ABSTRACT
In a lengthy discussion of Dickens (‘Modern Novels’, December 1842), the Christian Remembrancer, a High Church and Tory journal, had objected to his religion (‘for the most part…mere pagan sentimentalism’) and his politics: he was ‘a radical, probably of the better sort… The radical attacks appointed bounds and ordinances, ancient usage, and prescriptive rights, which, even when not directly and in the highest sense sacred, would nearly always be found helps instead of hindrances to the end he honestly has in view… Whenever, then, Mr Dickens comes in contact with any one of the objects against which the popular will is most easily tempted into hostility,—the privileged classes, recognized officials, ancient institutions, the laws and their administration,—it is more or less to disparage them…a proceeding the unfairness of which is fully equalled by its danger’ (iv, 585–96). Maclise’s frontispiece, criticized in this review, was found offensive: his frontispiece to The Cricket even more so. Both were ‘outrageous and not very decent’ (The Times, 27 December 1845, 6); the Cricket frontispiece and title-page were ‘scarcely…appropriate to a story of an English home’ (Illustrated London News, same date, 406).
