ady which Sir Walter
already detected in his own "Peveril of the Peak." The intense strain on
the faculties of Dickens--as author, editor, reader, and man of the
world--could not but tell on him; and years must tell. "Philip" is not
worthy of the author of "Esmond," nor "Daniel Deronda" of the author of
"Silas Marner." At that time--the time of the Dorrits and
Dombeys--_Blackwood's Magazine_ published a "Remonstrance with Boz"; nor
was it quite superfluous. But Dickens had abundance of talent still to
display--above all in "Great Expectations" and "A Tale of Two Cities."
The former is, after "Pickwick," "Copperfield," "Martin Chuzzlewit," and
"Nicholas Nickleby"--after the classics, in fact--the most delightful of
Dickens's books. The story is embroiled, no doubt. What are we to think
of Estelle? Has the minx any purpose? Is she a kind of Ethel Newcome of
odd life? It is not easy to say; still, for a story of Dickens's the
plot is comparatively clear and intelligible. For a study of a child's
life, of the nature Dickens drew best--the river and the marshes--and for
plenty of honest explosive fun, there is no later book of Dickens's like
"Great Expectations." Miss Havisham, too, in her mouldy bridal
splendour, is really impressive; not like Ralph Nickleby and Monk in
"Oliver Twist"--a book of which the plot remains to me a mystery. {128}
Pip and Pumblechook and Mr. Wopsle and Jo are all immortal, and cause
laughter inextinguishable. The rarity of this book, by the way, in its
first edition--the usual library three volumes--is rather difficult to
explain. One very seldom sees it come into the market, and then it is
highly priced.

I have mentioned more than once the obscurity of Dickens's plots. This
difficulty may be accounted for in a very flattering manner. Where do we
lose ourselves? Not in the bare high-road, but among lanes, between
hedges hung with roses, blackberries, morning glories, where all about us
is so full of pleasure that our attention is distracted and we miss our
way. Now, in Dickens--in "Oliver Twist," in "Martin Chuzzlewit," in
"Nicholas Nickleby"--there is, as in the lanes, so much to divert and
beguile, that we cease to care very much where the road leads--a road so
full of happy marvels. The dark, plotting villains--like the tramp who
frightened Sir Walter Scott so terribly, as he came from Miss Baillie's
at Hampstead--peer out from behind the hedges now and then. But we are
too