Carlyle--been
so brilliantly illuminated. Dickens was brooding on this
story at a time when, wretchedly unhappy, he was approaching the
crisis of a separation from his wife: the fact may help to
explain its failure to draw on that seemingly inexhaustible
fountain of bubbling fun so familiar in his work. But even
subtract humor and Dickens exhibits the master-hand in a fiction
markedly of another than his wonted kind. This Novel--or
romance, as it should properly be called--reminds us of a
quality in Dickens which has been spoken of in the way of
derogation: his theatrical tendency. When one declares an author
to be dramatic, a compliment is intended. But when he is called
theatric, censure is implied. Dickens, always possessed of a
strong sense of the dramatic and using it to immense advantage,
now and again goes further and becomes theatric: that is, he
suggests the manipulating of effects with artifice and the
intention of providing sensational and scenic results at the
expense of proportion and truth. A word on this is advisable.

Those familiar with the man and his works are aware how close he
always stood to the playhouse and its product. He loved it from
early youth, all but went on the stage professionally, knew its
people as have few of the writing craft, was a fine amateur
actor himself, wrote for the stage, helped to dramatize his
novels and gave delightful studies of theatrical life in his
books. Shall we ever forget Mr. Crummles and his family? He had
an instinctive feeling for what was scenic and effective in the
stage sense. When he appeared as a reader of his own works, he
was an impersonator; and noticeably careful to have the stage
accessories exactly right. And when all this, natural and
acquired, was applied to fiction, it could not but be of
influence. As a result, Dickens sometimes forced the note,
favored the lurid, exaggerated his comic effects. To put it in
another way, this theater manner of his now and then injured the
literature he made. But that is only one side of the matter: it
also helped him greatly and where he went too far, he was simply
abusing a precious gift. To speak of Dickens' violent
theatricality as if it expressed his whole being, is like
describing the wart on Cromwell's face as if it were his set of
features. Remove from Dickens his dramatic power, and the
memorable master would be no more: he would vanish into dim air.
We may be thankful--in view of what it produced--th