THE GENIUS OF DICKENS.
WHILE all English-speaking peoples to whom the tele- graph has as yet carried the sad news of the death of Dickens are realizing for the first time how vast a fund of enjoy- ment they owe to him, and how much happier thau their fathers they have been iu living in the time when Dickens gave a new province to English literature and new resources to English speech, it is the natural time to ask ourselves how we should all be mourning if, with the final vanishing of his figure from amongst us, it were inevitable for the innumerable crowd of Dickens's whimsical creations to be totally obliterated from our minds. Let any man seriously number the acquaintances the continued right of personal intercourse with whom he would buy at the cost of renouncing for ever the acquaintance of Dickens's best creations, and he will soon become conscious of the greatness of the sacrifice which would be required of him. How many of our friends should we not give up before letting loose our hold on Mrs. Nickleby and the old gentleman who tossed vegetable 'narrows over her garden wall? How many of our servants would receive warning before we consented to discharge "the Marchioness" from our memory, and forfeited for ever our vested right in Sam Weller and Job Trotter? How many schoolmasters would retain their schools if parents had to choose between their closing their doors and the final breaking-up of Dr. Blimber's and his successor in their minds ? Where is the caller whose cards we would not consent never to see again, rather than lose the picture of the pack Mr. Toots used to leave "for Mr. Donibey," "for Mrs. Dombey," "for Miss Dombey " ? Would not Loudon sacrifice fifty real boarding-houses without a sigh, rather than lose its " Todgers'e " ? And where is the popular preacher, however large his tabernacle, whom England would not surrender with resigna- tion rather than surrender the memory,—fragrant of much rarer and more delightful odours than pine-apple rum-and-water,—of the immortal Shepherd? Which of our thieves and housebreakers should we not be inclined to pardon by acclamation rather than. sentence either Charley Bates or the Dodger to intellectual transportation for life ? Would not even America,—libelled America,—part with many an eminent candidate for the next Presidency rather than lose its Pogram, or its Hominy, or its Jefferson Brick? How long we might go on with such a list of alternatives we dare not even try to calculate, but we are certain that we are speaking well within the mark when we say that there are at least a hundred of Dickens's figures in every reading Eng- lishman's mind, no one of whom would he consent to lose to keep, the acquaintance of one half of the living men whom be would speak to with friendly greeting if he met them in the streets. And if you add to the definite loss of typical forms, the even greater indefinite loss in the sense of humour which these crea- tions have stimulated, or even generated, in otherwise dull-minded, matter-of-fact Britons, the debt of ever-accumulating mental wealth which we owe to the works of the great man who has just left us becomes immeasurable.
What was the secret,—if it be possible in any brief way to describe the secret,—of a genius so rich to overflowing in the crea- tion of English types of humour ? Mainly it was, we think, due to
three great literary gifts combined,—a sense of humour as delicate as Charles Lamb's, and much more inventive and active, which was at the basis of Dickens's genius, and by which he sorted his con- ceptions; a power of observation so enormous that he could photo- graph almost everything he saw ; and, perhaps partly as the result of these two powers in combination, but partly, it may be, of some others, a marvellous faculty of multiplying at will, and yet with an infinity of minute variety, new illustrations of any trait, the type of which he had once well mastered. Indeed, just as the great mystery of physiology is said to be how a single living cell multi- plies itself into a tissue composed of an indefinite number of similar cells, so the great intellectual mystery of Dickens's fertile genius was his power of reduplicating a single humorous conception of -character into an elaborate structure of strictly analogous concep- tions. His greatest successes have always been gained on types of some complexity, such as that smart, impudent, cockney, be it serving boy, or serving man, or adventurer, which is the basis of such characters as Bailey Junior's, Sam Weller's, Jingle's, and several others,—and his greatest failures have been made on attempts to convert individual peculiarities, like Mr. Jaggers's habit of biting his thumb, or Mr. Carker's of showing his teeth, into the key-note of a character. But take which of his books you will, from the first to the one of which the publication had only just reached its third number at his death, and you will find the same secret of success and failure,—the former, the secret of success, inexhaustible power of illustrating an adequately-con- ceived physical type of character, such as Mrs. Gamp, or Mr. Pecksniff, or Mr. Squeers, or either of the Wellers, or Mr. Winkle, or the Marchioness, or Miss Miggs, or Mr. Toots, or Mrs. Pipchin, or Noah Claypole, or Bradley Headstone, or Mr. Venus,—the latter, the secret of failure, a monotonous repetition of some trait too individual to admit of any adequate variety, and which con- sequently becomes the mere incarnation of a bodily habit or trick, such as the Fat Boy, and Joe Willett, and the brothers Cheeryble, and Cousin Feenix, and Mr. Jaggers, and "the Analytical Chemist," and a number of others. But whether a success or a failure, Mr. Dickens's characters are invariably struc- tures raised by his humour on a single physical aspect. Sam Weller is always the smart or impudent cockney serving-man,- everything he says corresponds exactly with Mr. Dickens's first description of him as the sharp boots in the Borough inn, with a loose, red, neck-handkerchief round his neck, and an old white hat stuck awry on his head ; Mrs. Gamp is always the snuffy old monthly nurse ; the Marchioness always the keen-witted, stunted, child-servant ; Mr. Pecksniff always the candid hypocrite looking over a high wall of collar ; and so on with all his characters. There is not, as far as we remember, a single successful character in all Dickens's works of which you could conceive more than one aspect. Mr. Swiveller is always roysteriug, good-natured, and senti- mental; Mr. Toots always nervous, good-natured, and idiotic ; Dr. Blimber always pompous, patronizing, and sehoolmasterish ; Miss Miggs always spiteful, vain, and cunning ; Mr. Silas Wegg always sly, calculating, and quoting sentimental ballads ; Mr. Venus always low-spirited, weak-eyed, and anatomical ; and so forth. The great and unfailing wonder is how any novel- writer who gives so absolutely identical a tone to all the characters he conceives, manages to make them so full to overflowing of fresh vitality and infinite humour. No one ever gets tired of Dick Swiveller, or Bailey Junior, or Mr. Pecksniff, or Mrs. Gamp, or old Mr. \Yeller, or Fanny Squeers, or Mr. Lillyvick, or Sawyer late Knoekemorf, or Barnaby Budge and his raven, or Simon Tappertit, or even of Jenny Wren. And it is marvellous that it should be so, for all these are always precisely consistent with the first glimpse we get of them ; and with any genius less rich in variations on the same air than Dickens's we should be sick of them in no time.
