The Comedy in Dickens.

Auckland Star, Volume XXI, Issue 217, 13 September 1890, Page 4 (Supplement)

The Comedy in Dickens.

When Dicken3 brought Mr Pickwick and Sam Weller on the stage, the farce was received with shouts of laughter ; for a farce, and a screaming farce, the ' Pickwick Papers' were, and the immortal Sam is a magnificent impossibiliby. lb is nob only bhab wib and wisdom and apposibe illusbrabions dropped from his lips like the pearls from bhose of bhe princess in the fairy tale; but the range of his reading had been as wide as his practical philosophy was profound. He is ab home with Sterne, for he talks about the young woman who kept the goat, etc. Though, from being waggoner's boy, and sleeping under the Adelphi arches he had been promoted to boots at the Borough inn, he ia so familiar with the inberiors of respectable baverns in tho City thab he can warn his masber to avoid a certain table with bhe awkward log.. But whab of all thab ? We fear

"Pickwick" loses flavour with advancing age, but we used to know many a young man who read and re-read ib far more indefabigably than he ever searched the Scriptures. There was a time when ib was as freely quoted at fasb messes and other places where even the lighfcesb fiction was at a discount, as in the daily journals and magazines. The author had taken the license of the professional jester who never sticks ab a .rifle so long as he can raise a laugh. Mr Pickwick and his faithful companions aro as indifferent to the conventionalities of dress and the toilet as any follower of Dioeenes. They go for a week's visit in a country house in as light marching order as a Matabele warrior or a primitive Christian missionary. They are always swallowing liquor, in season and out of soason ; and though we have no sorb of sympathy with Sir Wilfrid, we are scandalised ab the frequency of Mr Pickwick's excesses. How he found his way home from tho cricket match to the Manor Farm has always been a mystery to us ; and we mu6t say that the sage in spectacles richly deserved the pillory, when he had gob drunk over the

Jars of Cold Punch

at bhe shooting luncheon. "Pickwick" was a tour d'esprit bhab was nob to bo repeated, and in his subsequent book Dickens rose from broad burlesque bo more chastened farce or genteel comedy. Though there was burlesque still in the picturesque characters whom Martin Chuzzlewib and Mr Tapley fell among in bhe Far Wesb, bhe Bbudies could nob nave been albogebher caricabured, or bhey would nob have stung i|he American so deeply. For ourselves, we have laughed over and enjoyed " Martin Chuzzlewit" more than any other of Dickens' books, although the autobiographical '* Copperfield " ranks higher aa a work of art, and we are far from forgetting Mr Micawber. Talking ot Messrs Micawber, Toots, Tapley, Swiveller and Co., there can be no stronger teab of the lifelike humour of bhose fancies bhan the frequency which bhey have pointed

The Speeches of Statesmen and been applied to the purposes of political caricature. Mr Punch has made us familiar enough with Chancellors of the Exchequer waiting for something to turn up and with Premiers struggling with difficulties and striving to be jolly under the circumstances. Of course ib would have been well for Dickenß' fame had he ceased to write when he began to read in public. * Like milestones on the Dover road,' the comical characters mark a melancholy and steady decline from the Flora and Mrs General of ' Libble Dorrib' bo the

PUMBLECHOOKS AND PIPS. Yeb we not only like his lasb books from grateful associations, but for bhe fun thab ia sbill on bap, though the quality has sadly deteriorated. There is matter for mirth in the first chapters of ' Great Expectations,' nor is bhe old goub-ridden purser in the last volume by any means bad. Even the Podsnaps and Twemlows of * Our Mutual Friend ' have bheir meribs. . Dickens was a genuine humourisb, bub ib is curious bo remark thab apparenbly he kepb all his good things for his novels. There i 9

Forced Fun

enough in the hasty notes to his friends preserved by Mr Forater, yet hardly a fancy was funny enough to impress itself on our memory. Wibh one notable exception, where a raven, arriving to roplace another, administers to the little property of bhe defuncb, and proceeds to ransack bhe repositories in the back garden ; and that fancy, we believe on second thoughts, was bouched up on translation to • The Uncommercial Traveller.' — 'Blackwood's Magazine.'