1857.]

believe that the fervid orator who delivered the speech on the Westminster Scrutiny, is the same man who wrote the History of the Reign of James II.

Mr. Gladstone is certainly no exception to the rule. He is beyond question the best speaker in the House of Commons at the present time. As a debater there, he stands not only facile princeps, but alone. Although he is perhaps too subtle a a thinker, and we will add, has too conscientious a mind to attain the highest kind of oratory, the great object of which is to persuade, by carrying as it were by storm the feelings and passions of the audience, no one can accuse him of not being clear, pointed, and vigorous. in debate; but, on the other hand, no one can deny that he is an obscure and intricate writer. He swims graceful as a swan on the waters of parliamentary strife, but when he takes up his pen he is like the same bird when it leaves its native element and waddles awkwardly on the ground.

We will quote two passages from his State in its Relations with the Church, either of which, from its involved style and almost studied obscurity, might puzzle an Edipus.

For how, as long as the mass of men are in juxtaposition with evil as a body, should they fail to be tainted by it; and how should its elasticity and selfpropagation prove among such materials less powerful over a kindred nature, than the operation of a kindred nature over an adverse one?

The meaning of this question, we suppose, is, How should evil, which is congenial to the nature of man, be less powerful than good, which is opposed to that nature? But we think that even Mr. Gladstone will admit that if we are mistaken, we are not without

excuse.

Again, in the next page, after saying that the inclinations of individuals are variable, and some prevail at one period and others at another, he proceeds as follows:—

But when in some general practice or law which stands for an expression of sovereign will, corroborated by the testimony of public concurrence, there is embodied some influence which favours

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the one and obstructs the other of these drifting tides; this, while it secures for the sympathetic principle free scope and action under its own shelter, likewise stands as a fixed barrier against the antagonistic principle of its alternate predominance; so that, for the most part, it is fully able, between two conflicting tendencies, to cast the balance ultimately and permanently in favour of that which harmonizes with itself.

We must leave this passage to explain itself, for we really do not understand it.

We turn next to the most popular and also the most prolific author of the day-Mr. Dickens-whose style, we suppose, is nearly as familiar to our readers as the alphabet. We think he writes too much and too fast; and unless he takes more care than he seems to think it worth while to do so long as the shilling numbers of any new novel from his pen are sold by thousands, we predict that he will be the destroyer of his own reputation. He has fallen into the habit of repeating himself to a degree which becomes wearisome, and his latter works have proceeded in a descending scale. That which is now issuing from the press, Little Dorrit, is decidedly the worst. His tone is melodramatic throughout; and by this we do not mean the melodrame of Mr. Harrison Ainsworth, whose favourite heroes are highwaymen, and who makes robbery and housebreaking romantic; but we have in his works neither tragedy nor what used to be called genteel comedy, which really meant ordinary social and domestic life. Mr. Dickens delights in the sayings and doings of strange, grotesque, out-of-the-way people, of whom we hardly ever meet the prototypes in flesh and blood; and in every one of his tales he fastens some distinctive oddities upon two or three of his characters, and never allows them to speak without bringing out the peculiarity in the most marked and prominent manner. His portraits are in fact caricatures. He daguerreotypes, so to speak, a particular grimace, and presents it every time that the features come into view. Thus Pecksniff is always sententious and hypocritical; Micawber is always

full of maudlin sentiment and emphatic nonsense; Gradgrindis always practical, to a degree that ceases to be human; Mrs. Nickleby is always parenthetical and incoherent; Mark Tapley is never tired of telling us that he is jolly;' Boythorn never opens his lips without being intensely and boisterously energetic; Major Bagstock always speaks of himself in the third person, as 'J. B.', 'tough old Joe,' 'Joe is rough and tough, sir!-blunt, sir, blunt, is Joe;' Uriah Heap is always ''umble,' 'very 'umble;' and Mrs. Gamp everlastingly quotes as her authority Mrs. Harris. Mr. Dickens has also a passion for personification, and for giving to inanimate objects all the attributes of life. We may take as an instance a passage at the beginning of Martin Chuzzlewit, where he describes a gusty evening:

How

Out upon the angry wind! from sighing it began to bluster round the merry forge, banging at the wicket and grumbling in the chimney as if it bullied the jolly fellows for doing anything to order. And what an impotent swagger it was too, for all its noise: for if it had any influence on that hoarse companion, it was but to make him roar his cheerful song the louder, and by consequence to make the fire burn the brighter, and the sparks to dance more gaily yet. At length they whizzed so madly round and round, that it was too much for such a surly wind to bear: so off it flew with a howl: giving the old sign before the alehouse door such a cuff as it went, that the Blue Dragon was more rampant than ever afterwards, and indeed before Christmas reaved clean out of his crazy frame.

