as
well as a character study. There is something decorative even about the
insistence on the swarthiness of Othello, or the deformity of Richard
III. Shakespeare's work is much more than picturesque; but it is
picturesque. And the same which is said here of him by way of example is
largely true of the highest class of literature. Dante's _Divine Comedy_
is supremely important as a philosophy; but it is important merely as a
panorama. Spenser's _Faery Queen_ pleases us as an allegory; but it
would please us even as a wall-paper. Stronger still is the case of
Chaucer who loved the pure picturesque, which always includes something
of what we commonly call the ugly. The huge stature and startling
scarlet face of the Sompnour is in just the same spirit as Shakespeare's
skulls and motley; the same spirit gave Chaucer's miller bagpipes, and
clad his doctor in crimson. It is the spirit which, while making many
other things, loves to make a picture.

Now the second thing to be remarked in apology for the picturesque is,
that the very thing which makes it seem trivial ought really to make it
seem important; I mean the fact that it consists necessarily of
contrasts. It brings together types that stand out from their
background, but are abruptly different from each other, like the clown
among the fairies or the fool in the forest. And his audacious
reconciliation is a mark not of frivolity but of extreme seriousness. A
man who deals in harmonies, who only matches stars with angels or lambs
with spring flowers, he indeed may be frivolous; for he is taking one
mood at a time, and perhaps forgetting each mood as it passes. But a man
who ventures to combine an angel and an octopus must have some serious
view of the universe. The man who should write a dialogue between two
early Christians might be a mere writer of dialogues. But a man who
should write a dialogue between an early Christian and the Missing Link
would have to be a philosopher. The more widely different the types
talked of, the more serious and universal must be the philosophy which
talks of them. The mark of the light and thoughtless writer is the
harmony of his subject matter; the mark of the thoughtful writer is its
apparent diversity. The most flippant lyric poet might write a pretty
poem about lambs; but it requires something bolder and graver than a
poet, it requires an ecstatic prophet, to talk about the lion lying down
with the lamb.

Dickens, at any rate, strong