...This introduction, then, will have prepared you for an exceedingly
humane and laudatory notice of the packet of works which you were good
enough to send me, and which, though they doubtless contain a great deal
that the critic would not write (from the extreme delicacy of his taste
and the vast range of his learning) also contain, between ourselves, a
great deal that the critic _could_ not write if he would ever so; and
this is a truth which critics are sometimes apt to forget in their
judgments of works of fiction. As a rustical boy, hired at twopence a
week, may fling stones at the blackbirds and drive them off and possibly
hit one or two, yet if he get into the hedge and begin to sing, he will
make a wretched business of the music, and Labin and Colin and the
dullest swains of the village will laugh egregiously at his folly; so
the critic employed to assault the poet.... But the rest of the simile
is obvious, and will be apprehended at once by a person of your
experience.
The fact is, that the blackbirds of letters--the harmless, kind singing
creatures who line the hedge-sides and chirp and twitter as nature bade
them (they can no more help singing, these poets, than a flower can help
smelling sweet), have been treated much too ruthlessly by the watch-boys
of the press, who have a love for flinging stones at the little
innocents, and pretend that it is their duty, and that every wren or
sparrow is likely to destroy a whole field of wheat, or to turn out a
monstrous bird of prey. Leave we these vain sports and savage pastimes
of youth, and turn we to the benevolent philosophy of maturer age.
* * * * *
And now there is but one book left in the box, the smallest one, but oh!
how much the best of all. It is the work of the master of all the
English humourists now alive; the young man who came and took his place
calmly at the head of the whole tribe, and who has kept it. Think of all
we owe Mr. Dickens since these half-dozen years, the store of happy
hours that he has made us pass, the kindly and pleasant companions whom
he has introduced to us, the harmless laughter, the generous wit, the
frank, manly, human love which he has taught us to feel! Every month of
these years has brought us some kind token from this delightful genius.
His books may have lost in art, perhaps, but could we afford to wait?
Since the days when the _Spectator_ was produced by a man of kindred
mind and temper, what books have appeared that have taken so
affectionate a hold of the English public as these? They have made
millions of rich and poor happy; they might have been locked up for nine
years, doubtless, and pruned here and there, and improved (which I
doubt) but where would have been the reader's benefit all this time,
while the author was elaborating his performance? Would the
communication between the writer and the public have been what it is
now--something continual, confidential, something like personal
affection? I do not know whether these stories are written for future
ages; many sage critics doubt on this head. There are always such
conjurors to tell literary fortunes; and, to my certain knowledge, Boz,
according to them, has been sinking regularly these six years. I doubt
about that mysterious writing for futurity which certain big wigs
prescribe. Snarl has a chance, certainly. His works, which have not been
read in this age, _may_ be read in future; but the receipt for that sort
of writing has never as yet been clearly ascertained. Shakespeare did
not write for futurity, he wrote his plays for the same purpose which
inspires the pen of Alfred Bunn, Esquire, viz., to fill his Theatre
Royal. And yet we read Shakespeare now. Le Sage and Fielding wrote for
their public; and through the great Dr. Johnson put his peevish protest
against the fame of the latter, and voted him "a dull dog, sir,--a low
fellow," yet somehow Harry Fielding has survived in spite of the critic,
and Parson Adams is at this minute as real a character, as much loved by
us as the old doctor himself. What a noble, divine power of genius this
is, which, passing from the poet into his reader's soul, mingles with
it, and there engenders, as it were, real creatures; which is as strong
as history, which creates beings that take their place besides nature's
own. All that we know of Don Quixote or Louis XIV we got to know in the
same way--out of a book. I declare I love Sir Roger de Coverley quite as
much as Izaak Walton, and have just as clear a consciousness of the
looks, voice, habit, and manner of being of the one as of the other.
