rather a scaly appearance. But mermaids are fond of looking at themselves in the glass, which she can't be. they have a habit of combing their hair,

which she hasn't."*

And

Next to his wit and humor, the leading quality of Mr. Dickens's mind is undoubtedly his imagination. We should expect it to be so in a successful writer of fiction. But it is one thing to possess this power, and it is quite another thing to be possessed by it. And, with much submission to Mr. Ruskin, imagination is not exactly the most truth-telling faculty of the human mind even for the purposes of art. It sometimes misleads. It sometimes overpowers by its own brilliancy. Oftenest it destroys the effect of a whole by the prominence which it gives to subsidiary parts. Those in whose hands it produces the most striking ef fects use it as Prospero used Ariel. This is not at all the practice of Mr. Dickens. He abandons himself unreservedly to the guidance of fancy, and makes a point of giving complete liberty to his Spirit at the very commencement of its task. That this is owing in part to the great relative strength of his imagination we do not at all doubt; but it is chiefly due to the absence of controlling power. Throughout his writings there is no sense of government or of restraint. We miss altogether that nice sense of relation and fitness, artistic judgment, tact, taste, the faculty, by whatever name it may be called, which should sit, like Eolus, to temper and calm the spirits who are wildly struggling for expression in him, and by the aid of which

Et premere, et laxas sciret dare jussus

habenas."

aware of the circumstance; nor did he seem to know that there was muffin on his knee. And how have they used you down stairs, sir?' asked the hostess.

666

6

"Their conduct has been such, my dear madam,' said Mr. Pecksniff, as I can never think of without emotion, or remember without a tear. Oh! Mrs. Todgers!'

"My goodness!' exclaimed that lady. 'How low you are in your spirits, sir.' Pecksniff, shedding tears, and speaking with "I am a man, my dear madam,' said Mr. Pecksniff, shedding tears, and speaking with father. My feelings will not consent to be an imperfect articulation, but I am also a smothered like the young children in the Tower. They are grown up, and the more I press the bolster on them, the more they look round the corner of it.'

"He suddenly became conscious of the bit of muffin, and stared at it intently, shaking

his head the while in a forlorn and imbecile manner, as if he regarded it as his evil genius, and mildly reproached it." *

The humor of this illustration is not

marred by any feeling of incongruity, for Mr. Pecksniff has been sitting over his wine, and it is natural that his ideas should not flow with severely logical precision. So, in the case of the gentleman who remarks that "there is a poetry in wildness, and every alligator bask ing in the slime is himself an epic selfcontained we are not offended by that, because it is said by an American. But when the thing illustrated is not separated or separable from other things, but stands to them in the relation of part to whole, its description must be kept strictly within the limits of likelihood, or the exaggeration will become evident by comparison with that which lies around and about it. In a series of disconnected sketches we can bear with much improbability. Perhaps it was some feeling of this which led Mr. Dickens to start the idea of publishing his novels in monthly parts. It certainly suits his style. Pickwick is not even in structure a story, and many of its most admired scenes would scarcely be supported were they not seen to be fragments. But when he writes for the purpose of carrying out an idea, we have a right to expect some harmony and proportion. There are two parallel passages in Mr. Dickens's works which are very much in point, and which we shall quote, quite as much for the sake

*Martin Chuzzlewit, vol. i. pp. 15, 78.

of the passages themselves, which are admirable, as of the example. The first occurs in the Old Curiosity Shop. Nell, in the course of her wandering, has taken office under Mrs. Jarley, the owner of a travelling show of waxwork, and she is sent by that lady to solicit the patronage of Miss Monflathers, who keeps a school for young ladies :

"You're the wax-work child, are you not?' said Miss Monflathers.

"Yes, ma'am,' replied Nell, coloring deeply, for the young ladies had collected about her, and she was the centre on which all eyes were fixed.

"And don't you think you must be a very wicked little child,' said Miss Monflathers, who was of rather uncertain temper, and lost no opportunity of impressing moral truths upon the tender minds of the young ladies, to be a wax-work child at all?'

"Poor Nell had never viewed her position in this light, and not knowing what to say, remained silent, blushing more deeply than before.

"Don't you know,' said Miss Monflathers, 'that it's very naughty and unfeminine, and a perversion of the properties wisely and benignantly transmitted to us, with expansive powers to be roused from their dormant state through the medium of cultivation ?'

The two teachers murmured their respectful approval of this home thrust, and looked at Nell as though they would have said that there indeed Miss Monflathers had hit her very hard.

