The Sun.
London, England, 1856-02-07 00:00:00

IL

PERIODICALS.

Little Dorrit. No. 111. By Charles Dickens.
Better and better. Charles Dickens is surpass-
ing himself in " Little Dorrit." The new number
for February is a masterpiece. Among its profu-
sion of merits it is difficult to particularise even
the most remarkable. From the exquisite delinea-
tion of the heroine in chapter nine, to the demo-
niacal portraiture of Rigaud in the eleventh, it is
all wonderful. The intermediate chapter—the
tenth—being, of all three, the most wonderful.
Wonderful as a humorous satire upon the whole
system of our muddled Constitution and muddling
Government. The Circumlocution Office isa thing
to be remembered. The Barnacles, especially the
Tite Barnacles, are personages we believe not very
easily to be forgotten. They are types of a class—
the limpits of the body politic—creatures dimly
hinted by the Greys, the Elliotts, and the Rus-
sells. Old men-of-the-sea sticking to the shoul-
ders of the Siubad of the nations—like Tite (very
tight) Barnacles. Here is Boz's sketch of Tite
Barnacle, senior :
" Mr. Barnacle dated from a better time, when the
country was not so parsimonious, and the Circumlocution
Office was not so badgered. He wound and wound folds
of white cravat round his neck as ho wound folds of
tape and paper round the neck of the country. His
wristbands and collar were oppressive, his voice and
manner were oppressive. He had a large watch-chain and
bunch of seals, a coat buttoned up to inconvenience, a
waistcoat buttoned no to inconvenience, an unwrinkled
pair of trousers, a stiff pair of boots. He was altogether
splendid, massive, overpowering, and impracticable. He
seemed to have been sitting for his portrait to Sir Thomas
Lawrence all the days of his life."

How possibly, however, are we to give his inimi-
tably delightful pencilling of Tite Barnacle, junior,
without transferring bodily page after page into our
columns from this glorious third number ? Here
is the first forshadowing of his entity in the few
first preliminary touches :
" The present Barnacle, holding Mr. Clennam's card in
his hand, had a youthful aspect, and the fluffiest little
whisker, perhaps, that ever was seen. Such a downy tip
on his callow chin, that he seemed half fledged like a young
bird ; and a compusionate observer might have urged, that if
he had not singed the calves of his legs, he would have died
of cold. lie had a superior eye-glass dangling round his
neck, but unfortunately had such flat orbits to his eyes,
and such limp little eyelids, that it wouldn't stick in when
ho put it up, but kept tumbling out against his waistcoat
buttons with a click that discomposed him very much."

