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

of all these affecting creations—noblest, tenderest,
loveliest of them all, in the truest and loftiest sense
—poor Sydney Carton, the ruined genius with the
gentle heart, he who perishes, at the close of the
narrative, so sublimely for his friend, and for his
foregoee love, by the inexorable blade of the guil-
lotine. Remembering that tearful and awful ter-
mination to the tragic melo-drama of the Tale of
Two Cities—that mysterious interview in the dun-
geon, during the perusal of which we ever seem to
have ringing in our ears the wonderful
ghost music in the " Corsican Brothers "
that procession of the tumbrils to the place
of execution, with the poor little seamstress clasp-
10g,, his gentle and heroic hand—that ascent of the
plood-red scaffold of the guillotine, and that first,
last kiss at the supreme moment before execution—
/nay we not reverently recall to mind the force of
the Holy Words— Vix eninz pro justo quis rnoritur :
"la pro bona forsitan quis audeat mori ? " For
Scarce for a just man will one die; yet, perhaps, for
I good man some oee would dare to die." A sub-
limity; of self-sacrificing affection, realised here in
Love exquisite imagining, in the name at once of
eeeve and Friendship.
As widely separated, however, as are the com-
mon every-day life Of the humbler classes among
the haunts of our peaceful English peasantry from
the stupendous horrors of that Earthly Pande-
monium which was opened up to view now fully
seventy
years ago in the blood-drenched streets of
Paris—are these two last productions of the
rare and, strictly speaking, poetic (d sroace), that
is creative, genius of Charles Dickens—? he ?ale of
,
to° Cities and GREAT EXPECTATIONS. Obeying a
happy inspiration, Mr. Dickens has in this, his
latest fiction, thrown his imagination entirely into
that region, that division or section of our common
humanity, in the delineation of which he stands
supreme and altogether unrivalled. English life in
the very lowest ranks—that life which is realised
'0 us as vividly by his pen of genius as though the
creatures which that pen depicts (never, for one
instant, with the most fugitive touch, or even idea, of
v
"u'igaritY) were actual flesh-and-blood existences,
Persons we not only knew as if they were living men
and women, but whom we seemed to know thus
quite intimately and familiarly, How lowly
the regions are in which the plot of this story is cast
mto ay be appreciated at once, by every one who comes
the work freshly, in the very opening chapter of
4.7eirt Expectations. That initial chapter strikes
'Jae keynote more profoundly than the reader at the
first moment suspects. It not only strikes the key-
note of the harmonious and discordant concert that
follows, but it sounds the whole compass of the in-
strument literally from the- treble to the diapason
from little Pip to the mysterious and long name-
less Convict, out of whose blended fortunes, or we
Might equally well say, misfortunes, rises (like a
certain nether palace that shall not here be men-
tioned) the whole fairy fabric of Great Expectations.
It is among the foremost of the shining excellencies
of Mr. Dickens as a delineator of humankind that
he can ever draw with a loving hand things the
purest and the holiest from sources the lowliest and
apparently in every way the least propitious for
the working of these miracles of the diviner
alchemy. Instead of casting pearls to swine, he
Can, 40 to speak, detect the living pearls of
truth and virtue, lying hitherto perdu, in the mire
of the stye and the swill of the trough. In every-
tette by the wayside, he has an eye for the blos-
som. The keenest sighted, bright-eyed lapidary—
As can ever recognise, at a glance, the " precious
Jewel" upon the head of the Toad of Poverty—yea,
-„.4130n "the very head and front of its offending!"
His aim throughout seems, as it were, instinctively
10 have been to reverse that vaunted ambition of
Crabbe, the poet of the villagers—
" To show the great, those mightier sons of pride,
How near in vice the lowest are allied."
Charles Dickens aspiring rather to show, more
vividly than any one had ever even attempted to
show,,, before, how near akin they are in virtue.
"ever closing his labours with Crabbe's almost
Cynical reflection—
So shall the man of power and pleasure see
In his own slave as vile a wretch as he ;
In his luxuriant lord his servant find
His own low pleasures and degenerate mind;
And each in all the kindred vices trace
Of a poor blind, bewildered, erring race,
Who, a short time in varied fortune past,
Die, and are equal in the dust at last.
The large and generous heart of Dickens throbbing
ever with the profounder yearnings of a far more
genial and elevating philosophy—prompting him to
the use of his rare and delightful powers as a
novelist, not with a view thus simply to depress
and sadden, but rather to cheer and hearten, us
all on to the work ever lying before each in the
"Battle of Life" between the Now and the Here-
after. So systematically and assiduously has he
striven to advance in that one direction at once as a
great popular fictionist and as a great practical
Philanthropist, that, even through the medium of
this one graceful department of intellectual toil,
Ile has contrived as effectively as any preacher, far,
far more effectively than the vast majority of
r°eachers, to enforce—Heaven knows in no sec-
jail spirit—the two great commandments sum-
ming up within them, according to Holy Lips, the
Z.,°111 and substance of our common Christianity.