"Don't you feel how naughty it is of you,' resumed Miss Monflathers, to be a waxwork child, when you might have the proud consciousness of assisting, to the extent of your infant powers, the manufactures of your country; of improving your mind by the constant contemplation of the steam-engine, and of earning a comfortable and independent subsistence of from two- and - ninepence to three shillings a week? Don't you know that the harder you work the happier you

are?'"*

The second is from the first two chap

ters of Hard Times:

"Now what I want is, Facts. Teach these children nothing but facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else. You can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon facts; nothing else will be of any service to them. This is the principle on which I bring up my own children, and this is the principle on

* Old Curiosity Shop, vol. i. pp. 245, 6.

which I bring up these children. Stick to Facts, sir.' The speaker and the schoolmaster and the third grown person present all backed a little, and swept with their eyes there arranged in order, ready to have impethe inclined plane of little vessels then and rial gallons of facts poured into them until they were full to the brim.

"Girl number twenty,' said Mr. Gradgrind, squarely pointing with his square finger. 'I don't know that girl. Who is that girl?'

666

'Sissy Jupe, sir,' exclaimed No. 20, blushing, standing up, and curtseying.

66 6

'Sissy is not a name,' said Mr. Gradgrind. 'Don't call yourself Sissy. Call yourself Cecilia.'

"It's father as calls me Sissy, sir,' returned the young girl in a trembling voice. "Then he has no business to do it,' said Mr. Gradgrind. 'Tell him he mustn't, Cecilia Jupe. Let me see. What is your father?"

"He belongs to the horse-riding, if you please, sir.' Mr. Gradgrind frowned and waved off the, objectionable calling with his hand.

666

"We don't want to know anything about that here. You mustn't tell us about that here. Your father breaks horses, don't he?' "When they can get any to break they do break horses in the ring, sir.' "Very well then. Describe your father as a horse-breaker. He doctors sick horses, I dare say?'

"Oh yes, sir.'

"Very well then. He is a veterinary surgeon, a farrier and horsebreaker. Give me your definition of a horse.'

"(Sissy Jupe thrown into the greatest alarm by this demand.)

"Girl No. 20 unable to define a horse!' said Mr. Gradgrind for the general behoof of all the little pitchers. 'Girl No. 20 possessed of no facts in reference to one of the commonest of animals. Some boy's definition of a horse. Bitzer, yours.'

Quadruped. Graminivorous. Forty teeth, namely, twenty-four grinders, four eye teeth, and twelve incisive. Sheds coat in spring; in marshy countries sheds hoofs also. Hoofs hard, but requiring to be shod with iron. Age known by marks in mouth.' Thus (and much more) Bitzer.

'Now girl No. 20,' said Mr. Gradgrind, you know what a horse is.'

"The third gentleman now stepped forth. A mighty man at cutting and drying, he was; a government officer; in his way (and in most other people's too) a professed pugilist; always in training; always with a system to force down the general throat, like a bolus; always to be heard of at the bar of his little public office, ready to fight all England. He

had a genius for coming up to the scratch, wherever and whatever it was, and proving himself an ugly customer. He was certain to knock the wind out of common-sense, and render that unlucky adversary deaf to the call of time. And he had it in charge from high authority to bring about the great public office millennium when commissioners should reign on earth.

"Very well,' said this gentleman briskly, smiling and folding his arms. 'That's a horse. Now let me ask you, girls and boys, would you paper a room with representations of horses?'

"After a pause, one half the children cried in chorus, Yes, sir.' Upon which the other half, seeing in the gentleman's face that 'Yes' was wrong, cried out in chorus 'No, sir'-as the custom is in these examinations.

"Of course, no. Why wouldn't you?' 66 'A pause. One corpulent slow boy, with a wheezy manner of breathing, ventured the answer-Because he wouldn't paper a room at all, but would paint it.

"You must paper it,' said the gentleman rather warmly.

"You must paper it,' said Thomas Gradgrind, 'whether you like it or not. Don't tell us you wouldn't paper it. What do you mean, boy?'

"I'll explain to you, then,' said the gentleman, after another and a dismal pause, 'why you wouldn't paper a room with representations of horses. Do you ever see horses walking up and down the sides of rooms in reality-in fact? Do you?'

"Yes, sir,' from one half, 'No, sir,' from the other.

"Of course, No,' said the gentleman, with an indignant look at the wrong half. Why, then, you are not to see anywhere what you don't see in fact; you are not to have any where what you don't have in fact. What is called taste is only another name for fact.' "Thomas Gradgrind nodded his approba

tion.

"This is a new principle, a discovery, a great discovery,' said the gentleman. Now, I'll try you again. Suppose you were going to carpet a room. Would you use a carpet having a representation of flowers upon it?'

"There being a general conviction by this time that 'No, sir,' was always the right answer to this gentleman, the chorus of No was very strong. Only a few feeble stragglers said Yes; among them Sissy Jupe.

