DICKENS'S HAUNTED MAN.
WHATEVER is intended for popularity must be broad and plain. The production may be full of faults of detail, false views, and offences against taste, or even against nature; the very breadth itself may be incompletely wrought out and rather suggested than presented : with all this, a ge- neral idea plainly indicated, that hits the popular taste, and leans to the side of open-handed rather than of prudent virtue, will carry the day against technical excellencies, or beauties of parts, or justness of con- clusion.
It was such breadth and plainness which gave attraction to the serial publications of Dickens, in despite of the limited range of his subjects, the deficiency of his story and its structure, and the literalness of his composition, not always animated by a vital spirit,—for the cant and claptrap rather aided than injured his popularity. His Christmas tales have always struck us as being inferior to his pictures of daily life, and as owing their circulation to the author's name rather than to their own merits. He wanted grace, refinement, and spirituality, in his superna- tural creations ; while his allegories were clumsy, and not always clear. Still his drift was apprehensible, and the composition had the kind of matter in it which is usually found in the books of Dickens.
The present tale is deficient in both those traits. The purpose of the book is not very intelligible; the story or means by which the purpose should be attained does not reach its end either naturally or consistently with itself; no interest is felt in the story, because the reader cannot make it out; and the pieces of it (they are scarcely parts) are a mere re- petition of stock matter,—a poor family, happy while they are satisfied, uncomfortable when the members become sour and indifferent towards one another ; a young student, overtaken by illness and poverty away from home ; and one of those excellent women whose simple kindness would " make a sunshine in the shady place." The writing is perhaps better than usual—there is less of stilt and struggle about it : but it is too often artificial ; and, unluckily, the author seems altogether to have depended upon mere writing for his effects. So far as we can comprehend its aim, The Haunted Man is intended to impress the superiority of kindly feelings over abstruse knowledge, and to show that by getting rid of sensibility we destroy the comfort of others without advancing our own. Mr. Redlaw, " the haunted man," is a professor of chemistry, who is beset by a shadow of himself ; but why or wherefore, appeared' not. To get rid of this being, he accepts its offer to "forget the sorrow, wrong, and trouble "he has known, but "no knowledge, no result of study." The Ghost's gift, however, is infectious : the professor introduces trouble and dissension into the family of the poor newsvender, merely by calling to see their student- lodger; the student gets dissatisfied with his kindly and volunteer nurse, Milly, solely in consequence of Mr. Redlaw's call. William Swidger, Mil- ly's husband, becomes disrespectful to his old father on Mr. Redlaw's ap- pearance ; a profligate son, who is dying in penitence, turns obdurate when the chemist approaches his bedside. Finding the danger of his gift, Mr. Redlaw has the grace to avoid Milly ; but the only person who can resist him is a ragged, outcast, beggar boy,—intended to show that intel- lectual indifference and the hardness of brutality meet together as " ex. tremes" ; while the beggar boy is made to illustrate the blue book conclu- sions touching education, public health bills, and ragged schools.
" You speak to me of what is lying here,' the Phantom interposed, and pointed with its finger to the boy.
" I do,' returned the Chemist. You know what I would ask. Why has this child alone been proof against my influence; and why, why, have I detected in its thoughts a terrible companionship with mine?'
" said the Phantom, pointing to the boy, is the last, completest inns tration of a human creature utterly bereft of such remembrances as you have yielded up. No softening memory of sorrow, wrong, or trouble, enters here; be- cause this wretched mortal from his birth has been abandoned to a worse condi- tion than the beasts, and has within his knowledge no one contrast, no human- izing touch, to make a grain of such a memory spring up in his hardened breast. All within this desolate creature is barren wilderness. All within the man bereft of what you have resigned is the same barren wilderness. Wo to such a man! Wo, tenfold, to the nation that shall count its monsters, such as this lying here, by hundreds and by thousands!'
"Redlaw shrunk appalled from what he heard.
" There is not,' said the Phantom, one of these—not one—but sows a har- vest that mankind must reap. From every seed of evil in this boy a field of ruin is grown that shall be gathered in, and garnered up, and sown again in many places in the world, until regions are overspread with wickedness enough to raise the waters of another Deluge. Open and unpunished murder in a city's streets would be less guilty in its daily toleration than one such spectacle as this.'
" It seemed to look down upon the boy in his sleep. Redlaw too looked down upon him with a new emotion.
" There is not a father,' said the Phantom, ' by whose side in his daily or his nightly walk these creatures pass; there is not a mother among all the ranks of loving mothers in this land; there is no one risen from the state of childhood but shall be responsible in his or her degree for this enormity; there is not a country throughout the earth on which it would not bring a curse; there is no religion upon earth that it would not deny; there is no people upon earth it would not put to shame.'
" The Chemist clasped his hands, and looked with trembling fear and pity from the sleeping boy to the Phantom standing above him with its finger pointing down.
" Behold, I say,' pursued the spectre, the perfect type of what it was your choice to be. Your influence is powerless here, because from this child's bosom you can banish nothing: his thoughts have been in terrible companionship' with yours, because you have gone down to his unnatural level. He is the growth of man's indifference; you are the growth of man's presumption. The beneficent design of Heaven is in each case overthrown; and from the two poles of the im- material world you come together.'" In the end, the chemist recovers his feelings ; Milly works a happy change upon all the rest ; and the affair is wound up, as usual, with a Christmas dinner.
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