Q;etting aside as hardly to be here talked of befit-
,stnglY that " first and greatest of all the command-
er:itt se —our author's very reverence for which has
led him to the enforcement of it in his capacity as a
oiled of fiction, only itedirectly and by a sort of a
l'etied implication—who shall not say that this
'great writer has nobly done his par,t as a lover of
Is kind in the enforcement of that other " com-
mandment that is like unto the first," teaching all
!alike and classes, the most widely separated each
.larone each, to think more tenderly of one another, to
feel more lovingly and sympathizingly in regard to
griefs and troubles, to trials and temptations, that
are common to us all It is the persistency with
Which, without an effort and without a pretention
aeYond his craft, or calling, or profession as a
novelist, Mr. Dickens has pursued this onward,
'unward course among his fellow creatures, that to
Our mind, lends a dignity to labours that otherwise
to a superficial glance may appear simply in their
results delightful. We feel that while he has been
winning from us all these years so abundantly our
tears andour laughter, he has at the same time
been bettering us—or that at the very least it is no
fault of his it, under the influence of his Mirthful
and Pathetic Genius, we are not by this time in
some appreciable degree bettered. As to the plot of
this new story of " Great Expectations," as to that
gossamer thread of the narrative first of all so
-
adroitly entangled and afterwards so delicately
and cexterously disentangled—we cannot but
recall to mind the very earnest appeal addressed
to his critics by the author of the " Woman in
White" (the immediate predecessor, as the chief
attraction in All the I ear Bound, of the present
narrative of " Great Expectations")—we cannot
but recall very vividly to recollection those almost
impassioned words in which Mr. Wilkie Collins de-
precated the customary, cold-blooded synopsis or
epitome by the reviewer of the secrets so carefully
Concealed by the novelist, until such moments as he
(the novelist) himself might deem the reader's
euriosity to be ripe for their revelation, Bearing
the reasonableness of that appeal in our conside-
ration, we cannot at the same moment but remem-
ber also that the Audience addressed by Mr.
Dickens when he ascends the curule chair of his
Popularity, or to express it differently, when he
heats himself upon his Arabian mat as a Story
Teller—that the audience our author then ad-
dresses is so vast and numerous, that scarcely is any
'work, or number, or chapter of his published—when
it would be difficult for any critic to make an un-
timely revelation. Nevertheless, even with that
large circle of readers gathered around him upondt
s
the instant—that grand "magic circle" in the midst
°f which this Megician of Literature carries on his
wonderful conjurations—even beyond that imme-
diate throng, we are aware of course thatthere ar
work
lta,pea,nuysaoltohfers who always reserve
.systematically the
"`Dickens's New Work" thatuntil
t'l-!a,11 have been actually completed. Rememberinget
!1"1°8e) therefore—the uninitiated, as we mayy
t`e,L'ln them—we cannot but spontaneously allow
need there yet remains in regard to Mr.in
Didegree
"Great Expectations" for a cert
Zegree of that reticence which Mr. Collins de-
manded for his " Woman in 'White." So far, at aiy``le, we can undertake to be reserved in our remarks
„ l
:4?°11 the plot of this new story now hastening to
close, in its periodical form, now actually
!,aneluded as :a separate publication, that we
refrain at least from drawing up in
at; I‘7garel a phlegmatic summary or syllabus
it I,'‘l,e succession of incidents recounted in
'An one understands more thoroughly the con-
e, allnate art of the novelist in rendering up to the
t moment what he intends fo be hidden, alto-
Zi‘"er inscrutable, than Mr. Dickens. We know
absolutely no surprises in romance that can
'oitePeass as surprises the disclosure, for example,
t„ "te fact that Smike is the son of old Ralph, to-
:1‘;8 the end of " Nicholas Nickleby :" or,
the lightning-flash of astonishment prck-
ul,e-: „sill the mind of the reader of " Bar-
ra.-1-tudr,e,, we en—among the smouldering
c 5 of the heave- -hearted Catholic gentleman's
allntresh 'es H ce le grapples 'with the
sli nuse_,r. arc a
lemon of the story, apostrophising him as
riage, thou double murderer!" And here are
sur-
--r
here too, in their way quite as startling as any
Novelist has vet adeeetured upon, elaborately
le'relit.„ „P ring them, in the first instance, and then ah
al"'-v laying them bare for the reader's astonish.
enlhion the course of t'
thread of this new tale of his entitled " Great
Ex-
pectatio "trio win ding-up of the ravelled
Particularly—at any rate we may
the sow,
'ventu say re to this much—particularly in regardiretaot
'ce of these Great Expectations—Pp,s
ci