It was small tyranny for a respectable wind to go wreaking its vengeance on such poor creatures as the fallen leaves, but this wind happening to come up with a great heap of them just after venting its humour on the insulted Dragon, did so disperse and scatter them, that they fled away, pell-mell, some here, some there, rolling over each other, whirling round and round upon

their thin edges, taking frantic flights into the air, and playing all manner of extraordinary gambols in the extremity of their distress. Nor was this enough for its malicious fury: for, not content with driving them abroad, it charged small parties of them and hunted them into the wheelwright's sawpit, and below the planks and timbers in the yard; and, scattering the sawdust in the air, it looked for them underneath, and when

it did meet with any, whew! how it drove them on and followed at their heels!

Take, again, the following extravaganza from Little Dorrit:

Mr. Casby lived in a street in the Gray's Inn-road, which had set off from that thoroughfare with the intention of running at one heat down into the valley, and up again to the top of Pentonville-hill; but which had run itself out of breath in twenty yards, and had stood still ever since. There is no such

place in that part now; but it remained there for many years, looking with a baulked countenance at the wilderness patched with unfruitful gardens, and pimpled with eruptive summer-houses, that it had meant to run over in no time.

an

The two opposite poles between which Mr. Dickens constantly oscillates, are comic humour pushed to buffoonery, and sentiment carried to maudlin excess. He seems to have no conception of a well-constructed plot, and the interest in his novels is kept up by a succession of detached and shifting scenes, and the introduction of endless variety of funny persons, while the story is left to drift on without much guidance, and take care of itself as best as it may. His characters are all exaggerations. We doubt if there is one which, as he has drawn it, occurs in real life. The substratum, so to speak, may indeed exist there, but on this he erects a superstructure so fanciful and fantastic that nature disowns the resemblance. Our readers have no doubt seen in the shop windows little grotesque figures in terra cotta of celebrated actors, singers, and musicians, where the head is made monstrously large in proportion to the rest of the body, and the features are ridiculously exaggerated. These forcibly remind us of Mr. Dickens's characters. He has also a marvellous talent for No Dutch minute description. painter ever depicted an interior with more servile fidelity than Mr. Dickens draws still life with his pen. His marine storeshops, his frouzy dwellings, his dull November streets, his Jews' alleys, and Jacob's islands, rival the pictures of Teniers and Ostade. But while we admire the painter we are apt to grow weary of the writer.

The

eye of the spectator can take in the whole of a picture at a glance, but the mind of the reader must go through the successive points of a description until it becomes fatigued by the multiplicity of details. A favourite form or rather trick of expression with this author is circumlocution, whereby he gives an air of comic originality to the commonest incidents and most hackneyed sayings. He uses, indeed, a circuitous phraseology as fre

quently as any of the Barnacle family in his own Circumlocution Office. His satire is keen, but so far as we remember, is never illnatured. He delights in showing up a foible, whether of character or manners; and the instrument he employs for this purpose is goodhumoured irony, in which he playfully says the very opposite of his real meaning. But we are now criticising the genius rather than the style of this remarkable writer; and yet they are so intimately connected that it is difficult to separate them.

One other fault we must mention before we quit the subject, and that is his habit of pushing an idea to the extreme. He never lightly touches a subject, and then leaves it to the imagination of the reader to fill up the outline. He hugs the child of his fancy in his arms, fondles it, caresses it, forces it on our attention, and asks us to examine it until we grow tired of the display, and refuse to admire what is so perseveringly obtruded on our notice. No man ever rode a metaphor harder than Mr. Dickens. We will give one example from Little Dorrit.

