MASTER-SPIRITS ]i is IN OBSCURITY : I. GEORGE HEATH, THE MOORLAND POET . . 303 II. THE LAUREATE OF THE NURSERY . 327 NOTE : Hl'XTKR'S RKTROSI'H 1 341 MASTER-SPIRITS INTROD UCTION. CRITICISM AS ONE OF TflE FINE ARTS. AMONG the many vague forms which modern ingenuity has tried to manipulate into a Science must be classed what is usually called Criticism ; but, for my own part, I am inclined to think that Criticism means to belong to the Fine Arts, and to elude the scientific arrangement altogether. There was a time, of course, when books, pictures, and music were judged by a certain set of fixed rules, each incontestable as the law of gravitation ; when contemporary persons could appraise the value of an aesthetic article as easily as a grocer finds out the weight of a pound of sugar ; when, in fact, critics knew their business thoroughly, being in the secret of the manu- facture. Sometimes the critical scales were entrusted to one man, say to Voltaire, or John Dryden, or Addison. I 2 Master-Spirits. Again, public opinion was guided by a kind of joint- stock company, like Pope, Swift, and Co., or Gifford and Co., or Jeffrey, Brougham, and Co. In all cases alike judgment was infallible ; there was no appeal. And the laws on which sentence was founded were, curiously enough, considered so unimpeachable, that one no more thought of questioning them than believers think of questioning the divine laws of Confucius, or the miracles of Mahomet, or the revelations of the Apocalypse. Moreover, these laws had all the weight of mystery. No one had ever read the golden book wherein they were enshrined. They were written in an unknown tongue ; the High-Priest of Criticism sat on the tripod, and interpreted. In this way, things amazing and awful came to pass. At one time it was decreed here in England that Abraham Cowley was a mighty poetical genius; and at another it was settled, there in France, that Shakspeare was a rude unsavoury monster. The Oracle spake, and Klopstock was crowned. The Public listened and approved. No unordained person dared to interfere in so profound a matter. The little murmur of protest that rose when impostors like Keats were punished, soon died away in the loud roar greeting the coronation of divinities like Mr. Sotheby. Criticism, in fact, was a semi-religious rite performed by a Priesthood, guided partly by a set of divine rules, partly by a kind of corybantic inspiration. Recent scepticism has tried to demolish much the Pentateuch and some of the miracles, for example ; but it has never yet demolished the brazen Idols of Criticism. Criticism as one of the Fine Arts. 3 The public press has advanced a great deal, freeing men's minds and widening their knowledge ; but, strange to say, it has not yet advanced to the point of refusing to shelter that worst class of priestcraft, which pro- nounces anonymous judgm nts. It is quite true, how- ever, that now-a-days it does not much matter, since critics are thoroughly disorganised, and each wiseacre, on a tripod of his own, delivers judgment to a special circle ; so that publishing a book or showing a picture is simply another sort of ' running the gauntlet.' But it is surely high time, in this questioning age, to ask on what grounds this critical priesthood still exists at all ? why it presumes to give judgment, often with such reckless disregard of consequences ? what use it is to any soul under the sun ? and how, having once proved it as thorough a humbug as the Delphic oracle itself, we are to get rid of it in the speediest possible manner ? To begin with, what is Criticism ? Strictly speaking, of course, it is the application of certain tests, by which we may ascertain the value of specific articles, just as we find out the quality of gold. These tests, applied to literature and art, have produced most astounding results, without really enlightening mankind at all. It was all very well when the work was cut and dried. At one time, for example, Criticism did almost all her work by a cabalistic yard-measure called the ' Unities.' Nothing could be easier. Whenever an epic poem or a tragedy was brought up for judgment, out came the yard-measure, and the matter was decided in a moment. The thing either did or did not conform B 2 4 Master-Spirits. to the Unities, and was praised or damned accordingly ; and in those days, we may remark, en passant, Shakspeare was nowhere. Latterly, however, such tests as this have been abandoned in despair. It is recognised as a privilege of genius to break all set rules, and so ride triumphant over them. There is no absolute axiom of criticism which some great man may not falsify in practice to-morrow. Here again, therefore, we ask with some asperity, what is Criticism ? No science certainly. No list of set rules to be applied by a priesthood. No sum as easy to manage as the multiplication table What then ? Criticism, now-a-days, simply means (it is doubtful whether at any time it has meant much more) the impression produced on certain minds by certain pro- ducts. If Jones paints a picture, and it is noticed un- favourably in the ' Peckham Review/ the criticism does not come right up out from Delphi, but consists simply of so much ( copy ' in the handwriting of Robinson. If Brown composes a poem, and it is wildly eulogised in the ' Stokeinpogis Chronicle/ let him first bethink him- self, before he become too bumptious, that the eulogy in question is simply the result of an individual impression, say on the mind of Smith. In any of these cases it is quite clear that the value of the criticism depends on the amount of honesty and intelligence possessed by Robinson and Smith respectively. To get anything like a fair insight into the truth, we must take care to ascertain at least a few preliminaries : Criticism as one of the Fine Arts. 5 1. How old the critic is, and what is the bent of his intellect 2. What are his favourite authors ? What is his chief study ? 3. Has he ever written or painted himself, and if so, is he at all soured ? 4. Is he personally acquainted with the author or painter criticised ? and if so, are his relations with him friendly, or the reverse ? 5. Is he usually honest in the expression of his opinions ? &c. &c. These seem unlimited questions, but, in point of fact, they are virtually answered in all criticism that has any weight. They are least answered, of course, in anony- mous criticism ; but, even then, they are partially settled to the public satisfaction. One may calculate to a nicety, for example, what effect such and such a new work will produce on the editor of the ' Times,' or of the ' Spectator,' or of the ' Saturday Review.' A work of high and daring originality, unpopular in form, will be utterly ignored by the leading Journal, patronised (if it contain no offence to the Broad Church) in the ' Spec- tator,' and gibed and grinned at in the 'Saturday Review.' Behind and beyond the natural style and temper of these professional critics, there lie of course the mysterious workings of private liking and prejudice. Now and then, when we see the unpopular tone taken in the ' Times,' we know what enormous secret influence must have been used to get that tone taken. There is no one of these journals, there is no one of the men who 6 Master-Spirits. write these journals, quite free of undue influence in some direction or other ; conscious or unconscious- it is there. There is, in fact, no end to the questions we must definitely answer before we ascertain the value of any published opinion. It is in all cases the record of an impression only ; but how has that impression been taken ? How rare it is to find a man in whose capa- bility of receiving an honest influence we can place full reliance ! It is not dishonesty we have to fear, but certain unconscious weaknesses. Even in the cases of such men as Mr. Mill, or Mr. Herbert Spencer, or Sainte-Beuve, or M. Taine, we must have our doubts. We almost trust them, but now and then we