DICKENS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXV, Issue 9088, 23 June 1888, Page 2 (Supplement)

DICKENS.

Yorr will often hear peoplo complain of Dickens that he could not, or at any rate did not, portray a gentleman or a lady. Of course they do not mean Nature's ladies or gentlemen —nobody ever does—but something which all mean without being able to define. Now, here is a grand law of criticism which will save all who observe it from thousands of follies and blunders : Never blame anybody for not doing what he did not make it his business to do. Never blame a blacksmith for not polishing diamonds, or a jeweller for not forging ploughshares, or a novelist who deals with one side of humanity for not treating of another. And here is another grand rule well worth remembering Never find fault with good work of one kind because it is not good work of another kind. It would bo as sensible to blame Thackeray for not giving us a Sergeant Buzfuz as Dickens for not having given us a Henry Esmonde. And as to that, if there be one piece of stupidity more stupid than all others, it is to draw comparisons between two writers so essentially incomparable as Dickens and Thackeray. Read them both—Dickens as soon as you can, Thackeray a good deal later—and be the happier and the kinder for reading both, and therefore the wiser. But , before you compare them, try to compare a look-ing-glass with the multiplication-table. The proces would not be a whit more absurd. Supposing that you arc about to read Dickens so as to get the best out of him, I must warn you of two difficulties. One arises from his method of writing from month to month, and of making each monthly part of a novel complete in itself, with its fixed proportion of comedy and sentiment, and with its own separate climax. Under such conditions the construction of a really lino plot is out of the question ; and it is unlikely that Dickens could havo constructed a fine plot under any conditions. In his earliest, and best, novels he scarcely attemped a plot except of the vaguost kind ; in his later novels he aimed moro and more at exciting interest in his story apart from his characters. And it may be said very safely that his strongest and most coherent plots are to bo found in his weakest and least satisfactory novels. If you read " Martin Chuzzlcwit," for instance, or " Great Expectations," and then tell somebody the plot, you will bo amazed to find how bald, and meagre, and improbable it all is. That is one dfficulty in reading a novel of Dickens' from cover to cover—absence of the quality which, in the art of fiction, is called " construction ;" that is to say, the method of arranging incidents and characters so that everyone of them may bo indispensablo to everyono of tho rest; of grouping and presenting them in the most soeming natural as well as most effective way ; of leading up to a single climax ; and, finally, of completely concealing how all this is done— short, of giving to a novol tho same sort of unity and harmony that we find in a well designed edifice or in a well-composed picture. The other difficulty is not so great, though it is no doubt very real to an increasingly large number of people. It is that the world of Dickens has, outwardly, so much ceased to be our world. We are becoming such a flock of sheep that the more pronounced characters ot Dickens seem to us much more caricature-like than they really are. Quilp, of course, is mere caricature, and so are the Pickwickians, at least at their first introduction. But before tho great steamroller of the Victorian age levelled us all down, strongly " humorous" characters, quite as humorous as those of Dickens, were a feature of English life, instead of surviving as relics in out-of-the-way corners here and there. Then, again, social manners and customs wero different. The distinction between a novel of Dickens and a novel of to-day is just the same as that between a stage coach and a Pullman car. Manners were rougher, more sociable, and less common place, and they allowed moro margin for professional peculiarity and personal oddity. Think of the world of change that lies between Sarah Gamp or Betsy Prig and a nursing sister ! It has been said that Dickens already begins to need a commentary and glossary for readers of to-day. No doubt many of his phrases arc as obsolete as Eatanswill election, or imprisonment for debt, or Dotheboys Hall. But the difficulty really amounts at last to no more than this—that we need just a little more imagination for the enjoyment of Dickens' novels than those who enjoyed them month by month, as they first appeared. Granting this, we speedily find ourselves living in his times—and it is wonderful how like our own they become when their outer crust is once broken through.— Francillon, In Atlanta.