And so with regard to this question of futurity; if any benevolent being
of the present age is imbued with a desire to know what his
great-great-grandchild will think of this or that author--of Mr. Dickens
especially, whose claims to fame have raised the question--the only way to
settle it is by the ordinary historic method. Did not your
great-great-grandfather love and delight in Don Quixote and Sancho Panza?
Have they lost their vitality by their age? Don't they move laughter and
awaken affection now as three hundred years ago? And so with Don Pickwick
and Sancho Weller, if their gentle humours and kindly wit, and hearty
benevolent natures, touch us and convince us, as it were, now, why should
they not exist for our children as well as for us, and make the
twenty-fifth century happy, as they have the nineteenth? Let Snarl console
himself, then, as to the future.
As for the _Christmas Carol_, or any other book of a like nature which
the public takes upon itself to criticise, the individual critic had
quite best hold his peace. One remembers what Buonaparte replied to some
Austrian critics, of much correctness and acumen, who doubted about
acknowledging the French republic. I do not mean that the _Christmas
Carol_ is quite as brilliant or self-evident as the sun at noonday; but
it is so spread over England by this time, that no sceptic, no _Fraser's
Magazine_,--no, not even the godlike and ancient _Quarterly_ itself
(venerable, Saturnian, big-wigged dynasty!) could review it down.
"Unhappy people! deluded race!" One hears the cauliflowered god exclaim,
mournfully shaking the powder out of his ambrosial curls, "What strange
new folly is this? What new deity do you worship? Know ye what ye do?
Know ye that your new idol hath little Latin and less Greek? Know ye
that he has never tasted the birch at Eton, nor trodden the flags of
Carfax, nor paced the academic flats of Trumpington? Know ye that in
mathematics, or logic, this wretched ignoramus is not fit to hold a
candle to a wooden spoon? See ye not how, from describing law humours,
he now, forsooth, will attempt the sublime? Discern ye not his faults of
taste, his deplorable propensity to write blank verse? Come back to your
ancient, venerable, and natural instructors. Leave this new, low and
intoxicating draught at which ye rush, and let us lead you back to the
old wells of classic lore. Come and repose with us there. We are your
gods; we are the ancient oracles, and no mistake. Come listen to us once
more, and we will sing to you the mystic numbers of _as in presenti_
under the arches of the _Pons asinorum_." But the children of the
present generation hear not; for they reply, "Rush to the Strand, and
purchase five thousand more copies of the _Christmas Carol_."
In fact, one might as well detail the plot of the _Merry Wives of
Windsor_ or _Robinson Crusoe_, as recapitulate here the adventures of
Scrooge the miser, and his Christmas conversion. I am not sure that the
allegory is a very complete one, and protest, with the classics, against
the use of blank verse in prose; but here all objections stop. Who can
listen to objections regarding such a book as this? It seems to me a
national benefit, and to every man or woman who reads it a personal
kindness. The last two people I heard speak of it were women; neither
knew the other, or the author, and both said, by way of criticism, "God
bless him!" A Scotch philosopher, who nationally does not keep
Christmas, on reading the book, sent out for a turkey, and asked two
friends to dine--this is a fact! Many men were known to sit down after
perusing it, and write off letters to their friends, not about business,
but out of their fulness of heart, and to wish old acquaintances a happy
Christmas. Had the book appeared a fortnight earlier, all the prize
cattle would have been gobbled up in pure love and friendship, Epping
denuded of sausages, and not a turkey left in Norfolk. His royal
highness's fat stock would have fetched unheard of prices, and Alderman
Bannister would have been tired of slaying. But there is a Christmas for
1844 too; the book will be as early then as now, and so let speculators
look out.
As for TINY TIM, there is a certain passage in the book regarding that
young gentleman, about which a man should hardly venture to speak in
print or in public, any more than he would of any other affections of
his private heart. There is not a reader in England but that little
creature will be a bond of union between the author and him; and he will
say of Charles Dickens, as the woman just now, "GOD BLESS HIM!" What a
feeling is this for a writer to be able to inspire, and what a reward to
reap.