pause. And then, when the critical moment comes, what is their ' impression ' worth ? Personally, much ; scientifically, not a rap ! It is great fun fun given to poor mortality, alas ! too seldom to see the advent of some outrageous Genius, some Monstr'-mform'-ingens-horrendus ' Demoniaco-seraphic prodigy of the Euphorion order, starting up, to the horror of criticism, and carrying all the masses before him by simple charm. Wonderful is that gift of pro- ducing on thousands of people precisely the same set of favourable impressions ; wonderful is that gift, whether possessed by a Dickens, a Tennyson, or a Tupper. Fortunately the great mass of people are their own ' tasters/ judging for themselves at first hand, and they will not be guided by the literary Priests, however wise ; Criticism as one of the Fine Arts. 7 and it is simply delicious to observe how reputations grow, in spite of all the Priesthood do to trample them down. Let no man despair merely because the few who write abuse him. The abuse simply means that he is not wanted by Smith, Brown, and Jones ; while all the - time he is being eagerly waited for by all the legions of the Robinsons, to whom every word he drops is a revelation. Dickens was abused by genteel journals, but what cared he ? Every author or artist, in fact, is a gauge to tell how many people there are in the world of about his own ratio of intelligence minus the creative faculty. There are one hundred thousand Tuppers. There are (it is seriously calculated) one hundred Stuart Mills and fifty Herbert Spencers. In art, the Faeds and Friths are innumerable ; the Leightons numerous ; and the Poynters infinitesimal. For many years, Browning paid the public large sums, as it were, for the privilege of publishing poems ; only there was no article in the agreement that the poems in question were to be read', and now, the public has turned the tables, and is paying all the money back for the privilege of reading those very poems. Luckily, we say, Criticism can only do mischief up to a certain point, and cannot do that mischief long. It may delay a reputation, but it cannot kill it. The public, in the long run, will have its own way, and choose its own favourite, and will choose according to the direct impression made by the favourite in question. But what a boon it would be to the public if the gentlemen who 'do' criticism, instead of assuming 8 Master-Spirits. the priestly robe and sitting veiled on a tripod, were simply and fearlessly to tell us how certain works have affected them, what they like and dislike in them, how they seem to stand in relation to other literature ! What time this would save! What lying it would avoid ! To speak with authority is ' parlous ' indeed. Who gains anything when Anonymous writes that Browning's last poem is sheer balderdash, or that Simeon Solomon's last picture is divinely original ? Who says so ? That is what we want to get at. If it be Smith, let Smith come forward and sign his name. Of course, much in criticism is self-convincing, quite apart from the writer's identity ; and the best and most con- vincing criticism of all, in the case of a book, is free and ungarbled extract from the work under notice : extract can seldom be unfair. But in how many cases should we be on our guard if we knew what critic was administering judgment ! Take an instance. Mr. Grote devotes a lifetime to the study of Plato, and at last produces a great work on the subject. This work, being sent to the ' Megatherium ' for review, is handed over to Tomkins, who is fresh from the university, where, so far from making any mark, he was considered a dull fellow, and has drifted into the most irresponsible of all business, that of anonymous reviewing. TOMKINS'S QUALIFICATIONS. I. He is 28 years of age, and with little experience either of men or books. Criticism as one of the Fine Arts. 9 2. He was crammed for his degree, and knows little of Greek beyond the alphabet. 3. He has quick intelligence, great power of hiding his ignorance, and little honesty. 4. He is mentally incapable of conceiving a Platonic proposition, &c. Here, it will be admitted, we should know what to think of Tomkins's criticism on Grote, if he candidly prefixed to it the above list of qualifications ; yet, ten to one, Tomkins, under his anonymous guise, manages so cleverly to conceal his ignorance that we feel per- fectly satisfied when he concludes : ' Passing over certain errors and repetitions pardonable in a work of such magnitude, as well as the pedantic mode of spell- ing some words more familiar to us in their Latinized shape, we may record our opinion that this work has given us real pleasure, an opinion in which, we are sure, every scholar will join. We have already ex- pressed our disapproval of certain passages, and have indicated where they need revision ; these revisions made, the work will stand as a monument of English scholarship and a complete manual of the subject.' Take another instance. A man of genius, to whom this generation does scant justice, Mr. William Gilbert, publishes a story, in which the real life of the lower classes in our country is pictured for us with a fidelity which would be terrible, if it were not illuminated by the most subtle and delicate humour. This story goes to the 'Dilettante Gazette,' and in course of time is handed over to Chesterfield Junior, Esq., of the Inner Temple. io Master-Spirits. CHESTERFIELD JUNIOR'S QUALIFICATIONS FOR ' CRITICISING ' C DE PROFUNDIS.' 1 1. He is 30 years of age, a literary man about town, and his tastes are elegant. 2. His notion of the working man is that he is a ' rough ; ' and his notion of life generally is that it is a series of dinings-out, unpleasantly varied by sullen re- quisitions on the part of the lower classes for ' goods re- ceived.' 3. He is utterly destitute of beneficence ; he has not even a dramatic perception of what beneficence is. 4. His favourite author is Thackeray ; but he enjoys the 'fun' of Dickens, &c. 5. He is utterly and hopelessly unconscious of the limited nature of his own literary vision. Chesterfield Junior's criticism on the marvellous tale of common life would probably amount to this : ' We have here a study, in the manner of Defoe, of one of the least interesting forms of life generated by our overcrowded cities. No one can doubt the cleverness of the hard literal drawing ; but to us it is simply unpleasant. It is a photograph, not a picture. It altogether lacks beauty, and has not one flash of the illuminating humour which distinguishes Dickens's work in the same direction/ In this case, be it noted, every word is the record of a genuine impression on a mind to whose sympathies the object does not appeal. Just suppose that, in addition to the natural antipathy, Chesterfield Junior had the least bit of personal animosity to his author, and he would 1 'De Profundis : a Tale of the Social Deposits.' By William Gilbert. (Strahan and Co.) Criticism as one of the Fine Arts. 1 1 hardly plead guilty to conscious injustice if he wrote in terms of entire condemnation : ' Mr. Gilbert is a realist of the penny-a-liner type, without one gleam of genius, and his book is the most vulgar and unpleasant production we have read for a long time. Led by the natural gravitation of his mind to the study of what is low and common, and incapable of anything but a vulgarising treatment, he solicits our interests in the futures of a virtuous washer- woman; a drummer, and an irreclaimable thief. Trash like this is simply intolerable to any person of refined tastes.' Poor Chesterfield Junior ! He means no harm. He is only a sheep with a silk ribbon on his neck, bleating his mutton-like defiance. A few people are deceived, and say to themselves, ' This Mr. Gilbert must be a very un- pleasant writer ! ' We, who know better, only smile, saying, ' Chesterfield Junior has put his poor little foot into it again, as is again and again the custom of crea- tures without eyes.' On the other hand, let the same work fall into the hands of Addison Redivivus, whose qualifications are great beneficence, vast experience of the lower classes, a natural repugnance to all false sentiment and fine writing, and that sort of intelligence which gives as well as takes illumination ; and we shall speedily hear, perhaps, that ' De Profundis ' is, for sheer perfection in the rarest of all styles, a work with scarcely a peer, possessing both truth and beauty, bearing on every page the sign of a masterly understanding and of the finest intellectual humour, and leaving on the competent reader's mind an impression in the highest sense imaginative and poetical. Who would be right Chesterfield Junior or Addison Redivivus ? 