Dickens - Page 2

too obvious; it was essentially personal, original, quaint, unexpected, and his own. His pathos was not infrequently derived from sources open to all the world, and capable of being drawn from by very commonplace writers. Little Nells and Dombeys, children unhappy, overthrown early in the melee of the world, and dying among weeping readers, no longer affect us as they affected another generation. Mrs. Beecher Stowe and the author of "Misunderstood," once made some people weep like anything by these simple means. Ouida can do it; plenty of people can do it. Dickens lives by virtue of what none but he can do: by virtue of Sairey Gamp, and Sam Weller, and Dick Swiveller, and Mr. Squeers, with a thousand other old friends, of whom we can never weary. No more than Cleopatra's can custom stale their infinite variety.

I do not say that Dickens' pathos is always of the too facile sort, which plays round children's death-beds. Other pathos he has, more fine and not less genuine. It may be morbid and contemptible to feel "a great inclination to cry" over David Copperfield's boyish infatuation for Steerforth; but I feel it. Steerforth was a "tiger,"--as Major Pendennis would have said, a tiger with his curly hair and his ambrosial whiskers. But when a little boy loses his heart to a big boy he does not think of this. Traddles thought of it. "Shame, J. Steerforth!" cried Traddles, when Steerforth bullied the usher. Traddles had not lost his heart, nor set up the big boy as a god in the shrine thereof. But boys do these things; most of us have had our Steerforths--tall, strong, handsome, brave, good- humoured. Far off across the years I see the face of such an one, and remember that emotion which is described in "David Copperfield," chap. xix., towards the end of the chapter. I don't know any other novelist who has touched this young and absolutely disinterested belief of a little boy in a big one--touched it so kindly and seriously, that is there is a hint of it in "Dr. Birch's School Days."

But Dickens is always excellent in his boys, of whom he has drawn dozens of types--all capital. There is Tommy Traddles, for example. And how can people say that Dickens could not draw a gentleman? The boy who shouted, "Shame, J. Steerforth!" was a gentleman, if one may pretend to have an opinion about a theme so difficult. The Dodger and Charley Bates are delightful boys--especially Bates. Pip, in the good old days, when he was the prowling boy, and fought Herbert Pocket, was not less attractive, and Herbert himself, with his theory and practice of the art of self-defence--could Nelson have been more brave, or Shelley (as in Mr. Matthew Arnold's opinion) more "ineffectual"? Even the boys at Dotheboys Hall are each of them quite distinct. Dickens's boys are almost as dear to me as Thackeray's--as little Rawdon himself. There is one exception. I cannot interest myself in