Besides these, there is yet. another sketch of
a perfectly different specimen of these same
übiquitous Barnacles—in the person of the
airy young Barnacle, the • engaging young
Barnacle, the bright young Barnacle, the light-
in-hand young Barnacle, the touch-and-go
young Barnacle, ready for any little bit of
fat that came to hand"—a " dashing young Bar-
nacle ; in a word, likely to become a statesman and
make a figure." Then there are the celebrated
Stiltstalkings—" better endowed in a sangnineous
point of view than with real or personal property"
—intermarried with the Barnacles. Jumbled up
with whom, in our recollections of the Circumle-
eution-office, are—Mr. Wobbler, paper-knife in
hand, and his mouth full of bread and marmalade ;
Jenkinson, the outraged messenger, roused from
his consumption of mashed potatoes and gravy be-
hind the partition ; the gentleman polishing his
gun-barrel on his handkerchief, and a number of
other worthies, including number one, number
two, and number three each of them astonishingly
characteristic. Mr. Lindsay, the shipowner, not
having forgotten his own " Peter Dick," we pre-
sume, will be the first to appreciate their marvel-
lous truthfulness to the originals. So let us com-
mend every master-touch in this extraordinary
"Chapter X., Containing the whole Science of
Government," to the attention of everybody, right
and loft, here, there, and everywhere. It is sug-
gestive, we take it, almost of a Revolution, so
painfully does it reveal the whole bungling idiotcy
of our present system of administration. A system
conducted, as Mr. Dickens reminds us, upon the
great principle of How Not To Do It ! Hear him !
Every word has the seed of an inestimable truth
in it. Every sentence has its golden value. The
story told in this one remarkable chapter
of "Little Dorrit" has its universal applica-
tion—its manifold significance, beyond the
reach of anything like exaggeration ! Beginning
with its general outline of the Circumlocution Office
with its finger at once "in the largest public pie
and the smallest public tart"—and ending with the
particular commemoration of the infamy of Daniel
Doyce the Inventor, the innocent rascal in whose
uncomplaining patience, good, honest, warm-hearted
Mr. Meagles discovers such extraordinary aggrava-
tion ! Apart from what is actually presented to us
in this new nuntSer of "Little Dorrit" for Feb-
ruary, we cannot but discern through it, by a sort
of presentiment, one or two wonderful creations to
be summoned into existence a little later on by the
genius of our great novelist—foremost among which
we have a foretaste of something (in two senses of
the term) " out of the common " in one Plornish the
Plasterer of Bleeling Heart Yard, already seen in
a sort of glimpse, but as yet to be formally intro-
duced. It were idle, however, merely to anticipate
the good things in store for us in "Little Dorrit"
when we have actually so much in hand that is
literally, we do believe, in many respects quite
matchless and unapproachable. For instance—
Maggy ! A wonderful creation ! Granddaughter
to old Mrs. Baugham deceased. Tutored by the
application of " broom handles and pokers. A
great awk ward clumsy being of eight-and-twenty—
imagining herself to be no more than ten—and,
tenderly, reverently, loving poor, tiny, Dorrit as
" Little Mother." Here is her portrait as touched
in with a few magic pen-and-ink strokes by the
hand of the greatest of all living delineators of
character :
She was about eight-and-twenty, with large bones,
largo features, large feet and hands, largo eyes, and no
heir. Her large eyes were limpid and almost colourless ;
they seemed to be very little affected by light, and to stand
unnaturally still. There was also that attentive lis-
tening expression in her face, which is aeon in the faces
of the blind; but she was not blind, having one toler-
ably serviceable eye. Her face was not exceedingly ugly,
though it was only redeemed from being so by a smile ;
a good-humoured smile, and pleasant in itself, but ren-
dered pitiable by being constantly there. A great white
cap, with a quantity of opaque frilling that was always
flapping about, apologised for Maggy's baldness; and made
it so very difficult for her old black bonnet to retain its
place upon her head, that it held on round her neck like a
gipsey's baby. A commission of haberdashers could alone
have repotted what the rest of her poor dress was made of ;
but it had a strong general resemblance to sea-weed, with
here and there a gigantic tea-leaf. Her shawl looked par-
ticularly like a tea-leaf, after long infusion."
O the exquisite beauty and gentleness shadowed
out of the relationship in which Little Mother and
poor, bald, goggle-eyed, demented, draggled Maggy
stand in regard to each other ! No wonder there
are glimmerings of a strange love growing up in
the heart of middle-aged Arthur Clennam for Little
Dorrit, humble needlewoman though she is, child
though she seems, niece though she be of Dirty
Dick, sister of vagabond Tip, daughter of the de-
graded, white-haired, Father of the Marshalsea.
Another extract we must give froth' this same mar-
vellous number of "Little Dorrit." It is the de-
scription given by Mr. Dickens of the messengers,
go-betweens, and errand-bearers of the Marshal-
_ _

" The shabbiness of those attendants upon shabbiness,
the poverty of these insolvent waiters upon insolvency,
was a sight to see. Such threadbare coats and trousers,
such fusty gowns and shawls, such squashed hats and bon-
nets, such boots and shoes, such umbrellas and walking-
sticks, never were seen in Rag Fair. All of thorn wore the
cast-off clothes of otker men and women ; were inadoup
of patches and pieces of ether people's individuality,
and had no sartorial existence of their own proper.
Their walk was the walk of a race apart. They had
a peculiar way of doggedly slinking round the cor-
ner, as if they were eternally going to the pawnbrokers.
When they coughed, they coughed like people acetic-'
toned to be forgotten on door-steps and in draughty
passages, waiting for answers to letters in faded ink, which
gave the recipients of those manuscripts great mental dis-
turbance, and no satisfaction. As they eyed the stranger
iu passing, they eyed him with borrowing eyes—hungry,
sharp, speculative as to his softness if they were accredited
to him, and the likelihood of his standing something hand-
some. Mendicity on commission stooped in their high
shoulders, shambled in their insteady legs, buttoned and
pinned, and darned and dragged their clothes, frayed their
button-holes, leaked out of their figures in dirty little ends
of tape, and issued from their mouths in alcoholic breath-
ings."

Scattered all through the number, too, there are
little casual " touches" that the pen of Charles
Dickens alone could have produced. As where
Mr. Cripples's pupils, having allowed Arthur
Clennain and Little Dorrit to pass by while they are
gazing at them in open-mouthed silence, celebrate
their getting away to a safe distance by " bursting
into pebbles and yells, and likewise into reviling,
dances," Ice. As where Arthur,Olennam having
arrived at the house in which Frederick Dorrit
lodges, finds the door-post "as full of bell-
handles as a cathedral organ is of stops," and
thereupon stands dubious as to which might be
" the clarionet stop. ' As where the old orchestral
player lingers over his pinches of snuff, as over
everything else, " feebly, sparely, and slowly,"
and yet " with a certain little trickling enjoyment
of them playing in the poor worn nerves about the
corners of his eyes and mouth." The great Ob-
server of the Are shines out, moreover, in little
casual allusions, not by any meals to be passed by
as insignificant—as in reference to the "suppleness
of thumb" noticeable in Daniel Doyce, in his trick
of " tilting up his hat at the back every now and
then, as if he were contemplating some half-finiahed
work of his hand, and thinking about it," or again
in " that under tone" in his way of speaking, indi-
cative of the mechanic accustomed to " consider
and adjust with great nicety." Then Barnacle
Junior's " Oh, 1 say. Look here !" and his anxiety
(seeing Clennam's brown face) to know whether
"it's anything about Tonnage ;" and his sticking
his glass in his right eye " in that inflam.
• niatory way that the eye began watorin dread.