1 2 Master -Spirits. Criticism, we repeat, is no science. Neither Chester- field nor Addison can settle the matter by any fixed rule. They merely chronicle their impression/w or contra, and the value of the impression depends on our knowledge of the person impressed. Well, if Criticism is no Science, what is it ? It seems to me that Criticism, as the repre- sentation of the effect particular works have on particular individuals, is rapidly securing its place as one of the Fine Arts, and that its value is in exact proportion to the amount of artistic self-portraiture attained by the critic. We have half-a-dozen tolerable critics in England, but we have perhaps only one equal as an artist 'to the person whom I shall use to illustrate my proposition. Now that Sainte-Beuve is gone, the finest living specimen is M. Taine, whose works are winning appreciation here as well as in France. M. Taine has great intelligence, culture, literary experience. His faculty of composition may be 'described as almost creative. Wherein, then, does this faculty consist ? It consists, I am sure, in the man's un- equalled power of representing his own qualifications ; of illustrating to us, by a thousand delicate lights and shades, the quality of his own mind and its limitations ; and of revealing to us, as frequently as possible, the nature of his education and its effect on his tastes. Sooner or later, he enables us to become on intimate terms with him. He conceals little or nothing. He lays bare the most secret sources of his sympathies and his anti- pathies. He invariably discards the ' editorial ' tone. And when once we know him thoroughly, nothing can be more delightful than his way of playing with his theme. Criticism as one of the Fine Arts. 13 We know almost by instinct where he will be right and where he may be wrong. His work belongs to the Fine Arts, and at times approaches masterly portrayal. ' The following,' M. Taine says in effect, ' are my quali- fications : ' i. I am not too young for self-restraint, nor too old for sympathy, and I have had an excellent education. ' 2. I am a Frenchman, educated under the Empire, and (more or less unconsciously) " aestheticised." ' 3. I have the French hatred of " institutions," and the French deficiency in the religious faculty. ' 4. My passion for symmetry may lead you to believe me a formal person ; but I am in reality a loose thinker, dexterously manoeuvring impressions under the guise of a finished style. ' 5. Form, as form, almost always fascinates me, but I try most to sympathise where the subject is most shape- less. ' 6. I am thoroughly conscious of my limitations, and seldom try to conceal them. ' 7. In spite of my seeming power of surveying large surfaces (the result of my instinct of symmetrical arrange- ment), my faculty is microscopic, and examines every work of art inch by inch, phrase by phrase, afterwards piecing the criticism together into the form of a verdict on the whole work.' Much more might be added ; but the point is, that M. Taine, being a thorough artist, tells us all the above, directly or indirectly, and makes us alive to it at every step. He never allows us for a moment to lose sight of I4 Master-Spirits. himself; and he is at his best when he is least impersonal, and most candid in portraying his emotions. How delicious it is, for example, to find a critic showing his own intellectual physiognomy in this way, when be- ginning to criticise a great English philosopher : When at Oxford some years ago, during the meeting of the British Association, I met, amongst the few students still in residence, a young Englishman, a man of intelligence, with whom I became intimate. He took me in the evening to the New Museum, well filled with specimens. Here short lectures were delivered, new models of machinery were set to work ; ladies were present and took an interest in the experiments ; on the last day, full of enthusiasm, ' God save the Queen ' was sung. I admired this zeal, this solidity of mind, this organisa- tion of science, these voluntary subscriptions, this aptitude for association and for labour, this great machine pushed on by so many arms, and so well fitted to accumulate, criticise, and classify facts. But yet, in this abundance, there was a void ; when I read the Transactions, I thought I was present at a congress of heads of manufactories. All these learned men verified details and exchanged recipes. It was as though I listened to foremen, busy in communicating their processes for tanning leather or dyeing cotton : general ideas were wanting. I used to regret this to my friend ; and in the evening, by his lamp, amidst that great silence in which the university town lay wrapped, we both tried to discover its reasons. One day I said to him : You lack philosophy I mean, what the Germans call metaphysics. You have learned men, but you have no thinkers. Your God impedes you. He is the Supreme Cause, and you dare not reason on causes, out of respect for Him. He is the most important personage in England, and I see clearly that He merits his position ; for He forms part of your Constitution, He is the guardian of your morality, He judges in final appeal on all questions whatsoever, He replaces with Criticism as one of tJie Fine Arts. 1 5 advantage the prefects and gendarmes with whom the nations on the Continent are still encumbered. Yet this high rank has the inconvenience of all official positions ; it produces a cant, prejudices, intolerance, and courtiers. Here, close by us, is poor Mr. Max Miiller, who, in order to acclimatise the study of Sanscrit, was compelled to discover in the Vedas the worship of a moral God, that is to say, the religion of Paley and Addison. Some time ago, in London, I read a proclamation of the Queen, forbidding people to play cards, even in their own houses, on Sundays. It seems that, if I were robbed, I could not bring my thief to justice without taking a preliminary religious oath ;. for the judge has been known to send a complainant away who refused to take the oath, deny him justice, and insult him into the bargain. Every year, when we read the Queen's speech in your papers, we find there the compulsory mention of Divine Providence, which comes in mechanically, like the apostrophe to the immortal gods on the fourth page of a rhetorical decla- mation ; and you remember that once, the pious phrase having been omitted, a second communication was made to Parliament for the express purpose of supplying it. All these cavillings and pedantry indicate to my mind a celestial monarchy ; naturally, it resembles all others I mean that it relies more willingly on tradition and custom than on examination and reason. A monarchy never invited men to verify its creden- tials. Taine's History of English Literature, trans, by Henry Van Laun, vol. ii., pp. 478-479 (Essay on John Stuart Mill). Even if the above did not occur at the end of two large volumes, full of self-portraiture more or less indi- rect, it would reveal to us, as by a sun-picture, the man with whom we have to deal. Herein lies the delightful art of it. We certainly do get some formal ideas in the end about Mr. Mill, but our real interest for the time being is in M. Taine. How