ABSTRACT
The completion of one of Mr Dickens’s monthly number books is to the critic what the termination of great events is to the politician, or the close of an epoch to the historian…. There is such an affluence of life in all Mr Dickens’s books—so vast a range of character and observation of the world—so broad a canvas crowded with so many shapes and incidents—that the effect on the mind is not so much that of glancing over a finished story, as that of looking at an epitome of life itself. If this involves some degree of imperfection in the mere matter of story-telling, it also involves the highest eulogy that can be pronounced on a novelist whose especial calling is the portrayal of human nature and human action. Mr Dickens is the most dramatic of the novelists…. We do not exaggerate when we say that his genius possesses some points of resemblance to that of Shakspeare—something of the very thing which, more than anything else, makes Shakspeare the greatest of dramatic poets. It is not merely that Dickens is himself a poet, and in nothing so much as in his exquisite sensitiveness to those fine threads of analogy which connect the animate with theinanimate world, so that the still life of his scenes is constantly made to reflect the dominant emotion of the characters, in a manner which may appear extravagant to matter-of-fact minds, but which is wonderfully true to all who have ever felt emotion—it is not merely that many of his characters have in them such a strong and self-existent vitality that they have already become part of our actual experience, and remain there like remembrances of our own life—it is not merely that Dickens has added phrases to the language, which are to be found in almost any column of a newspaper you may take up to read haphazard—it is not simply on these accounts that Dickens shows some affinity with Shakspeare, but much more on account of that feeling of universal sympathy with human nature which breathes through his pages like the ‘broad and general’ atmosphere. He soars above all considerations of sect, above all narrow isolations of creed; and, though a more deeply religious writer is not to be found, in all those elements of religion which rise eternally from the natural emotions of love and reverence, he is never disputatiously theological or academically dogmatic. Certain University-bred reviewers, whose shrivelled souls cannot understand the fresh, spontaneous efflorescence of genius, and who will accept no gold that does not come to them impressed with the college stamp, may affect to despise the large regard of Dickens; but the world will recognise its great ones whether or not they wear the uniform of cap and gown.
