Now, there is nothing not genial and delightful in Crummles and Mrs.
Crummles and the Infant Phenomenon. Here Dickens has got into a
region unlike the region of the pathetic, into a world that welcomes
charge or caricature, the world of humour. We do not know, we never
meet Crummleses quite so unsophisticated as Vincent, who is "not a
Prussian," who "can't think who puts these things into the papers."
But we do meet stage people who come very near to this naivete of
self-advertisement, and some of whom are just as dismal as Crummles
is delightful.
Here, no doubt, is Dickens's forte. Here his genius is all pure
gold, in his successful studies or inventions of the humorous, of
character parts. One literally does not know where to begin or end
in one's admiration for this creative power that peopled our fancies
with such troops of dear and impossible friends. "Pickwick" comes
practically first, and he never surpassed "Pickwick." He was a poor
story-teller, and in "Pickwick" he had no story to tell; he merely
wandered at adventure in that merrier England which was before
railways were. "Pickwick" is the last of the stories of the road
that begin in the wandering, aimless, adventurous romances of
Greece, or in Petronius Arbiter, and that live with the life of "Gil
Blas" and "Don Quixote," of "Le Roman Comique," of "Tom Jones and
"Joseph Andrews." These tales are progresses along highways
bristling with adventure, and among inns full of confusion, Mr.
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