subtle he is ! how thoroughly French ! How just and kind he is in other places to 1 6 Master-Spirits. Tennyson and Thackeray : but how much more he loves De Musset and Balzac ! He becomes our personal friend, and every word he utters has weight. His egotism is charming ; we could hear him talk for hours. In England here, critics for the most part assume the editorial tone, and are proportionally uninteresting. To the long list of critics who write without edification, either because they decline self-revelation or are unin- teresting when revealed, may be added, in modern times, the names of Mr. Lewes, late editor of the * Fortnightly Review/ and the Duke of Argyll. These gentlemen sign their articles, but utterly fail to attract us : they are so thoroughly, so transparently, 'editorial.' Critics of the higher class, on the other hand, may be found in Sir Arthur Helps, Mr. Matthew Arnold, and (with a slight editorial leaven) in Mr. R. H. Hutton, who has recently published two volumes of essays. Mr. Arnold may or may not be an interesting being, but he never for a moment represents himself as what he is not. We know him as thoroughly as if we had been to school with him. We do not get angry with what he says, so much as with his insufferable manner of saying it. 1 Sir Arthur Helps is, once and for ever, the optimist man of the world. Mr. R. H. Hutton, a writer of powerful, original genius and wonderful subtlety of insight, shows us, as in a mirror, his religion, his deep-seated prejudice, his quick sympathy with ideas as distinguished from literary clothing, and his genial love of microscopic dtficatesse. 1 I am speaking of Arnold's prose. His poetry is beautiful beyond measure. Criticism as otic of the Fine Arts. 1 7 In many cases, the Anonymous is a mere cloak, and everybody knows whom it conceals. The public bowed before the judgment of Jeffrey and Brougham, not that of the Edinburgh Review ; before the judgment of Gifford and Southey, not that of the Quarterly Review. Nowadays, nevertheless, the anonymous pen has multiplied itself so prodigiously, that the air rings with fiats and acclaims, and Heaven knows who is uttering them ! It is wonderful how Genius gets along, and escapes being put down ; wonderful how fairly the oracles speak, in spite of their irresponsibility. Still, the only Criticism worth a rap belongs to the Fine Artist, and the only Critic who really carries us away is he whose personality we entirely respect. There seems no end to the extension of so-called criticism as a creative form of composition (as valuable in its way as lyrical poetry or autobiography), wherein we have the representation of certain known products on certain competent or incompetent natures. The man who criticises may attract us by the tints of his own individuality, and the play of his own soul, as successfully as the man who sings or the man who paints. His work is merely the final record of an impression which, before reaching him, has passed through the colouring matter of the poet's or painter's mind. To conclude, then, Scientific Criticism is fudge, as sheer fudge as scientific poetry, as scientific painting ; but Criticism does belong to the Fine Arts, and for that reason its future prospects are positively unlimited. ig Master-Spirits. THE 'GOOD GENIE' OF FICTION. CHARLES DICKENS. THERE was once a good Genie, with a bright eye and a magic hand, who, being born out of his due time and place, and falling not upon fairy ways, but into the very heart of this great city of London wherein we write, walked on the solid earth in the nineteenth century in a most spirit-like and delightful dream. He was such a quaint fellow, with so delicious a twist in his vision, that where you and I (and the wise critics) see straight as an arrow, he saw everything queer and crooked ; but this, you must know, was a terrible defect in the good Genie, a tremendous weakness, for how can you expect a person to behold things as they are whose eyes are so wrong in his head that they won't even make out a straight mathematical line ? To the good Genie's gaze everything in this rush of life grew queer and confused. The streets were droll, and the twisted windows winked at each other. The Water had a voice, crying, ' Come down ! come down ! f and the Wind and Rain became absolute human entities, with ways of conducting themselves strange beyond expression. Where you see a clock, /is saw a face and The l Good Genie ' of Fiction. 1 9 heard the beating of a heart. The very pump at Aldgate became humanized, and held out its handle like a hand for the good Genie to shake. Amphion was nothing to him. To make the gouty oaks dance hornpipes, and the whole forest go country-dancing, was indeed something, but how much greater was the feat of animating stone houses, great dirty rivers, toppling chimneys, staring shop windows, and the laundress's wheezy mangle ! Pronounce as we may on the wisdom of the Genie's conduct, no one doubts that the world was different before he came ; the same world, doubtless, but a duller, more expressionless world ; and perhaps, on the whole, the people in it especially the poor, struggling people wanted one great happiness which a wise and tender Providence meant to send. The Genie came and looked, and after looking for a long time, began to speak and print ; and so magical was his voice, that a crowd gathered round him, and listened breathlessly to every word ; and so potent was the charm, that gradually all the crowd began to see everything as the charmer did (in other words, as the wise critics say, to squint in the same manner), and to smile in the same odd, delighted, bewildered fashion. Never did pale faces brighten more wonderfully ! never did eyes that had seen straight so very long, and so very, very sadly, brighten up so amazingly at discovering that, absolutely, everything was crooked ! It was a quaint world, after all, quaint in both laughter and tears, odd over the cradle, comic over the grave, rainbowed by laughter and sorrow in one glorious Iris, melting into a C 2 ' - beautiful hues, 'My name,* said the good Charles Dickens, and I have come to make especially the poor and lowly brighter Then, smfling merrily, he waved his hands, by one, along the twisted streets, among the iailiMi and the human pumps, quaint figures to walk, while a low voice told stories of Human its ghosts, its ogres, its elves, its good its ft and frolic; oft fulminating in verit- its Hinij dew-like glimmerings of was no need any longer for grown-up to sigh and wish for the dear old stories of the What was Puss in Boots to Mr. Pickwick in his ? \Vhat was Tom Thumb, with aU its oddities, to poor Tom Pinch playing on his organ all alone up in uBe Joit. .^V. DCW a^Mr sm!ff^^^ _ r jfnp^* iy I la arose tn X-rttle Keffl; abnghter and dearer little Jack Homer eating fcis Chi is! mas pie was foond when Oliver Twist appeared wfaea all Hie hrrame thus marvellously transformed. I* the first place, die world was divided, just as old divided, into good and bad fairies, Elves and awful Ogres, and everybody eitiber rcy loving or very spiteful Therewereno res, auu* as many of our human tale- tdas Hke to describe. Then there was generally a sort of Good little Boy who played the part of hero, and got married to a Good Little Girl, who TJie ' Good Genie' of Fiction. 