"Girl No. 20,' said the gentleman, smiling in the calm strength of knowledge. Sissy blushed and stood up.

"So you would carpet your room with representations of flowers, would you?' said the gentleman. Why would you?' "If you please, sir, I am very fond of flowers,' returned the girl.

"And that is why you would put tables and chairs upon them, and have people walking over them with heavy boots?'

666

It wouldn't hurt them, sir. They would be the pictures of what was very pretty and pleasant, and I would fancy

666

Ay, ay, ay! but you mustn't fancy!' cried the gentleman, quite elated by her coming so happily to his point. That's it. You are never to fancy.'

"You are not, Cecilia Jupe,' Thomas Gradgrind solemnly repeated, 'to do anything of the kind.'

"You are to be in all things regulated and governed,' said the gentleman, by fact. We hope to have before long a board of fact, composed of commissioners of fact, who will force the people to be a people of fact, and of nothing but fact. You must discard the word fancy altogether. You have nothing to do with it. You are not to have in any ob|ject of use or ornament what would be a contradiction in fact. You don't walk upon flowers in fact, and you cannot be allowed to walk upon flowers in carpets. You don't find that foreign birds and butterflies come and perch upon your crockery; you cannot be permitted to paint foreign birds and butterflies upon your crockery. You never meet with quadrupeds going up and down walls; you must not have quadrupeds represented upon walls. You must use,' said the gentleman, for all these purposes, combinations and modifications (in primary colors) of mathematical figures which are susceptible of proof and demonstration. This is the new discovery. This is fact. This is taste.'"

This passage is in Mr. Dickens's best manner, and is undoubtedly very clever and entertaining. It is not at all true; although, as a mere question of probability, the speech of the school inspector is much more in place than Miss Monflathers' tirade. But an attentive reader would be very differently influenced by the two scenes; he would be more struck with the exaggeration of the latter than with that of the former. Granting an imaginative treatment, there is no particular reason why Miss Monflathers should not talk nonsense and misrepresent the teaching of a certain school, for the simple reason that her remarks are wholly unconnected with the purpose of the story into which they are dovetailed. But Hard Times professes to be a treatise on education, and it is essential that the system to which, in its moral, it supplies the antidote, should be impartially set out. If Mr. Dickens's fancy had not run away with

It is the tendency of an active imagination to mistake thoughts for objects. The ideas which it presents are clothed with so much circumstance, and have such a real existence within the mind, that it seems superfluous to inquire whether they do or do not correspond with anything without it. This confusion is very observable in Mr. Dickens, but nowhere more than in his mode of describing Nature. His language takes us quite back to the old poetic days of Dryads and rivergods:

"The intelligible forms of ancient poets, The fair humanities of old religion, The power, the beauty, and the majesty That had their haunt in dale or piny mountain,

Or forest by slow stream, or pebbly brook," live again in his pages: the trees, the leaves, and the streams of his pictures are endowed with a distinct personality; they act, think, and suffer; and it is in the description of the imaginary relations which subsist between themin the transference to them of the writer's own thoughts and emotions, that his landscape painting essentially consists. Its aim is not so much to delineate the scene of action, as to excite in the reader a state of mind in harmony with the action itself. For example:

"It was pretty late in the autumn of the year when the declining sun, struggling through the mists which had obscured it all day, looked brightly down upon a little Wiltshire village, within an easy journey of the fair old town of Salisbury. Like a sudden flash of memory or spirit kindling up the mind of an old man, it shed a glory on the scene in which its youth and freshness seemed to live again. The wet grass sparkled in the light; the scanty patches of verdure in the hedgeswhere a few green twigs yet stood together bravely, resisting to the last the tyranny of nipping winds and early frosts took heart and brightened up; the stream, which had been dull and sullen all day, broke out into a cheerful smile; the birds began to chirp and twitter on the naked boughs, as though the hopeful creatures half believed that winter had gone by, and that spring had come already. The vane upon the tapering spire of the old church glistened from its lofty station in sympathy with the general gladness, and NEW SERIES-VOL. I., No. 1.

Sir Walter Scott would have given us a map of the country, with the heights and bearings of all the mountains; we get from Mr. Dickens a rhapsody on the beauty of the scene, with a few disjointed sketches of some of the principal objects. But these sketches are elaborate and minute often to a fault. Almost immediately following the passage just quoted, is a description of a churchtower. Not one of the infinite variety of shades and tints. the form of no single stone, has escaped the watchful eye of the artist. He concentrates his whole attention on it; he sees each the minutest detail, and for the moment he sees nothing else. The style is exactly that of Mr. Hunt. The leaders of the pre-Raphaelite school are, like Mr. Dickens, men of great imaginative power, and with a fine instinct. They protest against the conventionalism of art, as he protests against the conventionalism of society, with the same view of showing that beauty and worth are universal, and may be found everywhere, if only we have eyes to see them. But though all things may be beautiful, all things are not equally so, and their grades and relations have been somewhat lost sight of. The realism of certain artists recoils with horror from the loose, suggestive way in which fore-grounds are often treated; so the daisies and dandelions, and the ears of corn and blades of grass, are painted with as much care as if each were a separate centre of interest, the focus of a distinct picture. And the result is, that we get a gallery of photographs, but no landscape.

