawn largely from actual experience. After all, Mr. Dickens the artist is only subsidiary to Mr. Dickens the philosopher, the moralist, and the politician. We should not have ventured to regard him in this threefold capacity were it not that he expressly claims to have views in some of his prefaces,* and that he insists on those views in his books. Most people who affect to think have some kind of notion about the world in general. It commonly resolves itself into one of these two propositions: (1), that things are right; (2), that they are not right. The philosophy of Mr. Dickens is contained in the former statement. There is an optimism based on the belief that events are so arranged as to turn out happily in the long run. Upon this hypothesis the facts of life are explained by allowing plenty of time for arrangement, and by pointing out the imperfection of our means of judgment: "All nature is but art, unknown to thee, All chance direction that thou canst not see, All discord harmony not understood, All partial evil universal good." This is the optimism of theory, and it amounts to this, that there is, speaking strictly, no evil at all in the world. is, of course, a great deal of want, and wretchedness, and crime; but the poor people are compensated for their poverty by being more cheerful and virtuous than the rich; and the wretchedness and crime are chiefly owing to the absurdity of our government and laws, to our neglect of sanitary improvements, and to the selfishness of the great. A few obvious reforms, such as putting all the right men in the right places, and seeing that the laboring population lived in airy, clean, and well-ventilated houses, would soon put things to rights. This is his theory, and his practice accords with it. The deserving people are rewarded with a uniformity which is exceedingly gratifying. Those who are young enough are married happily-some of the very good ones twice; those who, like Miss Trotwood, the brothers Cheeryble, Mr. Pickwick, and Tom Pinch, could scarcely be married without destroying the romance of the thing, become accessories, before or after the fact, to the marriage of some body else, and live a quasi-domestic life surrounded by their friends' children. No mercy is shown to the Fagins, the Quilps, the Pecksniffs, the Squeers, the Heeps. The rewards of virtue are, it is true, somewhat commonplace, and the highest good of which any example is much above the level of material comfort. found in these volumes does not rise We believe that if Mr. Dickens were king he would first of all take care that in be sold for a penny, and he would make England seven half penny loaves should it felony to drink small beer. On the other side there is the view which treats misfortune, crime, and what ever makes men miserable, as so much foreign matter introduced, by a kind of divine accident, into an organism expressly constructed for happiness. Those As a mere matter of political expedi who adopt it do not attempt to explain ency, we are not at all disposed to quar away the facts, but they insist on the rel with this view. It is what would be duty of getting rid, as fast as possible, of tive to that large class of people who incalled "healthy," and it supplies a mowhatever interferes with the general well being; they also have the peculiarity obligations. But it is by no means the sist on taking a commercial view of moral of believing that they can do so. This last word on the subject. When an au is the optimism of practice-the wisdom thor steps forward and says, "I propose of Social Science Associations, of politi- to write a funny book;" very well: no cal reformers, and more particularly of Mr. Dickens himself. His theory of life is very complete and comfortable. He believes the world we live in, to be, in the main, a happy world, where virtue is rewarded and vice punished on the strict est principles of poetic justice. There *See particularly the Prefaces to Martin Chuzzlewit, Little Dorrit, and Bleak House. one troubles himself to examine his theories. But Mr. Dickens claims to represent large phases of modern thought and he should have set out with so trivial a life. Therefore we think it a pity that belief as that virtue is usually rewarded and vice usually punished. His moral and political speculations take their color from the opinions of the public for whom he works. Like many other novelists, he has two classes of readers. There are those (including, we should think, everybody who has sense to understand a joke,) who admire him greatly for certain special qualities. Then there are those who thoroughly understand and believe in him, and whom he may be said to represent-just as Cambridge men are represented by Mr. Kingsley. This class is not easily defined. It is chiefly made up of the impulsive people who write letters to the Times; of practical, well-to-do men who understand their own business, and see no difficul ties elsewhere; and of those to whom it is a pleasure to have their feelings strongly acted upon. That Mr. Dickens must keep constantly before him the requirements of some such class as this, is plain from his manner of dealing with the pathetic, as well as from the freedom with which he constantly expresses himself on subjects which he cannot possibly be supposed to understand. There is nothing more distinctive of the refinement which proceeds from education than these two qualities-a reluctance to draw conclusions, and a reserve of expression on subjects which nearly concern us. In dealing with practical affairs, all men are indeed equally forced to rely on half truths, to act on experiences which they know to be merely approximate, and to speak of things which they feel are vulgarized by being put into words. But they do so under protest, well knowing that they must either do this or nothing. Were they to wait for the precise juncture which would enable them to act and speak with absolute propriety, they would wait long. Circumstances, so far as they are any help at all, usually favor common purposes, and further every-day ends. Actual life is accordingly a continued sacrifice to opportunity, in which we are obliged to do some violence to ourselves and much violence to our convictions, for the sake of influencing the world around us. But the novelist is not under the influence of this necessity. It is open to him to arrange events in such a manner that the persons he creates may move in them, may act and be acted on by them, without compromising their better thoughts and feelings. In a book, a speaker is not absolutely bound to talk claptrap. The hero may pass through his various adventures, he may struggle, be