On one occasion
Thackeray "lit upon a very stupid part of 'Pendennis,' I am sorry to
say; and yet how well written it is! What a shame the author don't
write a complete good story! Will he die before doing so? or come
back from America and do it?"
Did he ever write "a complete, good story"? Did any one ever do
such a thing as write a three-volume, novel, or a novel of equal
length, which was "a complete, good story"? Probably not; or if any
mortal ever succeeded in the task, it was the great Alexander Dumas.
"The Three Musketeers," I take leave to think, and "Twenty Years
After," are complete good stories, good from beginning to end,
stories from beginning to end without a break, without needless
episode. Perhaps one may say as much for "Old Mortality," and for
"Quentin Durward." But Scott and Dumas were born story-tellers;
narrative was the essence of their genius at its best; the current
of romance rolls fleetly on, bearing with it persons and events,
mirroring scenes, but never ceasing to be the main thing--the
central interest. Perhaps narrative like this is the chief success
of the novelist. He is triumphant when he carries us on, as Wolf,
the famous critic, was carried on by the tide of the Iliad, "in that
pure and rapid current of action." Nobody would claim this especial
merit for Thackeray. He is one of the greatest of novelists; he
displays human nature and human conduct so that we forget ourselves
in his persons, but he does not make us forget ourselves in their
fortunes.
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