21 In the course of their wanderings through human fairyland, the hero and heroine met all sorts of strange characters queer-looking Fairies, like the Brothers Cheery ble, or Mr. Toots, or David Copperfield's aunt, or Mr. Dick, or the convict Magwitch ; out-and-out Ogres, ready to devour the innocent, and without a grain of good- ness in them, like Mr. Quilp, Jonas Chuzzlewit, Fagin the Jew, Carker with his white teeth, Rogue Riderhood, and Lawyer Tulkinghorn ; comical Will-o'-the-wisps, or moral Impostors, flabby of limb and sleek of visage, called by such names as Stiggins, Chadband, Snawley, Pecksniff, Bounderby, and Uriah Heep. Strange people, forsooth, in a strange country. Wise critics said that the country was not the world at all, but simply Topsy- turvyland ; and indeed there might have seemed some little doubt about the matter, if every now and again, in the world we are speaking of, there had not appeared a group of poor people with such real laughter and tears that their humanity was indisputable. Scarcely had we lost sight for a moment of the Demon Quilp, when whom should we meet but Codlin and Short sitting mending their wooden figures in the churchyard ? and not many miles off was Mrs. Jarley, every scrap on whose bones was real human flesh ; the Peggotty group living in their upturned boat on the sea-shore, while little EnVly watches the incoming tide erasing her tiny footprint on the sand ; the Dorrit family, surrounding the sadly comic figure of the Father of the Marshalsea ; good Mrs, Richards and her husband the Stoker, struggling through thorny paths of adversity with 22 Master-Spirits. a grumble ; Trotty Veck sniffing the delicious fumes of the tripe a good fairy is bringing to him ; and Tiny Tim waving his spoon, and crying, ' God bless us all ! ' in, the midst of the smiling Cratchit family on Christmas Day. This was more puzzling still to find ' real life ' and ' fairy life ' blended together most fantastically. It was like that delightful tale of George MacDonald's, where you never can tell truth from fancy, and where you see the country in fairyland is just like the real country, with cottages [and cooking going on inside], and roads, and flower-gardens, and finger, posts, yet everything haunted most mysteriously by supernatural creatures. But let the country described by the good Genie be ever so like the earth, and the poor folk moving in it ever so like life, there was never any end to the enchantment. On the slightest provocation trees and shrubs would talk and dance, intoxicated public-houses hiccup, clocks talk in measured tones, tombstones chatter their teeth, lamp- posts reel idiotically, all inanimate nature assume animate qualities. The better the real people were, and the poorer, the more they were haunted by delightful Fays. The Cricket talked on the hearth, and the Kettle sang in human words. The plates on the dresser grinned and gleamed, when the Pudding rolled out of its smoking cloth, saying perspiringly, ' Here we are again !' Talk about Furniture and Food being soulless things ! The good Genie knew better. Whenever he went into a mean and niggardly house, he saw the poor devils of chairs and tables attenuated and wretched, the lean time. The ' Good Genie 1 of Fiction. 23 piece with its heart thumping through its wretched ribs, the fireplace shivering with a red nose, and the chimney-glass grim and gaunt. Whenever he entered the house of a good person, with a loving, generous heart, he saw the difference jolly fat chairs, if only of common wood, tables as warm as a toast, and mirrors that gave him a wink of good-humoured greeting. It was all enchantment, due perhaps in a great measure to the strange twist in the vision with which the good Genie was born. Thus far, perhaps, in a sort of semi-transparent allegory, have we indicated the truth as regards the wonderful genius who has so lately left us. Mighty as was the charm of Dickens, there have been from the beginning a certain select few who have never felt it. Again and again has the great Genie been approached by some dapper dilettante of the superfine sort, and been informed that his manner was wrong altogether, not being by any means the manner of Aristophanes, or Swift, or Sterne, or Fielding, or Smollett, or Scott. This man has called him, with some contempt, a ' caricaturist.' That man has described his method of portrayal as 'sentimental.' MacStingo prefers the humour of Gait. The gelid, heart-searching critic prefers Miss Austen. Even young ladies have been known to take refuge in Thackeray. All this time, perhaps, the real truth as regards Charles Dickens has been missed or perverted. He was not a satirist, in the sense that Aristophanes was a satirist. He was not a comic analyst, like Sterne; nor an intellectual force, like 2 4 Master- Spirits. Swift ; nor a sharp, police-magistrate sort of humourist, like Fielding ; nor a practical-joke-playing tomboy, like Smollett He was none of these things. Quite as little was he a dashing romancist or fanciful historian, like Walter Scott. Scott found the Past ready made to his hand, fascinating and fair. Dickens simply enchanted the Present. He was the creator of Human Fairyland. He was a magician, to be bound by none of your commonplace laws and regular notions : as well try to put Incubus in a glass case, and make Robin Goodfellow the monkey of a street hurdy-gurdy. He came to put Jane Austen and M. Balzac to rout, and to turn London into Queer Country. Yes, he was hotheaded as an Elf, untrustworthy as a Pixy, maudlin at times as a lovesick Giant, and he squinted like Puck himself. He was, in fact, anything but the sort of story-teller the dull old world had been accustomed to. He was most unpractical. His pictures distorted life and libelled society. He grimaced and he gambolled. He bewitched the solid pudding of practicality, and made it dance to aerial music, just as if Tom Thumb were inside of it. It is, therefore, as you say, highly inexpedient that his works should be much studied by young people, who must be duly crammed with tremendous first principles ; and for a literary Rhadamanthus of two-hundred-horse power, he is absurd reading. Nor should we care to recommend his narratives to the Gradgrinds or the Dombeys of this generation. His stories are so child-like, so absurd, so unwise, so mad. But such stories ! When shall we The ' Good Genie' of Fiction. 25 hear the like again ? Wiser and greater tale-tellers may come, if to be hard and cold is to be wise and great ; but who will lull us once more into such infancy of delight, and make us glorious children once again ? The good Genie has gone, and already the wise critics who speak with such authority, and are so tremendously above being pleasing themselves are shaking their heads over his grave. But the amount of the world's interest in Charles Dickens is not to be measured by any quantity of head- shakings on the part of the unsympathetic ; and now that the magic has departed, every English home misses the magician. In spite of the small scandal which is spilt over every tea-table, in spite of the shrill yelps of those canine persons who (rinding the literary monuments too much like marble to suit their teeth) snap savagely at the great writer's personality, there wells from English life, at the present moment, a light spring of ever- increasing gratitude, having its source very deep indeed. The small critic may still hold that Dickens was a sort of Bavius or Maevius of his day, to be forgotten with the ephemera of his generation ; but, then, is it not noto- rious that the person in question thought Thackeray ' no gentleman,' and finds in the greatest genius of America only the ravings of a madman ? With the wrong and right about a great author petulant scribbling has nothing whatever to do. The world decides for itself. And the world decided long ago that Dickens was beyond all parallel the greatest imaginative creator of this generation, and that his poetry, the best of it, 2 6 Master-Spirits. although written in unrhymed speech, is worth more, and will possibly last longer, than all the Verse-poetry of this age, splendid as some of that poetry has been. None but a spooney or a pedant doubts the power. One question remains, how did that power arise ? by what means did it grow? Just as all England had decided that the question was unanswerable up rises Mr. John Forster with his most charming of books, and solves in a series of absorbing chapters -the great part of the mystery. It is not without a shock that we are admitted behind the curtain of the good Genie's private life. All is so different from what we had anticipated. The tree which bore fruit as golden as that of the Hesperides was rooted in a wretched soil, and watered with the bitterest possible tears of self-compassion. We see it all now in one illuminating flash. We see the mightiness of the genius and its limitations. We see why, less than almost any great author, Dickens changed with advancing culture ; how, more than ninety-Wne out of a hundred men, he acquired the habit of instant observation, false or true ; why he imparted to things\animate and inanimate the qualities of each other ; whWefore all life seemed so odd to him ; why, in a word, iVistead of soaring at once into the empyrean of the sweet English ' classics ' (so faultless that you can't pick a speck in them), he remained on the solid pavement, and told elfin and goblin stories of common life. It may seem putting the case too strongly, but Charles Dickers, having crushed into his childish experience a whole world of sorrow and humorous The ' Good Genie' of Fiction. 