disappointed, and be made supremely happy, without professing to see his way clearly through everything, or having to act on convictions he does not feel. Circumstances may be artificially constructed so as to favor him thus far. And when a novelist has to describe emotions or passions which call for reticence, he has an unlimited power of indicating their shades and depth inferentially, by the effect they produce, without minute analysis or outspoken description. No writer with whom we are acquainted has taken less advantage of this happy privilege than Mr. Dickens. He abuses the liberty of dogmatism, and he revels in describing incidents which good taste would carefully conceal. His death-bed scenes exceed in number and variety those of any other author, living or dead. They are arranged in much the same way as they would be put on the stage of the Adelphi Theatre. It is not distinctive of Mr. Dickens that he minutely analyzes states of mind and feeling that a person who appreciated their meaning would touch with extreme reserve; but it is distinctive of him that he often seeks to make a secondary and still more objectionable use of them by turning them, as it were, into political capital. In one of his novels there are some reflections in a country churchyard. These thoughts are suggested by some poor men's tombs, and they are not very bad, being, in fact, a part of Gray's "Elegy" done into prose. Then we have. the clergyman's horse stumbling about and cropping the grass, and close by a lean ass in a pound, who having trespassed in the churchyard "without being qualified and ordained, was looking with hungry eyes on his priestly neighbor." Now we wonder that Mr. Dickens did not see that there was a want of fitness in this. There is no objection to meditations in a country churchyard, but it is odd that any one who felt the influence of the place sufficiently to care to write about it at all, should have had his attention strongly directed to the difference between rich and poor, and to the exclusive privileges of the clergy. It may be all perfectly true; but it is so out of place that one cannot help suspecting that the scene, with all its accessories the ivy and the tombs of the "poor humble men" | -is merely introduced to heighten the effect of his little bit of bunkum at the end. And if so, Mr. Dickens has been trifling with the sympathies of his readers for an unworthy purpose. To the love of melodramatic effect and partiality for violent contrast must be referred a manner of treatment which seriously interferes with the artistic beauty of many of these novels. We allude to the practice of suddenly converting people without showing sufficient reason for the change. To do justice to Mr. Dickens's views, we must rather abuse our privilege of making extracts. quite a different person-distinguished for his affectionate qualities and domestic habits; and we take leave of him enjoying a bottle of Madeira in the company of Captain Cuttle. This is more like the melodrama in Nicholas Nickleby than anything else: "What do you mean to do for me, old fellow?' asked Mr. Lenville, poking the struggling fire with his walking-stick, and afterwards wiping it on the skirt of his coat; anything in the gruff and grumble way?' 6 666 "You turn your wife and child out of doors,' said Nicholas; and in a fit of rage and jealousy stab your eldest son in the library.' "Do I though?' exclaimed Mr. Lenville. 'That's very good business.' "After which,' said Nicholas, 'you are troubled with remorse till the last act, and then you make up your mind to destroy yourself. But just as you are raising the pistol to your head, a clock strikes-ten!' "I see,' cried Mr. Lenville. Very good.' "You pause,' said Nicholas; 'you recollect to have heard a clock strike ten in your infancy. The pistol falls from your handyou are overcome-you burst into tears, and become a virtuous and exemplary character for ever afterwards.' "Capital!' said Mr. Lenville; 'that's a sure card. Get the curtain down with a touch of nature like that, and it'll be a tri umphant, success.'"* But the most astonishing case of conversion is afforded by the history of Merry Pecksniff. She is introduced in the following description: "Miss Pecksniff sat upon a stool, because There is Mr. Dombey, in many respects an extremely well-drawn character; a type of the aristocratic pride of commerce. He has his ancestors, his traditions, and an hereditary name, which he is above all things anxious to preserve. He loses his wife, and regrets her after his fashion. "Something lay at the bottom of his cold heart, colder and heavier than its ordinary load; but it was more a sense of the child's loss than his own, awakening within him an almost angry sorrow. That the life and progress on which he built such hopes should be endangered in the outset by so mean a want; that Dombey and Son should be tottering for a nurse, was indeed a humiliation." His son dies next; the only result is, that he is more frigid and dignified than before. There is something painful in the obstinate in- of her simplicity and innocence, which were difference with which he repels the ad-great-very great. Miss Pecksniff sat upon vances of his daughter, not because she a stool because she was all girlishness, and thwarts, but because she cannot advance his ambition. He marries a second time, and pays dearly for it. Domestic misery is followed by commercial ruin; but through every change of circum stance Mr. Dombey is still the same. The reader is about to close the book with some admiration for the stoicism with which such a variety of misfortune has been met, when in the last chapter or so, Mr. Dombey suddenly encounters his daughter, who has lately eloped with a man to whom he has a particular objection. A meeting of this kind does not usually bring out the amiable side of the parental character, but it produces a remarkably soothing effect on Mr. Dombey, who instantly becomes playfulness, and wildness, and kittenish buoyancy. She was the most arch and at the same time the most artless creature, was the youngest Miss Pecksniff, that you can possibly imagine. It was her great charm. She her hair, or to turn it up, or to frizzle it, or was too fresh and guileless to wear combs in to braid it. She wore it in a crop, a loosely flowing crop, which had so many rows of curls in it that the top row was only one curl." So she is described throughout the first half of the book. She is a hypocrite, as we should expect a daughter of Mr. Pecksniff to be. Without any deliberately vicious intention, she is simply thoughtless, vain, insolent, and spiteful. *Nicholas Nickleby, pp. 225, 6. |