But then no writer ever had the power which Dickens had of developing the same fundamental conception in so infinitely humor- ous a variety of form. Hunt through all Mrs. G-amp's monthly- nurse disquisition, and you will never find there a repetition,— excepting always in those great landmarks of the conception, the vast selfishness and self-admiration, the permanent desire to have the bottle left on "the chimley piece" for use "when so dispoged," and the mutual confidence between her and her mythical friend Mrs. Harris. With these necessary exceptions there is not one single repetition of a speech or a maxim. The central cell, as we may call it, of the character has multiplied itself a thousandfold without a single echo of an old idea. The marvel of Dickens is the exquisite ease, perfect physical consistency, and yet wonderful variety of raths by which he always makes his characters glide back
j into their leading trait. His greater characters are perfect labyrinths of novel autobiographical experience, all leading back to the same central cell. Mrs. Gamp, for instance, is barely intro- duced before she introduces also to the reader her great and original contrivance for praising herself and intimating decently to all the world the various stipulations on which alone she agrees to "sick or monthly,"—that intimate friend whose sayings cannot be verified by direct reference to herself, because she is in reality only the reflex form of No. 1,—Mrs. Harris. " ' Mrs. Gamp," says this imaginary lady, as reported by Mrs. Gamp herself, "'if ever there was a sober creetur to be got at eighteenpence a day for working people and three-and-six for gentlefolks,—nightwatching,' said Mrs. Gamp, with emphasis, ' being a extra charge,—you are that inwalable person." Mrs. Harris,' I says to her, 'don't name the charge, for if I could afford to lay all my feller creeturs out for nothink, I would gladly do it, sech is the love I bears 'em." But this, we need hardly say, is a great humourist's creation on a hint from human life, and not human life itself. Any actual Mrs. C-amp no doubt might have invented sayings for actual friends of her own, but would never have indulged in the intellectual audacity of reproducing herself as her own beat friend, and investing her with another name and a great variety of imaginary babies. And so, too, it is the great humorist, and not Mrs. Gamp, who answers so generously for her willingness "to lay all my fellow-creeturs out for nothink, sech is the love I bears 'em." Note, too, the inexhaustible humour with which Dickens makes her slide back with the utmost naturalness and quite involuntarily into the provision for her own wants and the recollection of her own history, when she is appar- ently consulting for the comfort of others. She is making tea for Mrs. Jonas Chuzzlewit :—" 'And quite a family it is to make tea for,' said Mrs. Gamp, 'and wot a happiness to do it! My good young woman,' to the servant-girl, ' p'raps somebody would like to try a new-laid egg or two not biled too hard. Likeways a few rounds of buttered toast, first cuttin' off the crust, in consequence of tender teeth, which Gamp himself, Mrs. Chuzzlewit, at one blow, being in liquor, struck out four, two single and two double, as was took by Mrs. Harris for a keepsake, and is carried in her pocket at the present hour, along with two cramp bones, a bit of ginger, and a grater, like a blessed infant's shoe, in tin, with a little heel to put the nutmeg in, as many times I've seen and said and used for candle when required within the month." The infinite number of avenues by which Mr. Dickens makes Mrs. Gamp, as Hegel would say, return into herself, and the absolutely inexhaustible number of physical illustrations all of the monthly-nurse kind by which she effects it, are the key-notes to his genius. Watch him with Mr. Pecksniff, or Bailey Junior, or old Weller the coachman,—a perfectly typical instance is his wonderful account of his second wife's death, "paying the last pike at a quarter- past six," and of the condign punishment administered to Mr. Stiggins,—or watch him with Mr. Venus, or Mr. Honeythunder, or where you will, you always note the same method, a central type out of which his mind creates all sorts of conceivable, and, to any one but himself, inconceivable, but always consistent, varieties, each and all of them full of the minutest knowledge of life, and therefore never wearying the reader. His power is like that of a moral kaleidoscope, all the various fragments of colour being supplied by actual experience, so that when you turn and turn it and get ever new combinations, you never seem to get away from actual life, but always to be concerned with the most common-place of common-place realities. All the while, however, you are really running the changes on a single conception, but with so vast a power of illustration from the minutest experience, that you are deceived into thinking that you are dealingwith a real being. Of course, no man ever really pretended to be so scrupulously candid as Mr. Pecksniff when he complained, "I have been struck this day with a walking-stick, which I have every reason to believe has knobs on it, on that delicate and exquisite portion of the human anatomy, the brain ;" nor was there ever any one so per- sistently desirous of finding