It occurs to him to liken an old gentleman who is a good

Ideal under the dominion of his clerk, named Pancks, to an unwieldy ship in the Thames

when all of a sudden a little coaly steam-tug will bear down upon it, take it in tow, and bustle off with it.' After a considerable interval, we are told that the Patriarch

rose and went to the door by which Pancks had worked out, hailing that tug by name. He received an answer from some little dock beyond, and was towed out of sight directly.

VOL. LV. NO. CCCXXVII.

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Again, three pages further on we have:

Pancks dined with them. Pancks steamed out of his little dock at a quarter before six, and bore straight down for the Patriarch. Pancks instantly made fast to him, and hauled him out. Pancks took in his victuals as if he were coaling; with a good deal of noise, a good deal of dropping about, and a puff and a snort occasionally, as if he were nearly ready to steam away.

A page or two still further

'Good night!' said Clennam. But the Tug suddenly lightened, and untrammelled by having any weight, he too was already puffing away into the distance.

And so it goes on chapter after chapter. We have the Tug puffing and snorting and coaling and pulling and hauling; until we really forget that all the time it is the description of a person and not of a steamboat.

The rival of Mr. Dickens with the public is Mr. Thackeray-a very . different, and in our opinion a very superior, workman in the same craft as a novelist. He belongs, however, specially to the Humourists,--that small but chosen band of writers who, from Rabelais downwards, at rare intervals have thrown out their sportive sallies to delight those who can understand and appreciate the deep meaning which may be veiled under the form of irony. After Rabelais-Swift, Sterne, and Charles Lamb have been the chief leaders of this school; and of them all we prefer the charming author of the Essays of Elia. His style often reminds us of the sweetest music produced by the lightest touch. His fine-toned irony, his subtle wit and exquisite criticism, have never been surpassed. The nicest shades and glimpses of thought are pencilled off with unrivalled delicacy of touch. His style is the perfect reflex of his own gentle and affectionate nature, which clung so warmly to and yet sported so playfully with the objects of his attachment. Well might he ask

Sun and sky and breeze, and solitary walks and summer holidays, and the greenness of fields, and the delicious juices of meats and fishes, and society and candlelight, and fireside conversa

tions, and innocent vanities and jests, and irony itself,-do these things go out with life?

Can a ghost laugh or shake his gaunt sides when you are pleasant with him?

And you, my midnight darlings, my Folios! must I part with the intense delight of having you (huge armfuls) in my embrace? Must knowledge come to me, if it come at all, by some awkward experiment of intuition, and no longer by the familiar process of reading?

Southey's Doctor is also a delightful book of the same class. But it requires audience fit though few,' and had better not be approached by those who have no Pantagruelism in their nature, and who are like Charles Lamb's Caledonian, with whom you must speak on the square, and clap an extinguisher upon your irony, if you are unhappily blest with a vein of it. Remember you are upon your oath.'

Mr. Thackeray, however, is not always a humourist, and he can write without being satirical. Witness his Esmond, the most carefully written of all his works, and the one in which he has most conspicuously shown that he is a complete master of style. Much as we dislike the story, it is impossible not to admire the consummate skill with which he has there imitated the best writers of the time of Queen Anne, and we can but regret that it is at best only an imitation, and that the author devoted his powers to the reproduction of a style which has passed away, and to the composition of a work which must be regarded rather as a literary curiosity than a book of enduring reputation. And we may say the same of those deceptive little books of the class of Lady Willoughby's Diary, Cherry and Violet, and Mary Powell, whose authoresses attempt to realize in prose what Chatterton tried in poetry, and palm off a style

All deftly masked as hoar antiquity, to play tricks upon the public. But although with the aid of antique type and binding, and by means of a broad imitation of the style of the seventeenth century, these books might possibly pass with a careless reader as genuine productions of that period, they betray

themselves by the absence of any distinctive peculiarities of style proper to the particular times and persons at which and by whom they profess to be written. They are in fact about as correct as a dress would be made up out of the wardrobes of a courtier of the reign of Elizabeth, and a courtier of the reign of Charles II.

