I have mentioned more than once the obscurity of Dickens's plots.
This difficulty may be accounted for in a very flattering manner.
Where do we lose ourselves? Not in the bare high-road, but among
lanes, between hedges hung with roses, blackberries, morning
glories, where all about us is so full of pleasure that our
attention is distracted and we miss our way. Now, in Dickens--in
"Oliver Twist," in "Martin Chuzzlewit," in "Nicholas Nickleby"--
there is, as in the lanes, so much to divert and beguile, that we
cease to care very much where the road leads--a road so full of
happy marvels. The dark, plotting villains--like the tramp who
frightened Sir Walter Scott so terribly, as he came from Miss
Baillie's at Hampstead--peer out from behind the hedges now and
then. But we are too much amused by the light hearts that go all
the way, by the Dodger and Crummles and Mrs. Gamp, to care much for
what Ralph, and Monk, and Jonas Chuzzlewit are plotting. It may not
be that the plot is so confused, but that we are too much diverted
to care for the plot, for the incredible machinations of Uriah Heap,
to choose another example. Mr. Micawber cleared these up; but it is
Mr. Micawber that hinders us from heeding them.
This, at least, is a not unfriendly explanation. Yet I cannot but
believe that, though Dickens took great pains with his plots, he was
not a great plotter. He was not, any more than Thackeray, a story-
teller first and foremost.
Pages:
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
158