Mr. Dickens, through genius, has perfected
a standard from which Art itself will derive its essence, in rules.
When we speak in this manner of the "Old Curiosity Shop," we speak
with entire deliberation, and know quite well what it is we assert. We
do not mean to say that it is perfect, as a whole- this could not well
have been the case under the circumstances of its composition. But
we know that, in all the higher elements which go to make up
literary greatness, it is supremely excellent. We think, for instance,
that the introduction of Nelly's brother (and here we address those
who have read the work) is supererogatory- that the character of Quilp
would have been more in keeping had he been confined to petty and
grotesque acts of malice- that his death should have been made the
immediate consequence of his attempt at revenge upon Kit; and that
after matters had been put fairly in train for this poetical
justice, he should not have perished by an accident inconsequential
upon his villany. We think, too, that there is an air of
ultra-accident in the finally discovered relationship between Kit's
master and the bachelor of the old church- that the sneering
politeness put into the mouth of Quilp, with his manner of
commencing a question which he wishes answered in the affirmative,
with an affirmative interrogatory, instead of the ordinary negative
one- are fashions borrowed from the authors own Fagin- that he has
repeated himself in many other instances- that the practical tricks
and love of mischief of the dwarf's boy are too nearly consonant
with the traits of the master- that so much of the propensities of
Swiveller as relate to his inapposite appropriation of odds and ends
of verse, is stolen from the generic loafer of our fellow-townsman,
Neal- and that the writer has suffered the overflowing kindness of his
own bosom to mislead him in a very important point of art, when he
endows so many of his dramatis personae with a warmth of feeling so
very rare in reality.
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