ABSTRACT
Certainly there is nothing of ‘prefatory pleading’ in what the author says here. He does not plead, but asserts, and asserts roundly. Like Clive he is astonished at his own moderation. He has had to deal with a set ofdegraded wretches. He has had to take his readers among the lowest outcasts, and he has not been for one moment indelicate. On the contrary, there is, as he tells us, ‘scrupulous delicacy of treatment in certain portions of the story.’ He himself knows this, and intelligent readers have justly appreciated it.’ “You are a moral man,” said Mr. Snawley. “I rather believe I am, sir,” replied Squeers. “I have the satisfaction to know you are, sir,” said Mr. Snawley. “I asked one of your references, and he said you were pious.” “Well, sir, I hope I am a little in that line,” replied Squeers.’ Mr. Collins has his references also, both at home and abroad. As we learn by the title-page, ‘translations into the French, German, Italian, and Dutch languages are published by arrangement with the author.’ No doubt this prefatory testimonial will be published with all the translations, and Frenchmen, Germans, Italians, and Dutchmen will all alike know that Mr. Collins is famous for his scrupulous delicacy of treatment of a very unsavoury subject. They will know this, moreover, not only on the testimony of his own countrymen, who might speak with a fond partiality, but on that of intelligent readers abroad. It will be noticed that Mr. Collins claims for himself this scrupulous delicacy only in certain portions of his story. Is he, we might ask him, scrupulously delicate when he describes the open mouth of the quartermaster of an American steamer, ‘from which the unspat tobacco-juice trickled in little brown streams’? Where, in these days of word-painting, as it is called, are we to draw the line? Sailors too often have nasty habits; but that does not justify an author in disgusting his readers with nasty descriptions. Does Mr. Collins display this scrupulous delicacy for which he is so famed, in the account that he
gives of an infamous hag, who is suffering under an attack of delirium tremens in the kitchen of a thieves’ lodging house? …
[The reviewer’s attack on Collins’s story and characters, and his claims to ‘delicacy of treatment’, is pursued at length.]