fully ;" and his "evidently going blind on his
eye-glass side, but being ashamed to make any
further alteration iu his painful arrangements ;
and his " I say. Look here. You stick to us in a
devil of a manner ;" and his semi-paralytic "Upon
my soul you mustn't come into the place saying
you want to know, you know ;" and his staring at
the intruder "until his eye-glass fell out, and his
putting it in and staring at him until it fell out
again !" What shall we say of all this, but that as
we read it we lay the number down, every now and
then, and fairly have our roar of laughter out, until
compelled at last, like Scrooge's nephew, to get up
and stamp ! The thing is altogether delicious.
Charles Dickens only could have written it—and
remembering that we accept it from his hand all
the more gratefully. As we do even that hobgoblin
of a last chapter in which Rigaud, the diabolical, is
" Let Loose" to the dismay of the good folk of
Chalons, and the particular horror of poor John
Baptist Cavaletto.

L ITER AT UR E.

CHARLES MACKA.Y'S NEW POEMS.

The Lump of Gold ; and other Poems. By Chas.
Mackay. Routledgo and Co.

A cordial welcome is due to any new volume of
poetry from the hand of Dr. Charles Mackay. Not,
however, as he himself (judging from his title-page)
appears to imagine, by reason of his being the
author of "Egeria," or the celebrant of " The Le-
gends of the Isles," or the bard of " The Salaman-
drine." Rather than this, let us say at once,
almost in a manner despite his authorship of those
longer poems, and, be it added, because of such
minor effusions as " The Voices from the Crowd,"
and " The Voices from the Mountains" his
humble lyrics of the heart—national songs and
English melodies. For the sake of these, and
neither for his " Egeria," nor his "Salamandrine,"
do we accord an eager greeting—a greeting of
genuine and unaffected satisfaction at its appear-
ance—to a new book of verse from the pen of Dr.
Mackay. Because we' recognise in him a song-
writer whose voice is always' pitched in the most
natural key in the world, never quavering off into
an affected roulade or an incorrigible falsetto. A.
voice sweet and dulcet—with the tears in it some-
times—but evergenial, and manly,and out-breathed.
Dr. Mackay, moreover, be it confessed, frankly
and without further delay—we are grateful to, for
inasmuch as he allows his meaning to be perfectly
comprehensible. He understands, as by a sort of
instinct of good taste, that politeness te a reader
which induces a writer, whether of verse or ofphi-
losophy, to be lucid—according to the happy dic-
tum of Arago. A matter of some moment, it must
be admitted, in this age of mystical spasmodics,
when rhymed stanzas are twisted into all imagin-
able and unimaginable convolutions, until one is
fain to cry aloud in anguish with honest Hotspur—
I had rather be a kitten, and cry—mew,
Than one of these same metre ballad-mongers.
I had rather hear a brazen candlestick turn'd,
Or a dry wheel grate on the axle-tree;
And that would nothing set my teeth on edge,
Nothing so much as mincing poetry.
Dr. Mackay, at least, in the midst of all the din of
the jarring mysticism in which our poets-of-the
day are so tumultuously involved, to the torment-
ing of our ears, and the bewilderment of our un-
derstandings, is al ways at once melodious and
comprehensible. Besides which he is never mawkish
--but, on the contrary, his tenderness is everdistin-
guished by the characteristics of a masculine sensi-
bility. As such—namely, as musical, as pathetic,
as comprehensible—his poetry is very welcome to
us : particularly when it comes to us in the simple
forms of the lyric and the ballad. And of these
his now somewhat numerous volumes afford us
hardly less of a variety than the pack of the delec-
table knave Autolycus—" He hath songs for man
and woman, of all sizes ; no milliner can so fit his
customers with gloves ; he has the prettiest love
songs for maids, with such delicate burdens of dil-
dos and fadings," et cetera ! Do we not all re-
member them, " thundered," if not " to the tune
of Green Sleeves," to some no less popular melody,
from the tuneful fancy of Henry Bishop or of
Henry Russell ? Many and many of them scattered
broadcast over the laud by this time, "familiar
in our mouths as Household Words," and dear to
our hearts as the tones of old friends ♦ibrating
tenderly upon the inner chords of our remem-
brance. It were idle to particularise among fa-
vourites so freshly and immediately in the general
recollection. For the sake of these dearly-appre-
ciated favourites, for his own sake as the author of
them, we greet Charles Mackay, on the instant of
his coming before us with his Lew volume in his
hand, right heartily as with a veritable benison.
As he himself has sung—