27 insight, so loaded his soul that he never grew any older. He was a great, grown-up, dreamy, impulsive child, just as much a child as little Paul Dombey or little David Copperfield. He saw all from a child's point of view strange, odd, queer, puzzling. He confused men and things, animated scenery and furniture with human souls, wondered at the stars and the sea, hated facts, loved good eating and sweetmeats, fun, and frolic, all in the childish fashion. Child-like he commiserated himself, with sharp, agonising introspection. Child-like he rushed out into the world with his griefs and grievances, concealing nothing, wildly craving for sympathy. Child-like he had fits of cold reserve, stubborner and crueller than the reserve of any perfectly cultured man. And just as much as little Paul Dombey was out of place at Dr. Blimber's, where they tried to cram him with knowledge, and ever pronounced him old-fashioned, was Charles Dickens out of place in the cold, worldly circle of literature, in the bald bare academy of English culture, where his queer stories and quaint ways were simply astonishing, until even that hard circle began to love the quaint, questioning, querulous, mysterious guest, who would not become a pupil. Like little Paul, he was ' old-fashioned.' * What/ he might have asked himself with little Paul, 'what could that " old-fashion " be, that seemed to make the people sorry ? What could it be ? ' Never, perhaps, has a fragment of biography wakened more .interest and amazement than the first chapters of Mr. Forster's biography. Who that had read the 2 8 Master-Spirits. marvellous pictures of child-life in 'David Copperfield,' and had been startled by their vital intensity, were pre- pared to hear that they were merely the transcript of real thoughts, feelings, and sufferings ; were the literal transcript of the writer's own actual experience nay, were even a portion of an autobiography written by the author himself in the first flush of his manhood ? The pinching want, the sense of desolation, the sharp, agonising pride, were all real, just as real as the sharp, child-like insight into life and character, and the wonder- ful knowledge of the byways of life. His first experience was at Chatham, where his father held a small appointment under Government, and here he not only contracted that love for the neighbourhood which abided with him through life, but amassed the material for many of his finest sketches of persons and localities notably for that extraordinary account of a journey down the river given in ' Great Expectations.' His o,vn account of his life at Chatham, embodied in the fragment of biography before alluded to, is very interesting ; and in his autobiographical novel we have a list of the very books he loved ' Tom Jones,' ' Tales of the Genii ' (but the tale of the most wonderful Genie of all remained to be told!), ' Arabian Nights,' 'Roderick Random,' 'Humphrey Clinker,' 'Don Quixote/ 'Robin- son Crusoe,' and ' Gil Bias.' Before he was nine years old, however, Dickens was removed to that mighty City over which he was after- wards to shed the glamour of veritable enchantment, and which, from having been the wonder and delight of The ' Good Genie' of Fiction. 29 his early boyhood, was to arise into the huge temple of his art. The elder Dickens, having procured a situation in Somerset-house, took his family to Bayham Street, Camden Town, and shortly afterwards little Charles was forwarded inside the stage-coach, ' like game, carriage paid.' His recollection of the journey was very vivid. ' There was no other inside passenger,' he relates, ' and I consumed my sandwiches in solitude and dreariness, and it rained hard all the way, and I thought life sloppier than I had expected.' The following passage from Mr. Forster's biography is pregnant with interest,, and tells a whole tale of sorrowful change : The earliest impressions received and retained by him in London, were of his father's money involvements ; and now first he heard mentioned ' the deed/ representing that crisis of his father's affairs in fact which is ascribed in fiction to Mr. Micawber's. He knew it in later days to have been a composition with creditors, though at this earlier date he was conscious of having confounded it with parchments of a much more demoniacal description. One result from the awful document soon showed itself in enforced retrenchment. The family had to take up its abode in a house in Bayham Street, Camden Town. Bayham Street was about the poorest part of the London suburbs then, and the house was a mean small tenement, with a wretched little back-garden abutting on a squalid court. Here was no place for new acquaintances to him : no boys were near with whom he might hope to become in any way familiar. A washerwoman lived next door, and a Bow Street officer lived over the way. Many many times has he spoken to me of this, and how he seemed at once to fail into a solitary condition apart from all other boys of his own age, and to sink into a 30 Master-Spirits. neglected state at home which had always been quite unac- countable to him. 'As I thought,' he said on one occasion very bitterly, ' in the little back garret in Bayham Street, of all J had lost in losing Chatham, what would I have given, if I had had anything to give, to have been sent back to any other school, to have been taught something anywhere ! ' He was at another school already, not knowing it. The self- education forced upon him was teaching him, all unconsciously as yet, what, for the future that awaited him, it most behoved him to know. That he took, from the very beginning of this Bayham Street life, his first impression of that struggling poverty which is nowhere more vividly shown than in commoner streets of the ordinary London suburb, and which enriched his earliest writings with a freshness of original humour and quite unstudied pathos that gave them much of their sudden popularity, there cannot be a doubt. ' I certainly understood it/ he has often said to me, ' quite as well then as I do now.' But he was not conscious yet that he did so understand it, or of the influence it was exerting on his life even then. It seems almost too much to assert of a child, say at nine or ten years old, that his observation of everything was as close and good, or that he had as much intuitive understanding of the character and weaknesses of the grown-up people around him, as when the same keen and wonderful faculty had made him famous among men. But my experience of him led me to put implicit faith in the asser- tion he unvaryingly himself made, that he had never seen any cause to correct or change what in his boyhood was his own secret impression of anybody whom he had had, as a grown man, the opportunity of testing in later years. How it came that, being what he was, he should now have fallen into the misery and neglect of the time about to be described, was a subject on which thoughts were frequently interchanged between us and on one occasion he gave me a sketch of the character of his father which, as I can here repeat The l Good Genie ' of Fiction. 