The Sun.
London, England, 1861-11-15 00:00:00

THE SUN, LONDON, FRIDAY EVENING, NOVEMBER 15, 1861.

DICKENS' LIBRARY EDITION.

himsical creations, by Aunt Betsy in
erfri/d.
Davidaut h oe s c
The Kenwio;scs an d the Crumlleses.
Miss Petowk-er and Miss Snevellicci.

Mr. Lillyvick—the Water-rate Collector.
Besides many othe rs unnecessary here to be enu-
merated.
It will be sufficien,t for our purpose, however,
if we take the merest " pick" of the world-famous
personages introduced il.l the two other remarkable
fictions already particularised. Remembering, in
MARTIN CIILIZZZ LEWIT,—•
Seth Pecksniff—the architect and arch-hypocrite.
Tom Pinch—" dear Tom ! old friend!"
Ruth—his pretty little sister.
Mark Tapley and Mrs. Lupin.
M. Todgero.-- wonder among boarding-house

keepers.
Bailey Junior—her boy in green baize, afterwards

in boots and buckskins. -
Old Chuffey and Betsy Prigg.
Montague Tigg—otherwise Tigg Montague.

Jonas-the murderer_

Mrs. Gamp —the monthly nurse. And, most wonder-
ful of all these creations—a dream within a
dream— _

Mrs. ifarris—the mythical Mrs. Harris—product
of Mrs. Gamp's own lively imagination.
Finally—let there be remembered as among the
choicest cusiosities trooping out of the OLD CURIO-
SITY SHOP—

Dick Swiveller—that match
Little Nell—dear, angel Nell.
Boz Gallery.
Sampson Brass—the attorney iless droll even in the
of Bevis Marks.
Sally—his sister—a sort of female hippogriff or
legal hermaphrodite.
Daniel Quilp—the little demon dwarf.
The Nubbleses and the Wackleses.

Kit (especially) and Barbara, sly little Barbara.
The Poney Whisker, and the Marchionees.
Short and Codlin, with their Punch's Show.
Mrs.Jarley, and her Travelling Wax-works.
Nelly'a Grandfather and the Poor Schoolmaster.
No wonder that a wizard pen that can conjure into
the semblance of reality individualities so distinct
and life-like—no wonder, we say, that a pen that
can accomplish such marvels with so much ease
should have won for its wielder an innocent and
delightful fame, as wide-spread and as secure as
that of which Charles Dickens has been now for a
quarter of a century in the happy and deserved en-
joyment.
Yet,
were,
with the vezy itera-
tion oft ftahteigaupepdl,auasseit thus
cordially lavished upon
Charles Dickens during this same quarter of a cen-
tury last past by his more grateful admirers,
the chiefs of that venerable smellfungus race
whose ancestors ostracised Aristides—whose
favourite robe, must, without doubt, be a wet
blanket, their aptest crest an extinguisher, and.
their chosen motto Nil adnzirari—the leaders and
champions of that ancient race have delighted of
late years in exulting over, what they have insisted
upon designating, the almost total extinction of all
Mr. Dickens' powers as a humorist. Triumph-
antly pointing in proof of this to one after another of
his latest fictions—more particularly to Dombey and
Son, to Bleak House, and to Little Dorrit. Yet
even here, the answer that can be at once given to
them is, in its way, we maintain, perfectly conclu-
sive. Not that the three last-mentioned novels by
Boz are without flaws—for flaws they have beyond
one moment's question, and some of these, too, flaws
of very considerable magnitude. But that it were,
in spite of those blemishes, at once ungracious and
ungrateful to the very last degree not to bear in
remembrance, for example, that to DOMBEY AND
SON we are indebted for
Captain Cuttle—" the gentleman with the instru-

ent."
Major Bagstock—l. 8., Sir; Josh; Old Joe.
Miss Tos and the Toodleses.
Susan Nipper and Mrs. Pipchin.
Mr. Dombey—the stiff-necked merchant.
Dear Little Paul Dombey.
Mr. Toots with his friends Diogenes and the Game

Chicken.
The Blimbers and the Macstingers.
That to BLEAK HOUSE we owe the existence of
Mr. Bucket—the Detective.
Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet. _

Mr. Tulkinghorn—tLe fashionable Attorney.
Mr. Guppy—the unfashionable attorney's clerk.
Mr. Snagsby—the law stationer.

Poor Jo-:--tlie Crossing-sweeper.
Mr. Chadband—the oily Dissenting preacher.
Mr. George of the Shooting Gallery.
Phil Squod—his crab-like attendant.
The Family of the Bagnets, headed by the Old
Girl.
Harold Skimpole and Mr. Boythorn.

That to LITTLE DORRIT, again, we have reason to
be thankful for—

The Patriarch and the Tug.
Flora and Mr. F's Aunt.

The Plornishes and Little Mr. Nandy.
Daniel Doyce, the Engineer.
Sparkler—the Man Mountain.
_ _

Mr. Murdle—the Millionaire.