disagreeable circumstances under which it would be a credit to be jolly, as Mark Tapley. This is the idealism of the author, idealism only disguised by the infinite resource of common physical detail with which he illustrates it. How little of a realist Dickens actually was in his creations of character, may be seen whenever he attempts to deal with an ordinary man or woman, like Nicholas or Kate Nicicleby, or again David Copper- field, who is to us quite as little real as Nicholas Nickleby, even though intended, as has always been said, for the author himself. Mortimer Lightwood and Eugene Wrayburn, in "Our Mutual Friend," are deplorable failures, and the worthy minor Canon in "The Mystery of Elwin Drood " promised to be so too. The infinite multiplication of detailed illustrations of a single humor- ous type has always been Mr. Dickens's real secret of power. A realist as regards human nature, he never was at all.
But it will be asked where, then, is the secret of Dickens's pathos, such pathos as that with which he describes little Paul Dombey's death, or Nancy's murder. Can that really come under such a rationale of his genius as we have given ? In the first place, we do not believe that Dickens's pathos is by any means his strong side. He spoils his best touches by his heavy hand in harping on them. Even in the death of little Paul, a great deal too much is made of a very natural touch in itself,—the child's languid interest in the return of the golden ripple to the wall at sunset, and his fancy that he was floating with the river to the sea. Dickens is so obviously -delighted with himself for this picturesque piece of sentiment, that lie quite fondles his own conception. He used to give it even more -of the same effect of high-strung sentimental melodrama, in reading or reciting it, than the written story itself contains. We well re- -member the mode in which he used to read, "The golden ripple on the wall came back again, and nothing else stirred in the room. 'The old, old fashion ! The fashion that came in with our first ,garments and will last unchanged till our race has run its course, .and the wide firmament is rolled up like a scroll. The old, old 'fashion—Death! Oh, thank God, all who see it, for that older 'fashion yet of Immortality ! And look upon us, angels of -young children, with regards not quite estranged when the swift =river bears us to the ocean." It was precisely the pathos of the Adelphi Theatre, and made the most painful impression of pathos :feasting on itself. We more than doubt, then, whether Dickens -can be called a great master of pathos at all. There is no true -lyrical, no poetic touch, about his pathos ; it is, in the main, the -overstrained pathos of melodrama. And that precisely agrees with -our estimate of what he was greatest in. He could always abstract any single trait of human life, and collect round it all sorts of natural physical details. Just so, he describes the pity excited by little Paul's --death, and frames his death-bed, as it were, in those gradual changes -from light to shade, and shade to light, which take up so much -of the perceptive power of a dying child. Of course, however, in -all Dickens's attempts to describe, he describes with the intensity of „genius. No one can fail to feel horror at the description of Sikes's 'feelings as he wanders about with his dog after the murder -of Nancy. In the delineation of remorse he is, too, much -nearer the truth of nature than in the delineation of grief. True grief needs the most delicate hand to delineate truly. A touch too much, and you perceive an affectation, and, 'therefore, miss the whole effect of bereavement. But remorse when it is genuine is one of the simplest of passions, and the most difficult to overpaint. Dickens, with his singular power -of lavishing himself on one mood, has given some vivid pic- 'tures of this passion which deserve to live. Still this is the ex- -ception which proves the rule. He can delineate remorse for -murder because there is so little limit to the feeling, so little -danger of passing from the true to the falsetto tone. In general there is no delicate painting of emotion in Dickens. His love- passages are simply detestable. By far his greatest success, here, is the mixture of profound love with worship which poor Smike feels ;from afar for the sister of his friend, because in that picture a certain .amount of restraint was imposed on the somewhat vulgar tender- ness in which his heroes and heroines otherwise delight. But this 'failure to depict any of the subtler emotions, in their purest dorm, like his failure to depict a single real character as dis- 'finguished from his impersonation of a certain abstract type, -surely confirms the impression that it is as a humourist, and as a -humourist alone, that Dickens will be immortal. He drew one -or two real moods of feeling with singular intensity, but fell into -melodrama where delicacy of discrimination was requisite ; but 'he could always aocumulate round a single abstract type the .most wonderful wealth of humorous illustration in the utmost -detail, and it is his figures of this kind which will live for ever, .not as men, but as impersonations. Moliere's Tartuffe is poor -and thin compared with Dickens's Peckaniff.
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