1838.

LONDON: thereto of light and pleasant articles of food; and concludes, after some general moralizing on the shiftings and changes of this world having taken so wonderful a turn that mail-coach guards were become no longer judges of horse-flesh: 'I reap no gain or profit by parting from 'you, nor will any conveyance of your property be re'quired, for in this respect you have always been literally 'Bentley's Miscellany and never mine'

CHAPTER IX.

NICHOLAS NICKLEBY.

1838 AND 1839.

1838-9.

Doubts of

I WELL recollect the doubt there was, mixed with LONDON: the eager expectation which the announcement of his second serial story had awakened, whether the event Nickleby: would justify all that interest; and if indeed it were possible that the young writer could continue to walk steadily under the burthen of the popularity laid upon him. The first number dispersed this cloud of a question in a burst of sunshine; and as much of the gaiety of nations as had been eclipsed by old Mr. Pickwick's voluntary exile to Dulwich, was restored by the Dispelled. cheerful confidence with which young Mr. Nicholas Nickleby stepped into his shoes. Everything that had given charm to the first book was here, with more attention to the important requisite of a story, and more wealth as well as truth of character.

How this was poured forth in each successive number, it hardly needs that I should tell. To recall it now, is to talk of what since has so interwoven itself with common speech and thought, as to have become almost part of the daily life of us all. It was well said of him, soon after his

1838-9.

Remark

LONDON: death, in mentioning how largely his compositions had furnished one of the chief sources of intellectual enjoyment to this generation, that his language had become. part of the language of every class and rank of his countrymen, and his characters were a portion of our contemporaries. 'It seems scarcely possible,' continued this otherwise not too indulgent commentator, 'to 'believe that there never were any such persons as Mr. 'Pickwick and Mrs. Nickleby and Mrs. Gamp. They are 'to us not only types of English life, but types actually 'existing. They at once revealed the existence of such 'people, and made them thoroughly comprehensible. They 'were not studies of persous, but persons. And yet they

of the Saturday Review.

Idealiza

tion of the real.

Characters selfrevealed.

were idealized in the sense that the reader did not think 'that they were drawn from the life. They were alive; 'they were themselves.' The writer might have added that this is proper to all true masters of fiction who work in the higher regions of their calling.

Nothing certainly could express better what the new book was at this time making manifest to its thousands of readers; not simply an astonishing variety in the creations of character, but what it was that made these creations so real; not merely the writer's wealth of genius, but the secret and form of his art. There never was any one who had less need to talk about his characters, because never were characters so surely revealed by themselves; and it was thus their reality made itself felt at once. They talked so well that everybody took to repeating what they said, as the writer just quoted has pointed out; and the sayings being the constituent elements of the characters,

1838-9.

these also of themselves became part of the public. This, LONDON: which must always be a novelist's highest achievement, was the art carried to exquisite perfection on a more limited stage by Miss Austen; and, under widely different conditions both of art and work, it was pre-eminently that of Dickens. I told him, on reading the first dialogue of Mrs. Nickleby and Miss Knag, that he had been lately reading Miss Bates in Emma, but I found that he had not at this time made the acquaintance of that fine writer.

Miss Bates

and Mrs.

Nickleby.

Who that recollects the numbers of Nickleby as they appeared can have forgotten how each number added to the general enjoyment? All that had given Pickwick its vast popularity, the overflowing mirth, hearty exuberance of humour, and genial kindliness of satire, had here the advantage of a better laid design, more connected incidents, and greater precision of character. Everybody seemed immediately to know the Nickleby family as well as his own. Dotheboys, with all that rendered it, like a piece Dotheboya. by Hogarth, both ludicrous and terrible, became a household word. Successive groups of Mantalinis, Kenwigses, Crummleses, introduced each its little world of reality, lighted up everywhere with truth and life, with capital observation, the quaintest drollery, and quite boundless mirth and fun. The brothers Cheeryble brought with them all the charities. With Smike came the first of those

Newman

Smike and pathetic pictures that filled the world with pity for what Noggs. cruelty, ignorance, or neglect may inflict upon the young. And Newman Noggs ushered in that class of the creatures of his fancy in which he took himself perhaps the most delight, and which the oftener he dealt with the more he

VOL. I.

L

1838-9.

A favourite type of character.

Sydney
Smith to

C. D.

LONDON seemed to know how to vary and render attractive; gentlemen by nature, however shocking bad their hats or ungenteel their dialects; philosophers of modest endurance, and needy but most respectable coats; a sort of humble angels of sympathy and self-denial, though without a particle of splendour or even good looks about them, except what an eye as fine as their own feelings. might discern. My friends,' wrote Sydney Smith, describing to Dickens the anxiety of some ladies of his acquaintance to meet him at dinner, 'have not the 'smallest objection to be put into a number, but on the contrary would be proud of the distinction; and Lady 'Charlotte, in particular, you may marry to Newman Noggs.' Lady Charlotte was not a more real person to Sydney than Newman Noggs; and all the world that Dickens attracted to his books could draw from them the same advantage as the man of wit and genius. It has been lately objected that humanity is not seen in them in its highest or noblest types, and the assertion may hereafter be worth considering; but what is very certain is, that they have inculcated humanity in familiar and engaging forms to thousands and tens of thousands of their readers, who can hardly have failed each to make his little world around him somewhat the better for their teaching. From first to last they were never for a moment alien to either the sympathies or the understandings of any class; and there were crowds of people at this time that could not have told you what imagination meant, who were adding month by month to their limited stores the boundless gains of imagination.