.

The very title of this book indicates the confidence of conscious
genius. In a new aspirant for public favor, such a title might have been
a good device to attract attention; but the most famous novelist of the
day, watched by jealous rivals and critics, could hardly have selected
it, had he not inwardly felt the capacity to meet all the expectations
he raised. We have read it, as we have read all Mr. Dickens's previous
works, as it appeared in instalments, and can testify to the felicity
with which expectation was excited and prolonged, and to the series of
surprises which accompanied the unfolding of the plot of the story. In
no other of his romances has the author succeeded so perfectly in at
once stimulating and baffling the curiosity of his readers. He stirred
the dullest minds to guess the secret of his mystery; but, so far as
we have learned, the guesses of his most intelligent readers have been
almost as wide of the mark as those of the least apprehensive. It has
been all the more provoking to the former class, that each surprise was
the result of art, and not of trick; for a rapid review of previous
chapters has shown that the materials of a strictly logical development
of the story were freely given. Even after the first, second, third, and
even fourth of these surprises gave their pleasing electric shocks
to intelligent curiosity, the _denouement_ was still hidden, though
confidentially foretold. The plot of the romance is therefore
universally admitted to be the best that Dickens has ever invented. Its
leading events are, as we read the story consecutively, artistically
necessary, yet, at the same time, the processes are artistically
concealed. We follow the movement of a logic of passion and character,
the real premises of which we detect only when we are startled by the
conclusions.

The plot of "Great Expectations" is also noticeable as indicating,
better than any of his previous stories, the individuality of Dickens's
genius. Everybody must have discerned in the action of his mind two
diverging tendencies, which, in this novel, are harmonized. He possesses
a singularly wide, clear, and minute power of accurate observation,
both of things and of persons; but his observation, keen and true to
actualities as it independently is, is not a dominant faculty, and is
opposed or controlled by the strong tendency of his disposition to
pathetic or humorous idealization. Perhaps in "The Old Curiosity Shop"
thes