" Give me your hand--you shall, you must !
1 love you as a brother."
A brother to us all he has become, long since, with
that large heart, and that warm grasp, and those
kindly human eyes of his. Viewed dispassionately,
" The Lump of Gold," is little else than another
manifestation of the genial nature for which Dr.
Mackay has long been remarkable. It is a new
ebullition ef almost all his nobler qualities as a lover
of his kind, as a poet-reformer, as e. literary philan-
thropist. In its root idea, he has followed the
axioinati,!, advice of the sage—xafpow yvwoi—he has
seized his opportunity. That opportunity, a theme
of universal interest, the lust of gold at once in
the new world, and at our antipodes. The plot is
readily enough indicated—springing as it does from
Edward Aubrey's going in quest of wealth in Aus-
tralia. Having discovered a monstrous lump of
gold, somewhere in the neighbourhood of the fa-
mous diggings of Ballarat—
"A fiendish lump ef gold"—

the hearing about the mere dimensions of which is
enough to make the mouth of a Croasus water, to
warm into new life the ashes of an Elwes, and
to curdle with sympathy into a sort of auriferous
slag the glittering sands in the honor, of old Pac•
tolus !

" The .',old was long, and broad, and thick,
flee statue of a man 1"
A monstrosity of wealth—immovable ! Aubrey is
in despair lest any one else should discover it.
Listen to the sequel—the turning point of the ,
whole narrative—as it is described by the author
himself. Premising, before we give the quotation, ,
that Heseltine is the bosom-friend of Aubrey, the
gold-hunting hero of Ballarat. Aubrey is
hanging over his treasure one day, when he is thus
startled :
There burst on the air a scornful laugh,
And a hand was laid on mine;
I started hack as from a snake,
And saw 'twas Heseltine.
" So greedy, Aubrey ! may, be just,
The treasure's mine and thine ;
I've watched thee in thy moody walks,
And seen thy ramble ends :
Too much for oue, enough for two,
We'll share it, and be friends."
" Friend of a robber who dogs my path !"
I answered him in scorn ;
I uttered words that stung his pride,
Too bitter to be borne.
Taunt followed taunt—he drove me mad—
He struck me on the face;
And quick as thought—but thoughtless all,
Except of the disgrace--
I raised the mallet in my hiand,
And fella him on the place.
Hormr stricken at the imagined murder of his
companion, Aubrey flies from the accursed
laud, and returns across the ocean home-
wards—remorsefully, gloomily, despairingly. And
here follows what we conceive to be the finest of
all the imaginings in the whole of this imaginative
poem of "The Lump of Gold." "The fiendish
lump of gold" takes life to itself, as it were, out of
the horror of the fancied murderer. Telling the
tale himself, he ones :
A sudden frenzy raised my hair—
I knew not what I did ;
But I thought the golden fiend arose
Frain the ground where it lay hid,
And chased me with convulsive steps
Over the land and sea,
Eitting beside rae when I slept.,
Eating its bread with me ;
Mocking me with its yawning eyes,
Raising its yellow hand,
And driving, driving, driving me on,
Over the see and land.
Adding, as by an awful illustration of the phan-

tom :
A hideous likeness of myself,
A torture to behold ;
Part was throbbing flesh and blood,
Part was senseless gold.
It stood between me and the sun—
It fouled the healthy air—
I looked to heaven, to fly its face,
And lo ! the fiend was there.
I looked to earth, and at its feet
I saw a yawning pit;
It grinned and pointed with its hand,
And said " Thy bones will fit."
Pursued by this golden shadow of the monster
in " Frankenstein," Aubrey returns to the little
Surrey village of Micklethorpe, to have the ghost
of his despair laid by the hand of Parson Vale,
whose daughter Lilian has been all the while Ed-
ward's wife, when Heseltine, to the delight of the man
who imagines himself to have been his assassin,
returns in perfect health and frank forgiveness
from the mammon-growing tracks of Australia.
So all ends happily—fieseltine, bent at the close
of the poem upon returning to Australia, to seize,
on behalf of himself and his friend Aubrey, upon
the buried " Lump of Gold," the lump having
been literally buried by him, very ingeniously, prior
to his departure from Ballarat, under a grave-dike
hillock, surmounted with this epitaph :
" Here lies a sinner—trouble not his bones."
Such is Charles Mackay's now poem of " The
Lump of Gold"—a poem the principal charm of
W4ich igi: cliwoveratie is tho gentl9 lidiains