The Sun.
London, England, 1861-07-18 00:00:00

BY CHARLES DICKENS.

Although the countless readers of All the Year
Bound are still, of course, trembling, as it were
upon the very brink of the completion of this new
story by the Greatest of all our English Humourists,
we cannot any longer resist the inclination that has
of late been urging us almost irresistibly, at length
quite irresistibly, to offer at once to Mr. Dickens and
to this last of his productions that simple but earnest
tribute—born of our appreciation—which we have
all along felt to be its due. Nearly seven months
have now elapsed since this tale of " Great Expec-
tations" was originally- commenced. In another
fortnight the narrative will, as a serial, have been
brought to its conclusion. Beginning on Saturday,
the Ist of last December, and ending on Saturday,
the 3d of August, it will have taken six and thirty
weeks—with not one single week's intermission—
in gradually making its appearance, in slowly win-
ning its way into our hearts, as a periodical publi-
cation. Already, of these thirty-six instalments,
the subscribers to All the Year RoUnd have, at this
moment as many as thirty-four in their possession !
So that while the concluding chapters of the work
have, by the mass of its weekly readers, yet, it is
true, to be waited for as patiently as may be, it can
hardly be said that we are acting in any respect
prematurely or precipitately in thus expressing our
opinion of " Great Expectations" as a whole—before
the actual revelation in its periodical issue of the com-
plete denouement. More particularly—seeing that
the work in its complete form has within the last few
days been duly published in three goodly volumes
by the Messrs. Chapman and Hall, of Piccadilly.
While reading this remarkable fiction thiough—
first rapidly and afterwards with critical deliberation
—for we must acknowledge to have read it through
twice already, first of all week by week as it ap-
peared, and more recently the whole three books
consecutively—we have been more than ever im-
pressed with the fact, a fact that we take to be
wholly and absolutely indisputable that Mr.
Dickens has yet to begin what is called in regard
to an Author " writing himself out." If, indeed, he
can ever begin it, while he is yet capable of holding a
pen—and long long years to come may his loved and
honoured hand still weild for us that potent sceptre
of fascination ! It is to our thinking, it has long
been to our thinking, conspicuous among the many
distinguished peculiarities of Charles Dickens as a
Novelist, that no two works of his have aught about
them, either in their character or in their treatment,
like a :direct relationship. Whenever we open a
fresh story of his, we seem to be in a new atmosphere
altogether. Could anything in this way be more
strikingly apparent than the dissimilarity observ-
able—if we turn for a moment to Mr. Dickens's
minor effusions—between the earliest and the latest
of his collected essays or sketches of a miscel-
laneous kind, published separately, paper by
paper in the periodicals, between his Sketches
by Bo: and his Uncommercial Traveller? Again,
among his larger and more elaborated works of
imagination—could any two productions be more
entirely unlike each other in every possible par-
ticular, in every conceivable point of view than
Pickwick and David Copperfteld? And yet both of.
these at the same time so truly admirable as humo-
rous masterpieces ! Remember, moreover, those two
stories of his that, when originally published, ap-
peared in a manner as though linked together—hose
Siamese Twins of literature extracted hem that
wonderful drawer in "Master Humphreys Clock"
—The Old Curiosity Shop and—a take as unlike its
immediate predecessor and comperaion as novelist's
hand could well have pennerl_Barnaby Budge !
Could any two works we ask, be more unlike each
other—could any two fictions be more diametrie•
tally the reverse of each other than those two
delightful and exquisitely original narratives ?
It is not simply, thus moreover, because the Age
depicted in each is divided from the other by an
interval of more than half a century—or, because
while in the latter we are living (among the
imaginary creatures introduced) in the year, eighty,
of the eighteenth century, in the former we are in
the midst of a later generation (among our own con-
temporaries) in one of the, forties of the nineteenth.
It is not merely because those imaginary creatures
here alluded to are so startling in what may be
termed their generic dissimilarity. Here—that most
delectable of jolterpates, dear stupid old Sohn
Willett, with that dainty old beau, Mr, Chester,
and charming Dolly Varden, and ridiculous Sins
Tappertit, and preposterous Miggs, and the Raven
Grip, and the Maypole tavern, and the No Popery
riots of Lord George Gordon ending, in old London
streets, with a wild religious chaos of bloodshed
and conflagrations! There—Little Nell, dear angel
there—in Nell
tears
overvwivh
iotdsh whose deathndteraatsh t
tfeo
oneht
haav
ofte
baoel
ulwroi
Otf
cwuh
udsgehacerrde
onesartie
oa
nl:
—Quilp, the little demon Quilp,and despicable dirty
cringing Sampson Brass, and good honest chuckle-
headed Kit, and pretty sly little Barbara, and.
