ly supports this conception: that great
literary men as such do not despise the purely pictorial. No man's works
have so much the quality of illustrating themselves. Few men's works
have been more thoroughly and eagerly illustrated; few men's works can
it have been better fun to illustrate. As a rule this fascinating
quality in the mere fantastic figures of the tale was inseparable from
their farcical quality in the tale. Stiggins's red nose is distinctly
connected with the fact that he is a member of the Ebenezer Temperance
Association; Quilp is little, because a little of him goes a long way.
Mr. Carker smiles and smiles and is a villain; Mr. Chadband is fat
because in his case to be fat is to be hated. The story is immeasurably
more important than the picture; it is not mere indulgence in the
picturesque. Generally it is an intellectual love of the comic; not a
pure love of the grotesque.

But in one book Dickens suddenly confesses that he likes the grotesque
even without the comic. In one case he makes clear that he enjoys pure
pictures with a pure love of the picturesque. That place is _Barnaby
Rudge_. There had indeed been hints of it in many episodes in his books;
notably, for example, in that fine scene of the death of Quilp--a scene
in which the dwarf remains fantastic long after he has ceased to be in
any way funny. Still, the dwarf was meant to be funny. Humour of a
horrible kind, but still humour, is the purpose of Quilp's existence and
position in the book. Laughter is the object of all his oddities. But
laughter is not the object of Barnaby Rudge's oddities. His idiot
costume and his ugly raven are used for the purpose of the pure
grotesque; solely to make a certain kind of Gothic sketch.

It is commonly this love of pictures that drives men back upon the
historical novel. But it is very typical of Dickens's living interest in
his own time, that though he wrote two historical novels they were
neither of them of very ancient history. They were both, indeed, of very
recent history; only they were those parts of recent history which were
specially picturesque. I do not think that this was due to any mere
consciousness on his part that he knew no history. Undoubtedly he knew
no history; and he may or may not have been conscious of the fact. But
the consciousness did not prevent him from writing a _History of
England_. Nor did it prevent him from interlarding all or any of his
works with tales of the pictorial