Tbe g)pertator, gnptentber 24t1j, 1853
DICKENS'S BLEAK HOUSE*
"I BELIEVE I have never had so many readers," says Mr. Dickens in the preface to Bleak House, "as in this book." We have no doubt that he has the pleasantest evidence of the truth of this conviction in the balance-sheet of his publishing-actount; and without any more accurate knowledge of the statistics of his circulation than the indica- tions furnished by limited personal observation, we should not be surprised to find that Punch and the Times newspaper were his only rivals in this respect. Whatever such a fact may not prove, it does prove incontestably that Mr. Dickens has a greater power of amusing the book-buying public of England than any other living writer; and moreover establishes, what we should scarcely have thought probable, that his power of amusing is not weakened now that the novelty oi his style has passed away, nor his public wearied by the repetition of effects in which truth of nature and sobriety of thought are largely sacrificed to mannerism and point.... Many of his portraits excite pity, and suggest the existence of crying social sins; but of almost all we are obliged to say that they border on and frequently reach caricature, of which the essence is to catch a striking likeness by exclusively selecting and exaggerating a peculiarity that marks the man but does not represent him.
* Bleak House. By Charles Dickens. Published by Bradbury and Evans.
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