COMIC PICKWICKIANS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIV, Issue 19744, 17 September 1927, Page 7 (Supplement)

COMIC PICKWICKIANS.

the great adventure.

Concluding an article on "Pickwick in the Empire Review, Mr. G. K. Chesterton says:—"Nothing is more English nor more characteristic in the 'Pickwick' enic than the fact that the band of comrades are comic in their incongruity. They differ and do not quarrel; or they quarrel and do not part. There is an assumption and atmosphere of absurd toleration spread over the whole story, so that we never expect ridicule to be anything except ridiculous. Mr. Pickwick calls Mr. Winkle an impostor; but lie does not seem object to impostors. He denounces his followers for trifling with feminine feelings, tmd then only laughs when the denunciation is turned against himself " There runs through the whole story an implication that the absurd company will go through with its absurd adventure. and that implication has been tacit in many companies of English There must have been many groups of Englishmen m camps and colonial holes au<f corners consisting of men who got on with each other somehow, though each was regarded lightly enough as an individual. They were comic characters, if not to themselves, at least to each other. And, even in isolation, any one of them who had with him—as he often ] !at j— a tattered volume of " Pickwick,' must, have felt that lie carried his country in his pocket-"