Whisker the pony, and the Nubbleses, and the
Garlands, and the Whackleses, and delightfallest of
all the droll beings ever conjured up by the whim-
sical brain of Boz irresistible, delectable, inimitable
Dick Swiveller ! It is not simply that the fictitious
personages introduced upon the scene in each of the
two storiea thus intimately associated with each
other when first published are so wholly dissimilar.
It is that the whole manner, tone, and style in which
the two works are written are so entirely diarent.
It were easy enough, it is certainly to ourselves
sufficiently tempting, but that space Tould here be
wanting, to enforce our argument by illustrations
drawn from the contrast that might be brought to
light upon a comparison, the one with the other, of
all the various writings of Charles Dickens not
already particularized placing side by side
now Nicholas Nickleby and Oliver twist--now
Dombey and Son, and. the C'hristmas Carol—now
Bard limes and Martin Chuzzlewit! Directing
attention even to—what few have probably ever
twofron books o
Italyoks of! travelsA
yet remarked—the startling diversity at once in.
regard to manner and matter observable in our
E
author's Pictures
—nzeriean Notes and.
Enough however,
brief reminder
hasrat
rather
been here remarkedit should be said than in any laboured enforcement
of the truth that Dickens has yet to begin " writing
himself out," has yet to evidence that impoverish-
ment of the imaginative faculty which betrays the
exhaustion of many and many a writer's fancy by—
es the phrase runs—" repeating himself." No more
conspicuous evidence of this need be adduced than
by the merest casual reference, here in conclusion,
to the extraordinary dissimilarity noticeable be-
tween the two latest emanations from the imagina-
tion of our Great Novelist. No two stories, we are
bold to aver, could, by any possibility, be in more
striking contrast with each other. Insomuch that
but for the inimitable genius discernable through
each, they might have proceeded from two distinct
intellects. In the immediate predecessor to the
new fiction now brought to its conclu-
sion, Mr. Dickens had given to the world proof
positive of his hitherto but partially recognised
capacity to contrive a plot at once of the most
subtle continuity, and yet, at the same time, of the
most intricate elaboration. As a fictitious narra-
tive, appearing in the world of literature with these
pretentious, the Tale of Two Cities stands forth,
among the happiest efforts ever adventured upon
in this one particular direction, as an all but per-
fect masterpiece. The cohesion of the whole scheme
of the narrative, the homogeniousness of its materials
throughout, cannot but be regarded, even by the
most exacting and supercilious, with the -very
liveliest admiration, But one artistic flaw, of any
appreciable magnitude, is there to be detected in it,
indeed, according to our view of the whole work,
as a work of art. And a flaw that is unquestion_
ably, it must be allowed, very greivous in itself as
a violation of all the rules of art as applied to any
production of this ambitious character in the higher
•
ng to—which
• *-
walks of imaginative literature. It is that incon-
gruous incident—we are here alluding
archetypefarge wife of the nine-
seller
of
mars the crowning glory and beauty of this terrible
and pathetic romance, The Tale of Two Cities
where one of the chief tragic characters in the stovy,
the appalling
tricoteuses of the Revolution, not only dies at last
Antoine, Madame
De
by sheer accident, but
stehlele formidable isdaaibnite
, worst of all, by a ludicrous
accident—an accident at the hands of one of the
comic characters in the story, namely, of that
ludicrous red woman,2onnet "like a
Grenadier' with a ys wooden measure (and good measure too)
or a great Stilton Cheese," las Press. Flawed
however, marred however, thus though that won-
derful story
is--a story that were, otherwise, but as
" one entire and pe ftr ec chrysolite"—how exquisitely
aro we compensated for this exceptional blemish,
by the abounding,
and many of them, matchless
merits of the whole production ! How the charac-
ters there introduced come crowding back upon our
recollection—some of them so delightfully and
whimsically, others so tenderly and so bewitch-
ingly ! The white headed old Shoemaker, Doctor
Marlette, Prisoner of the Bastille, brooding over
his work and his lost love—" 0, my wife, beloved
of my heart ! My fair young English wife . " His
daughter Lucie, the golden haired, seated in a
chequer-work of light and shade under the plane
tree, he the garden of that quaint old quiet corner of
'
Soho, listening, in the midst of the dear home
sound of the
group, to the echoing footsteps coming
and going, and making _
them out to be (a true poet's
thought !) the echoes of all the footsteps coming by
and by into their aes. Noblest, tenderest, loveliest