The national era. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1847-1860, 1857-09-03
DlCKENS'S DEFENCE OF LITTLE DORRIT,
From Dickens's Household Words.

(. The Edinburgh Reoie,o, in an article in it's
Z last number ON "The License of Modern Nov.
elisss," is angry with Mr.. Dickens and other
modern novelists for not combining themselves
to the mere amusement of their readers, and
Tor testifying in their works that they seriously
feel the interest of true Englishmen in the vel.
fare and honor Of their country. To them
should be left the making of easy occasional
books, for idle young gentlemen and ladies to
take up and lay down on sofas and window
seats to the Edinburgh Rerie,o should be re-
served the settlement of all social and political
questions, and the strangulation of all COM
planners. Mr.. Thackeray may write upon snobs,
ebut there must be none in the superior Govern
ment departments. There is no positive OBJ
lection to Mr. Reade having to do, in Platonic
|. way, with Scotch fsh-woman or 80 but he
, must by no meaus connect himself with prison
, discipline. That is the unalienable property of
official personages; and until Mr.. Reade can
show that he has so much year, paid quarter
ly, for understanding Tor not understanding
the subject it is none of his, and it is impossi.
BILE that he can be allowed to deal with it.
The name of Mr.. Dickens is at the head of
this page, and the hand of Mr.. Dickens writes
this paper. He will shelter himself under no
affectation of being any one else, in having a
few words of earnest but temperate remon.
pointing out its curious misprint. Temperate,
for the honor of literature; temperate, because
OF the good service which the Edinburoh Re.
r'e,o has rendered in it's time to good literature
and good government; temperate, in remem-
brance of the loving affection of Jeffrey, and
friendship of Sydney Smith, and the faithful
sympathy of both.
:" The License of Modern Novelists" is a ia.
king title. But it suggests another-the Lii.
cense Of Modern Reviewers. Mr.. Dickens's libel
on the wonderfully exact and vigorous English
Government, which is always ready for any
emergency, and which, as everybody knows,
has never shown itself to be at all feeble at q
pinch within the memory of man, is license in
q novelist. Will the Edinburgh RerieD forgive
Mr.. Dickens for taking the liberty to point out
what is License in Reviewer?
=" Even the catastrophe in Little Dorrit' is
evidently borrowed from the recent fall of
houses in Tottenhsm-court road, which happens
to have appeared in the newspapers at conve-
nient period"
Thus, the reviewer. The novelist begs to ask
him whether there is no license in his writing
those words, and stating that assumption as
truth, when any man accustomed to the crit
cal examination of a book cannot fail, atten.
lively turning over the pages of Little Dor
rt," to observe that that catastrophe is careful.
ly prepared for, from the very first present
alton of the old house in the story; that
when Rigaud, the man who is crushed BY the
fall of the house, first entered it, hundreds of
pages before the end,) he is beset by mysteri-
Gus fear and shuddering g that the rotten and
crazy state of the house is laboriously kept be-
fore the reader, whenever the house is shown /;
that the way to the demolition of the man and
the house together is paved all through the book
with painful minuteness and reiterated care
| of preparation, the necessity of which lin order
that the thread may be kept in the readers
mind through nearly two years) is one of the
adverse incidents of that social form of publ.
cation?
1t may be nothing to the question, that Mr..
Dickens now publicly declares, on his word and
honor, that that catastrophe was written, was
engraven on steel, was printed, had passed
through the hands of compositors, readers for
the press, and pressmen, and was in type and
in proof in the printing house of Messrs. Brad.
| bury & Evans, before the accident in Totem.
ham court road occurred. But it is much to
the question that an honorable reviewer might
have easily tracked this out in the internal ev.
idence of the book itself, before he stated, for
fact, what is utterly and entirely, in every par
ticular and respect, untrue.
| More: if the editor of the Edinburgh Reriesc
(unDenOlng from the severe OmCl8i QuCle6 OF B
blameless branch of the Circumlocution ofice)
had happened to condescend to cast his eye on
the passage, and had referred even its mechan-
ical probabilities and improbabilities to his
publishers, those experienced gentlemen must
have warned him that he was getting into dan
ger; must have told him that, on q comparison
OF dates, and with reference to the number
printed of Little Dorrit," with that very Incl.
dent illustrated, and to the date of the publica-
ton OF the completed book in a volume, they
hardly perceived how Mr.. Dickens could have
waited, with such a desperate Micawberism,
tor tall of houses in Tottenhsm- court road to
get him out of his difficulties, and yet could
have come up to time with the needf1l punctu.
ality. Does the Edinburgh Reuiep make no
charges at random? Does it live in a blue
and yellow glass-house, and yet throw such big
stones over the roof? Will the licensed review.
er apologize to the licensed novelist for his lit.
tie Circumlocution office? Will he Examine
the justice" of his own general charges" as
well as Mr.. Dickens's? Will he apply his own
words to himself, and come to the conclusion