In his last two novels, The Caxtons and My Novel, Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton has also striven for a place amongst the humourists, but we think with indifferent success. Humour is certainly not his forte, and no writer who was blest with the vein would have condescended to appear as the servile copyist of the manner of another. To use a nautical metaphor suggested by Mr. Dickens's steam-tug, The Caxtons was laid down on the lines of Tristram Shandy, and the new ship has neither the trim nor the sailing qualities of her model. But we willingly admit that, in point of simplicity and ease of style, there is in his last two works a great improvement. That of his former novels is too stilted and high-flown, and the author, haunted with the idea of the necessity of keeping up the dignity of his subject, adopted a phraseology too affected for the natural language of ordinary life. Take, for instance, the following passages from Rienzi:

And with scarce less eagerness he laved his enfeebled form and haggard face with the water that stood at hand. He now felt refreshed and invigorated, and began to indue his garments, which he found thrown in a heap beside the bed.

Again :

He glanced over the slain, as the melancholy Hesperus played upon the bloody pool and the gory corslet.

Even in The Caxtons, Sir Edward cannot condescend to speak of a hackney-coachman, but calls him 'a ministrant of Trivia.' This may be called fine writing, but we think it is ridiculous Euphemism.

But our limits warn us here to stop, and we must go on with the subject of the present article in the next number.

1857.]

WHY

HY does a country gentleman invariably select the worst room in the house for his own private apartment, in which he transacts what he is pleased to call his 'business,' and spends the greater part of his time? At Beverley Manor there were plenty of rooms cheerfal, airy, and well-proportioned, in which it would have been a pleasure to live, but none of these were chosen by Sir Harry for his own: disregarding the charms of the saloon, the drawing-room, the morning-room, the billiard-room, and the hall itself, which, with a huge fireplace and a thick carpet, was by no means the least comfortable part of the house, he had retired toa small, ill-contrived, queer-shaped apartment, dark, dusty, and uncomfortable, of which the only recommendation was that it communicated directly with the back-staircase and offices, and did not require in its own untidiness any apology on the part of muddy visitors, who had not thought of wiping their boots and shoes as they came up. A large glass gun-case, filled with doublebarrels, occupied one side of the room, flanked by bookshelves, loaded with such useful but not entertaining works as the Racing Calendar, White's Farriery, and Hawker's Instructions to Young Sportsmen. In one corner was a whipstand, hung round with many an instrument of torture. The knotted dog-whip that reduced Ponto to reason in the golden stubbles; the long-thonged hunting-whip, that brought to mind at once the deep, fragrant woodland in November, with its scarlet coats flitting down the distant ride; and the straight, punishing 'cut-and-thrust,' that told of Derby and St. Leger, Ditch-In, Middle-Mile, and all the struggles of Epsom and Newmarket. In another was an instrument for measuring land, and a roll of plans by which acres were to be calcu

lated and a system of thorough draining established, with a view to golden profits.

'Draining,' remarked Sir Harry, in his younger days, to an assemblage of country gentlemen, who stood aghast at the temerity of his proposition, I am no advocate for draining:-voices were raised, and hands uplifted in pious horror and deprecation 'all I can say is, gentlemen, that I have drained my property till I cannot get a farthing from it,' was Sir Harry's conclusive reasoning, which must have satisfied Mr. Mechi himself.

A coloured engraving of the wellknown Beverley short-horn Dandy,' hung on one side of the fire-place, and on the other, a print of 'Flying Childers,' as he appeared when going at the rate of a mile in a minute, apparently ridden by a highwayman in huge jack-boots and a flowing periwig. In the centre of the room was fixed a large leather-covered writing-table, and at this table sat Sir Harry himself, prepared to administer justice and punish all offenders. He was a tall thin man, somewhat bent and bald, with a hooked nose and a bright searching eye, evidently a thorough man of the world in thought, opinion, and feeling; the artificial will become second nature if long enough persisted in, and Sir Harry had served no short apprenticeship to the trade of fashion. His dress was peculiarly neat and gentlemanlike, not the least what is now termed 'slang,' and yet with a something in it that marked the horseman. He was busy writing when we were ushered into the awful presence, and Victor and I had time to steal a look at each other, and to exchange a reassuring pressure of the hand. The young Hungarian raised his head frank and fearless as usual; I felt that I should like to sink into the ground, but yet was determined to stand by my friend.