3 1 it in the exact words employed by him, will be the best preface I can make to what I feel that I have no alternative but to tell. I 1 know my father to be as kind-hearted and generous a man as ever lived in the world. Everything that I can remember of his conduct to his wife, or children, or friends, in sickness or affliction, is beyond all praise. By me, as a sick child, he has watched night and day, unweariedly and patiently, many nights and days. He never undertook any business charge, or trust, that he did not zealously, conscientiously, punctually, honourably discharge. His industry has always been untiring. He was proud of me, in his way, and had a great admiration of the comic singing. But, in the ease of his temper and the strait- ness of his means, he appeared to have utterly lost at this time the idea of educating me at all, and to have utterly put from him the notion that I had any claim upon him in that regard, whatever. So I degenerated into cleaning his boots of a morning, and my own ; and making myself useful in the work of the little house ; and looking after my younger brothers and sisters (we were now six in all); and going on such poor errands as arose out of our poor way of living.' In this and other portions of the biography, we are thus directly informed that Mr. Dickens, senior, with his constant pecuniary embarrassments, his easy good nature, his utter unpractically, sat full length for the immortal portrait of Mr. Micawber ; and this fact has already been the signal for much after-dinner comment and for numberless bitter remarks on the part of the unsympathetic. It so happens that Dickens, in his biographical fragment as in his great novel, dwells with all the intensity of an incurably wounded nature on the early privations and trials which (as has been truly observed) made him the great power he was. This, it is 32 Master- Spirits. suggested, was, if not positive folly, rank ingratitude ; his self-commiseration was contemptible, his after-re- crimination atrocious ; and it is to be regretted that he was not at once more manly and more gentle. Thus far a small section of the public. Read, now, Dickens's account of his life at the blacking warehouse, where he was sent at the request of a relation : It is wonderful to me how I could have been so easily cast away at such an age. It is wonderful to me that, even after my descent into the poor little drudge I had been since we came to London, no one had compassion enough on me a child of singular abilities, quick, eager, delicate, and soon hurt, bodily or mentally to suggest that something might have been spared, as certainly it might have been, to place me at any common school. Our friends, I take it, were tired out. No one made any sign. My father and mother were quite satisfied. They could hardly have been more so if I had been twenty years of age, distinguished at a grammar school, and going to Cambridge. The blacking warehouse was the last house on the left hand side of the way, at old Hungerford stairs. It was a crazy, tumble-down old house, abutting, of course, on the river, and literally overrun with rats. Its wainscoted rooms and its rotten floors and staircases, and the old grey rats swarming down in the cellars, and the sound of their squeaking and scuffling coming up the stairs at all times, and the dirt and decay of the place, rise up visibly before me, as if I were there again. The counting-house was on the first floor, looking over the coal barges and the river. There was a recess in it, in which I was to sit and work. My work was to cover the pots of paste- blacking, first with a piece of oil-paper, and then with a piece of blue paper ; to tie them round with a string ; and then to clip the paper close and neat, all round, until it looked as smart The ' Good Genie ' of Fiction. 33 as a pot of ointment from an apothecary's shop. When a certain number of grosses of pots had attained this pitch of perfection, I was to paste on each a printed label; and then go on again with more pots. Two or three other boys were kept at similar duty downstairs on similar wages. One of them came up, in a ragged apron and a paper cap, on the first Monday morning, to show me the trick of using the string and tying the knot. His name was Bob Fagin ; and I took the liberty of using his name, long afterwards, in Oliver Twist. . . I know I do not exaggerate, unconsciously and unintentionally, the scantiness of my resources and the difficulties of my life. I know that if a shilling or so were given me by anyone, I spent it in a dinner or a tea. I know that I worked from morning to night, with common men and boys, a shabby child. I know that I tried, but ineffectually, not to anticipate my money, and to make it last the week through; by putting it away in a drawer I had in the counting-house, wrapped into six little parcels, each parcel containing the same amount, and labelled with a different day. I know that I have lounged about the streets, insufficiently and unsatisfactorily fed. I know, but for the mercy of God, I might easily have been, for any care that was taken of me, a little robber or a little vagabond.' At last, this hard life came to an end ; how, is explained in this bitter sequel : * At last, one day, my father, and the relative so often men- tioned, quarrelled ; quarrelled by letter, for I took the letter from my father to him which caused the explosion, but quarrelled very fiercely. It was about me. It may have had some back- ward reference, in part, for anything I know, to my employment at the window. All I am certain of is, that, soon after I had given him the letter, my cousin (he was a sort of cousin, by marriage) told me he was very much insulted about me ; and that it was impossible to keep me after that. I cried very much, D 34 Master-Spirits. partly because it was so sudden, and partly because, in his anger, he was violent about my father, though gentle to me. Thomas, the old soldier, comforted me, and said he was sure it was for the best. With a relief so strange that it was like oppression, I went home. ' My mother set herself to accommodate the quarrel, and did so next day. She brought home a request for me to return next morning, and a high character of me which I am very sure I deserved. My father said I should go back no more, and should go to school. / do not write resentfully or angrily : for I know how all these things have worked together to make me what I am ; but I never afterwards forgot, I never shall forget, I never can forget, that my mother was warm for my being sent back. ' From that hour until this at which I write, no word of that part of my childhood which I have now gladly brought to a close, has passed my lips to any human being. I have no idea how long it lasted ; whether for a year, or much more, or less. From that hour, until this, my father and my mother have been stricken dumb upon it. I have never heard the least allusion to it, however far off and remote, from either of them. I have never, until I now impart it to this paper, in any burst of con- fidence with any one, my own wife not excepted, raised the curtain I then dropped, thank God ! ' The reader has now before him the whole story, the whole explanation of why, over Charles Dickens, ' ere he is scarce cold/ Begins the scandal and the cry ! The case is very simple. Charles Dickens, having been greatly unfortunate in his youth, dwelt on the circumstances with an intensity * almost vindictive' in other words, with the frightfully realistic power which The ' Good Genie' of Fiction. 