Just so with Mr. Dickens. His genesis of character, like his description of Nature, is exactly what might be expected in a writer of his peculiar endowments. It is imaginative, brilliant, effective; but it is altogether wanting in analytical depth, and has, at least, an air of half truth about it. He rarely shows us any of the more delicate springs of action. There is too much consistency for life, and too much violent contrast for art. The gradations, the shading, the second

ary lights are wanting. It always reminds one of Martin's pictures, in which the world is tumbling about in the presence of a mixed assembly of demons and angels. He paints his scenes minutely. He conceives his characters strongly. But he works at them as if each, like the alligator, were itself an epic self-contained. They stare at you out of his canvas with an oppressive individuality like the generals in the picture of the Waterloo banquet. But there is neither harmony of conception nor unity of design.

In Martin Chuzzlewit, for example, the writer's design was, we are told, to exhibit selfishness in various forms, and to trace out its consequences. To this end several very selfish people are described: Martin Chuzzlewit the elder and Martin Chuzzlewit the younger; Antony Chuzzlewit and his son Jonas. The incidents are carefully arranged, so as to give the vice in question plenty of room in which to display itself. Each of the leading personages is set off by a contrast; old Martin is attended by his niece Mary, young Martin by Mark Tapley, Antony Chuzzlewit by Chuffey, and Jonas is relieved by his wife. We need not stay to inquire how far the novelist has succeeded in doing what was proposed, for we can scarcely imagine anything more certain to give a distorted view of life and character than the fact of his success. The most selfish men are not all selfish. Even when they are inclined to be so, events are constantly compelling them to act with reference to others. Here we have a number of self-seeking people brought together with exceptional means of studying their own ease and, convenience, and with a self-denying friend always at hand to bring out their idiosyncrasies as strongly as possible. On the whole Martin Chuzzlewit, considered as treatise on moral philosophy, rather overshoots its mark. Mr. Dickens makes in it exactly the same mistake as was committed by Major Pawkins. He gives an unnecessary stimulus to his own vigor.*

a

* "We are an elastic country," said the Rowdy Journal.

We are a young lion," said Mr. Jefferson Brick.

"We have revivifying and vigorous principles

The principle of describing men under the influence of a leading habit or passion is carried out into the subordinate traits of character. Some very ordinary and superficial peculiarity is seized and kept constantly before us. At one time it is the repetition of a phrase; at another, it is some trick of manner or of gesture. No one objects to the fat boy going to sleep, to Barkis being willing, to Traddle drawing skeletons, to Carker showing his teeth, to Mark Tapley being jolly, to Dick Swiveller quoting scraps of songs occasionally. occasionally. But we are treated to this as if for the most part we were capable of nothing but inexplicable dumb show and noise. On the stage the artifice is common and allowable; the novelist, however, has opportunities of developing character which are denied to the playwright. The impression left by this posture-making is, that the men and women we meet are acting their parts, and not acting them particularly well either. To represent Daniel Quilp eating hard-boiled eggs, shells and all, drinking boiling spirits and tea without winking, and biting his spoon and fork till they bend, is mere burlesque.

The want of analytical power with which we are disposed to charge Mr. Dickens is in certain directions compensated by his extraordinary delicacy of observation.

Outward peculiarities the details of manner, speech, and appearance, are at best but an imperfect index of character. But they are always worth something, and there are cases in which they tell us all that we care about, or indeed, are able to know.* The moral and intellectual peculiarities. of animals, for example, are sufficiently

within ourselves," observed the Major. "Shall we drink a bitter afore dinner, Colonel?" sight into Doctor Blimber's character than the *Pages of analysis would not give us more infollowing short description of his manner of walking: "The doctor's walk was stately, and calculated to impress the juvenile mind with solemn feelings. It was a sort of march. But when the doctor put out his right foot, he gravely turned upon his axis with a semicircular sweep towards the left; and when he put out his left foot, he turned in the same manner towards the right. So that he seemed, at every stride he took, to look about him as though he were saying, 'Can anybody have the goodness to indicate any subject, in any direction, on which I am uninformed? I rather think not.'"-Dombey and Son, vol. i. p. 160.