The news & observer. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 1894-current, 1905-04-09
The FICTION OF DICKENS
AND THE POETRY OF SCOTT.
BY DR.. THEODORE BRYANT KlNGSBURY.

That Charles Dickens was the best
popular author in the strict sense and
that he remains the most popular au-
thor of all the English writer's of the
nineteenth century is true, | believe,
with perhaps the one exception of the
great Sir Walter Scott. A Southern
writer, following in the wake of GER
tain contemporary English critics, has
asserted that Dickens was the very
worst, the most careless of all eminent
English authors in his disregard OF
grammatical rules and the most UNI
natural of painters of character. He
wrote some time since and also damned
his plots. his style and his personages,
attempted to be drawn. The charge
was sweeping and most damning. l
cite his language:
"Dickens's plots, according to every
canon of criticism, are failures. Al
most every imperfect use of English
could be instanced from his works.
No other great writer is so careless in
style as he. His prolifcness and the
instant demands of serial publication
inhibited the advantages of polishing
and revision. At the behest of his
exuberant fancy he created comic
scenes and vivified his oddly conceived
characters, never placing them undcr
the least restraint, and the whole
miracle is in the fact that these per-
sonages live and move and have a very
real being
If all that is true then Dickens is a
tremendous humbug and failure. And
still he lives, and his best novels are
almost sure to live for centuries to
come. No other great writer has so
many editions published forty years
after his DEATH save only Scott and
Shakespeare. Recently it was an
nounced that there would soon be is
sued a new life of him by Thomas
Wright, in the face of the fact that
John Forster, his personal friend, and
others had written lives of him, Forst-
er's being the most important one,
although insufficient and unsatisfac-
tory. That Dickens is, in 1905, as
popular as he has ever been is fact
not to be gainsaid There is club
or society in London known as the
Dickens Fellowship In all parts of
the world it has $500 members The
editor of the New York Saturday Re-
view has said of this association in
honor of the great novelist:
Most persons who join the Fellow
ship write letters to the Secretary.
There are members as young as thir-
teen years, who have shed tears over
the death of Little Nell and Paul
Dombey, and a recent recruit is an
American old woman of seventy-three'
his children the monthly numbers as
they were brought to us from across
the sea; who, in her turn, has read
the same to her children and children'S
children. There are members in the
army and navy, in the dockyards, i'm
the factories. and the membership ex-
tends to all the colonies of Great Bri-
tain, from Manitoba to Australia. Mr.
MatZ says:
We are told that the first book a
traveller chooses from his knapsack,
when starting on journey, is the
Bible, the second, shakespeare. Well,
the true Dickensian would change this
and put Dickens for Shakespeare, as
take in witness: No other works have
so stirred the depths of the hca-- no
other works-except the have
so stirred the SOUL, q un-
qualified confession Oh d member of
the Fellowship: while another de-
clares, You will think it rather strong
language, but, after the Holy Scrip
lures, nothing so appeals TO me as
his writings
In this Fellowship all sorts and
conditions of men. are represented
the nobility and the artisan-the man
of wealth and the toiling, moiling
bread-winner-all unite to do honor
to the memory of their greatest intel
Iectual helper and inspirer. The Sat
urday Review says:
1.-THE significant fact about the let
ters Mr.. MatZ receives, however, is that
SO many persons all over the world,
high and low, rich and poor, (for the
nobility and the millionaires are rep
resented in the Fellowship, as we'll as
plain folks unable TO spell correctly,D
should have banded themselves to-
gether to urge the reading of Dickens
upon a new generation"
So his wretched grammar, his utter
want of literary art and training, his
very defective, abominable style, his
miserable failures as to plots. his in
ability to portray living beings, his
extreme sentimentality, all combined,
Of true), can not prevent the continu
ance of the absorbing interest of
Charles Dickens, and can not drive
from him the men of brains and Gull