Every man has remarked in dreams the vast dramatic power which is sometimes evinced-I won't say the surprising power -for nothing does surprise you in dreams. But those strange characters you meet make instant observations of which you never can have thought previously. In like manner, the imag- 270 ination foretells things. We spake anon* of the inflated style of some writers. What, also, if there is an afflated style, when a writer is like a Pythoness on her oracle tripod,* and mighty words-words which he cannot help-come blowing and bellowing and whistling and moaning through the speaking-pipes 275 of his bodily organ? I have told you it was a very queer shock to me the other day when, with a letter of introduction in his hand, the artist's (not my) Philip Firmin walked into this room and sat down in the chair opposite. In the novel of Pendennis, written ten years ago, there is an account of a certain Costigan, 280 whom I had invented (as I suppose authors invent their personages out of scraps, heel-taps, odds and ends of characters). I was smoking in a tavern parlor one night, and this Costigan came into the room alive-the very man--the most remarkable resemblance of the printed sketches of the man, of the rude 285 drawings in which I had depicted him. He had the same little coat, the same battered hat cocked on one eye, the same twinkle in that eye. "Sir," said I, knowing him to be an old friend whom I had met in unknown regions-"sir," I said," may I offer you a glass of brandy-and-water?"—" Bedad ye may,” 290 says he," and I'll sing you a song tu.” Of course he spoke with an Irish brogue. Of course he had been in the army. In ten minutes he pulled out an army agent's account, whereon his name was written. A few months after we read of him in a police court. How had I come to know him, to divine him? 295 Nothing shall convince me that I have not seen that man in the world of spirits. In the world of spirits-and-water I know I did; but that is a mere quibble of words. I was not surprised when LITERARY ANALYSIS.-271. spake. Remark on the form. 272. afflated. This is a word of Thackeray's own coinage. It is derived from Lat. afflatus, inspiration. 272-276. What... organ? The sentence suggests by its very structure the thought which the author is expressing. he spoke in an Irish brogue. I had had cognizance of him before, somehow. Who has not felt that little shock which arises 300 when a person, a place, some words in a book (there is always a collocation) present themselves to you, and you know that you have before met the same person, words, scene, and so forth? 8. They used to call the good Sir Walter the "Wizard of the North." What if some writer should appear who can write so 305 enchantingly that he shall be able to call into actual life the people whom he invents? What if Mignon and Margaret and Goetz von Berlichingen are alive now (though I don't say they are visible), and Dugald Dalgetty and Ivanhoe were to step in at that open window by the little garden yonder? Suppose Un- 310 cas and our noble old Leatherstocking were to glide, silent, in? Suppose Athos, Porthos, and Aramis should enter with a noiseless swagger, curling their mustaches? And dearest Amelia Booth, on Uncle Toby's arm, Tittlebat Titmouse, with his hair dyed green, and all the Crummles company of comedians, with 315 the Gil Blas troop, and Sir Roger de Coverley, and the greatest of all crazy gentlemen, the Knight of La Mancha, with his blessed squire? I say to you, I look rather wistfully towards the window, musing upon these people. Were any of them to enter, I think I should not be very much frightened. Dear old 320 friends, what pleasant hours I have had with them! We do not see each other very often, but when we do we are ever happy to meet. I had a capital half hour with Jacob Faithful last night. -when the last sheet was corrected, when “ Finis” had been written, and the printer's boy, with the copy, was safe in Green 325 Arbor Court. 9. So you are gone, little printer's boy, with the last scratches and corrections on the proof, and a fine flourish by way of Finis at the story's end. The last corrections? I say those last corrections seem never to be finished. A plague upon the weeds! 330 Every day, when I walk in my own little literary garden-plot, I spy some, and should like to have a spud* and root them out. Those idle words, neighbor, are past remedy. That turning LITERARY ANALYSIS. -304–326. The pupil should name the books in which the several characters mentioned in this paragraph occur. back to the old pages produces anything but elation of mind. Would you not pay a pretty fine to be able to cancel some of 335 them? Oh, the sad old pages, the dull old pages! Oh, the cares, the ennui, the squabbles, the repetitions, the old conversations over and over again! But now and again a kind thought is recalled, and now and again a dear memory. Yet a few chapters more, and then the last: after which, behold 340 Finis itself come to an end, and the Infinite begun. CHARACTERIZATION BY E. P. WHIPPLE. 1. Dickens, as a novelist and prose poet, is to be classed in the front rank of the noble company to which he belongs. He has revived the novel of genuine practical life, as it existed in the works of Fielding, Smollett, and Goldsmith; but, at the same time, has given to his materials an individual coloring and expression peculiarly his own. His characters, like those of his great examplars, constitute a world of their own, whose truth to nature every reader instinctively recognizes in connection with their truth to Dickens. Fielding delineates with more exquisite art, standing more as the spectator of his personages, and commenting on their actions with an ironical humor and a seeming innocence of insight which pierces not only into, but through, their very nature, laying bare their inmost unconscious springs of action, and in every instance indicating that he understands them better than they understand themselves. It is this perfection of knowledge and insight which gives to his novels their naturalness, their freedom of movement, and their value as lessons in human nature as well as consummate representations of actual life. Dickens's eye for forms of things is as accurate as Fielding's, and his range of vision more extended; but he does not probe so profoundly into the heart of what he sees, and he is more led away from the simplicity of truth by a tricksy spirit of fantastic exaggeration. Mentally, he is indisputably below Fielding; but in tenderness, in pathos, in sweetness and purity of feeling, in that comprehensiveness of sympathy which springs from a sense of brotherhood with mankind, he is indisputably above him. . . . 2. In representing life and character, there are two characteristics of his genius which startle every reader by their obviousness and power-his humor and pathos; but in respect to the operation of those qualities in his delineations, critics have sometimes objected that his humor is apt to run into fantastic exaggeration, and his pathos into sentimental excess. Indeed, in regard to his humorous characters, it may be said that the vivid intensity with which he conceives them, and the overflowing abundance of joy and merriment which spring instinctively up from the very foundations of his being at the slightest point of the ludicrous, sometimes lead him to the very verge of caricature. He seems himself to be taken by surprise as his glad and genial fancies throng into his brain, and to laugh and exult with the beings he has called into existence in the spirit of a man observing, not creating. Squeers and Pecksniff, Simon Tappertit and |