The volume is only one of
a series- only part of a whole; and the title has no right to
insinuate otherwise. So obvious is this intention to misguide, that it
has led to the absurdity of putting the inclusive, or general, title
of the series, as a secondary instead of a primary one. Anybody may
see that if the wish had been fairly to represent the plan and
extent of the volume, something like this would have been given on a
single page-
MASTER HUMPHREY'S CLOCK
By Charles Dickens. Part I. Containing The Old Curiosity Shop,
and other tales, with numerous illustrations, &c. &c.
This would have been better for all parties, a good deal more
honest, and a vast deal more easily understood. In fact, there is
sufficient uncertainty of purpose in the book itself, without resort
to mystification in the matter of title. We do not think it altogether
impossible that the rumors in respect to the sanity of Mr. Dickens
which were so prevalent during the publication of the first numbers of
the work, had some slight- some very slight foundation in truth. By
this, we mean merely to say that the mind of the author, at the
time, might possibly have been struggling with some of those
manifold and multiform aberrations by which the nobler order of genius
is so frequently beset- but which are still so very far removed from
disease.
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