We have
heard some of them called caricatures- but the charge is grossly
ill-founded. No critical principle is more firmly based in reason than
that a certain amount of exaggeration is essential to the proper
depicting of truth itself. We do not paint an object to be true, but
to appear true to the beholder. Were we to copy nature with accuracy
the object copied would seem unnatural. The columns of the Greek
temples, which convey the idea of absolute proportion, are very
considerably thicker just beneath the capital than at the base. We
regret that we have not left ourselves space in which to examine
this whole question as it deserves. We must content ourselves with
saying that caricature seldom exists (unless in so gross a form as
to disgust at once) where the component parts are in keeping; and that
the laugh excited by it, in any case, is radically distinct from
that induced by a properly artistical incongruity- the source of all
mirth. Were these creations of Mr. Dickens' really caricatures they
would not live in public estimation beyond the hour of their first
survey. We regard them as creations- (that is to say as original
combinations of character) only not all of the highest order,
because the elements employed are not always of the highest. In the
instances of Nelly, the grandfather, the Sexton, and the man of the
furnace, the force of the creative intellect could scarcely have
been engaged with nobler material, and the result is that these
personages belong to the most august regions of the Ideal.
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