And the whole Family of the Duras, together with
all the various inhabitants of the old vanished

•
Marshalsea.
Reverting to this noble edition, however—this last
and best of all the different editions now pro-
curable of the Collected Writings of Charles
Dickens—The Library Edition, adorned with the
" original illustrations," we have only to describe
it thus simply for 'w hat it is—to pronounce its fullest
commendation. It is a more resplendent decora-
tion than any order of merit, than any badge of
a Legion of Honour that could be accorded to a
Great Author—his witnessing the issue from the
press of precisely such an edition as this ! It seems
for all the world, like the visible imprinting of the
timbre of his popularity, during his own life-time,
upon his reputation. It is like a foretaste of the
applause of posterity. And it is precisely because
we regard it as such, in this instance of Mr.
Dickens, that we cannot but rejoice on his
account at the reprint and republication of so
really admirable an edition of his collected works.
Since the four novels already specified, viz.,
" Pickwick," " Nicholas Nickleby," " The Old
Curiosity Shop," and
" Martin Chuzzlewit" have
been completed by the issue from the press of the
eight leading volumes of this Library Edition,
Illustrated—two other volumes, it may be men-
tioned, have also made their appearance. Simul-
taneously with the magazines for November, for
example, there came into the hands of the sub-
scribers, in one goodly tome of 475 pages octavo,
those carelessly dashed-off mervels of comicality,
written by our novelist " when he was a very young
man," and originally published when he was still
" a very young man." " The Sketches by Boz"
with all the old familiar illustrations from the
pencil of George Cruikshank, Prior to this latest
reissue of " The Sketches," the introductory volume
of " Barnaby Rudge," had come into the possession
of the subscribers : to be followed probably at the
dawn of December with a second and concluding
volume like that completing "The Old Curiosity
Shop"—a volume, that is, eked out, as we have said,
by a selection of further " Reprinted Pieces," the
choicest specimens of Mr. Dickens' miscellaneous
contributions to his own periodicals. Among the
collection of these papers already presented to
us, the collection, comprising some two-thirds
of the eighth volume of this Illustrated
Library Edition of Dickens—extending, as it
does, from page 153 to page 435 inclusively—what
charming specimens of Mr. Dickens, in his very hap-
piest manner, are to be found ! For example—did
we want to demonstrate at once Mr. Dickens'
powers in the truest sense of the words, as a Poet,
how could we possible do this more conclusively
than by directing attention to his exquisite allegory
of Human Life (pp. 234-238), entitled "A Child's
Story P" Did we wish to present to view in a com-
pact form his marvellous gifts as a humorist, we
should illustrate their possession upon the instant
by an extract or two from his account of " The Beg-
ging Letter Writer." " Our French Watering
Place" again would afford the opportunity for more
than one delightful example of Mr. Dickens' genius
as a humorist—especially in the genial delineation of
M. Loyal's character. A delineation,in the course of
which, by the way, there is a casual misapprehen-
sion (it is in the middle of p. 193) of an expression
employed by M. Loyal—meaning, in reality, a re-
ligious rite or ceremonial, here mistaken inciden-
tally for a mere phrase of idiomatic facetiousness.
As a sort of counter-blast to Mr. Catlin's enthusiasm,
the essay entitled " The Noble Savage," an argu-
ment, flashing throughout with irony, will be found
by those who know it not already, something admi-
rable in its way. " Has ho ever improved
a dog," asks our essayist, speaking of the
noble savage, "or attached a dog since his nobility
first ran wild in woods and was brought down (at
a very long shot) by Pope ?"—meaning by the way,
Dryden : the famous line hinted at, occurring in
the first scene of the first act of "Glorious loin's"
Conquest of Granada—
" Ere the base laws of servitude began
When wild in woods the noble savage ran!'
Does anyone yet want an instant illustration of the
perfectly wonderful power possessed by the genius
of this incomparable writer of ours, the perfectly

wonderful power possessed by Charles Dickens of
extracting the exquisitely pathetic and the exqui-
sitely beautiful from haunts the foulest, the mean-
est, the most squalid that can be anyw her e recognised ?
We satisfy this wish at once, very simply and very
conclusively. How P By extracting this one brief
but marvellously touching and lovely passage from
the paper headed "A Walk in a Workhouse."

THE NURSE OF THE ITCH WARD !
"In a room opening from a squalid yard, where a
number of listless women were lounging to and fro,
trying to get warm in the ineffectual sunshine of
the tardy May morning—in the Itch Ward,' not
to compromise the truth—a woman such as Hogarth
has often drawn, was hurriedly getting on her
gown before a dusty fire. She was the nurse, or
wardswoman of that insalubrious department—
hex self a pauper—flabby, rawboned, untidy—un-
promising and worn of aspect as need be. But on
being spoken to about the patients whom she had
in charge, she turned round, with her shabby gown
half on, half off, and fell a-crying with all her
might. Not for show, not querulously, not in
any mawkish sentiment, but in the deep
grief and affliction of her heart; turning
away her dishevelled head, sobbing most bitterly,
wringing her hands and letting fall abundance of
great tears, that choked her utterance. What was
the matter with the nurse of the Itch Ward? Oh,
the dropped child was dead! Oh, the child that
was found in the street, and she had brought up
ever since, had died an hour ago, and see where the
little creature lay, beneath this cloth ! The dear,
the pretty dear !
" The dropped child seemed too small, and poor a
thing for Death to be in earnest with, but Death
had taken it; and already its diminutive form was
neatly washed, composed, and stretched as if in
sleep upon a box. I thought I heard a voice from
Heaven saying, It shall be well for thee, 0 nurse of
the itch ward, when some less gentle pauper does
those offices to thy cold form, that such as the
dropped child are the angels who behold my
Father's face I"

Enough, It is a perfect Master of our
Tears no less than of our Laughter that we
hail in Charles Dickens—the creator of Old Weller
and Little Nell, of Paul Dombey and Dick
Swiveller! It is as the very beat of all the col-
lective editions of the works of a Humorist
whose genius is of this ample range, that we ac-
cord a welcome thus earnest to this latest reprint
of the writings of Boz.