35 especially distinguished the man. Weighing all the circumstances, probing the very core of the truth, -we see nothing in this to account for the prevalent misconcep- tion. Let us bear in mind, in the first place, the keen- ness of the author's memory, and the stiletto-like touches of the author's style, both liable to be misunderstood by men with dimmer memories and flabbier styles. Let us remember, next, that Dickens was concocting no mere fiction, but attempting to tell things exactly as they had happened, to narrate (in his own words) ' the whole truth, so help me God ! ' Lastly, let us not forget, that the words we have read were no formal public charge, but the rapid instantaneous flashes of a private self- examination, never published until totally disguised and modified. We have more faith in the English public, which has persistently adhered to the great master in spite of the carpings and doubtings of Blimberish persons, than to imagine it will be misled in reading this matter, any more than Mr. Forster has been misled in printing it ; and we unhesitatingly assert that, in the autobiographical fragment, there is not one sentence inconsistent with a noble soul, a beneficent mind, and a loving heart. The worst passage is that referring to his mother's desire to send him back to the blacking ware- house. We agree with Dickens that such a desire was cruel almost to brutality (Dickens never says so, though he seems to have felt as much), but we affirm, neverthe- less, that the language he uses is perfectly tender and lawful. ' I never shall forget, I never can forget! that is all. The impression survived, but had he not tried to D 2 36 Master-Spirits . obliterate it a million times ? and why ? because, with that reverent yearning nature, he would fain have made himself believe his mother had been completely noble and true to him, because he was too sensitive to do with- out motherly love and tenderness, because he could not bear to think the one great consecration of childhood had been missing. Such a feeling, we believe, so far from being inconsistent with love, is part of love's very nature. Had he not been filial to the intensest possible degree, he would never have felt an unmotherly touch so sorely. He sits in no judgment, he utters no blame, but to himself, in the recesses of his soul, he cries that he would part with half his fame to feel that that one unkindness had been wanting. ' The pity of it, the pity of it, lago ! ' And we, who owe him a new world of love and beauty, we who are to him as blades of common grass to the rose, are we to sit in judgment on our good Genie, because he has bared his heart to us, a little too much, perhaps, in the all-telling candour of a child ? God forbid ! Shall we cast a stone, too, because (as we are told) he, in one of his leading characters, ' cari- catured his own father ? ' O dutiful sons that we are, shall we spit upon the monster's grave ? No. Rather let us, like wise men, read the words already quoted, wherein the great author pictures his father's character in all the hues of perfect tenderness and truth. Rather let us open ' David Copperfield,' and study the character of Micawber again, to find the queer sad human truth embodied in such a picture as only love could draw, as TJie ' Good Genie ' of Fiction. 37 only a heart overflowing with tenderness could conceive and feel. MlCAWBER ! There is light in every linea- ment, sweetness in every tone, of the delicious creature. ' The very incarnation of selfishness,' it is retorted ; ' dishonourable, mean, absurd, gross, contemptible.' But to this there is no reply ; for Micawber, with all his faults, which are of the very nature of the man, is to us, as to him who limned him for our affection, almost as dear a figure as Don Quixote, or Parson Adams, or Strap, or Uncle Toby. But this appealing against harsh judgment is thankless work. Far better pass on to those portions of the book which show how Dickens, when a neglected boy, began accumulating the materials for his great works wander- ing about Seven Dials, aghast at that theatre of human tragedy of which every threshold was the proscenium ; haunting the wharfs and bridges, till the river became a dark and awful friend ; visiting the gaffs and shows in the Blackfriars Road, till every feature of low mum- ming life grew familiar to him ; visiting his father in that Marshalsea of which he was to leave so vivid a memorial ; watching the cupola of St. Paul's looming through the smoke of Camden Town ; dreaming, plan- ning, picturing, until this vast web of London grew, as we have said, enchanted, and life became a magic tale. So intense were the sensations of those days, so vivid were the impressions, that they remained with the author for ever fascinating him, as it were, into one child-like way of looking at the world. Indeed, the sense of oddity deepened as he grew older in years till 3& Master-Spirits. it became almost ghastly, brooding specially on ghastly things, in his last unfinished fragment. 1 One never forgets how Aladdin, when he got posses- sion of the ring, and, rubbing the tears out of his eyes, accidentally rubbed the ring too, discovered all in a moment his power over spirits and things unseen. Much in the same way did Dickens discover his gift. It was an accidental rub, as it were, when he was crying sadly, that brought the brilliant help. But in his case, unlike that of Aladdin, the power grew with using. The first few figures summoned up in the ' Sketches ' were clever enough, but vague and absurdly thin, mere shadows of what was coming. But suddenly, one morning, descended like Mercury the angel Pickwick beaming through his spectacles ; and the man-child revelled in laughter, utterly abandoning himself to the maddest mood. He was not as yet quite spell-bound by his own magic, and was merely full of the fun. The tricksy Spirit of Metaphor, which he compelled to such untiring service afterwards, scarcely got beyond such an image as this, in the vulgar- ising style of 'Tom Jones': 'That punctual servant- of-all-work, the sun, had just risen and begun to strike a light.' But the book was full of quiddity, rich in secret unction. It was in a sadder mood, with the recollections of his hard boyish sufferings still too fresh upon him, that he wrote ' Oliver Twist.' This book, with all its faults, shows what its writer might have been, if he had not chosen rather to be a great magician. Putting aside 1 See < The Mystery of Edwin Drood.' The ' Good Genie' of Fiction. 39 altogether the artificial love story with which it is in- terblended, and which is the merest padding, there is scarcely a character in this fiction which is not rigidly drawn from the life, and that without the faintest attempt to secure quiddity at the expense of verisimi- litude. The character of Nancy, the figures of Fagin and his pupils, the conduct of Sykes after the murder, are all studies in the hardest realistic manner, with not one flash of glamour. Even the Dodger is more life-like than delightful. There are touches in it of marvellous cunning, strokes of superb insight, bits of description unmatched out of the writer's own works ; but the lyric identity (if we may apply the phrase to one who, although he wrote in prose, was specifically a poet) had yet to be achieved. The charm was not all spoken. The child-like mood was not yet quite fixed. Not at the ' Oliver Twist ' stage of genius could he have written thus of a foggy November day : ' Smoke lowering down from chimney-pots, making a soft black drizzle, with flakes of soot in it as big as full-grown snow-flakes gone into mourning, one might imagine, for the death of the sun ; ' or thus about shop-windows on the same occasion : ' Shops lighted two hours before their time as the gas seems to know, for it has a hag- gard and unwilling look ; ' or thus of a sleeping country town, where ' nothing seemed to be going on but the clocks, and they had such drowsy faces, such heavy lazy hands, and such cracked voices, and they surely must have been too slow.' Still less could he have pictured the wonderful figure of little Nell surrounded 4