ing his way back to his men, had won his Victoria Cross-were they filled with tears?

From The Spectator.

DICKENS AS DRAMATIST.

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his ability as an actor as a reader of his own most brilliant scenes. How is it that the man who was preferred as an actor to Charles Matthews by many excellent judges, and whose most brilliant achievements, even in his novels, consisted in comic monologues or dialogues, could have produced dramatic pieces so feeble and vulgar as three of these plays, MR. RICHARD HERNE SHEPHERD has and so emptily conventional as the fourth? brought out two largely padded-out vol- We can only suggest a very partial soluumes which he entitles, "The Plays and tion of the difficulty, but a partial solution Poems of Charles Dickens," * - plays there is. Any one who will compare the and poems which could certainly have very miserable and vulgar farce called been got into a single unpretentious vol-"The Lamplighter" in these volumes, ume without any difficulty at all, and with the contributions to "The Pic Nic which would not add an iota to Dickens's Papers" called "The Lamplighter's Stogreat reputation in either shape, though ry," which is republished here, will, in in their present ostentatious form they part at least, divine it. The latter, though might injure it, if it were by this time it is one of Dickens's poorest efforts, susceptible of injury from any conceivable probably because it was a recast of the cause, by the severe disappointment rejected farce, is yet much superior to which the contents are certain to inflict the farce, and in the opening portion of it on every one who allows his expectation is not quite unworthy of the humorist. to rise as he opens them. The truth is You see at once how much better adapted that the plays are vulgar and the poems than the dramatic form was the easy nar are altogether commonplace and flimsy, rative form to the vigilant, observant hu and that neither the one nor the other are mor of Dickens. The moment he gets at all worthy of the great humorist. There his Lamplighter Chairman and his Lampare only a few touches in these volumes lighter Vice-Chairman hobnobbing toto betray the man of genius even to those gether at the Lamplighters' House of who know how great his genius was, and Call, he falls into his natural manner, and absolutely nothing to prove his genius to you begin to smile at his touches, just any doubter or disbeliever. Those plays because he does not feel bound to make for which Dickens alone is responsible every separate speech a separate effect. have an air of underbred jocoseness which "Gentlemen,' said the Lamplighter in is thoroughly distressing. And the poems the chair, I drink your healths. And are commonplace sentiments thrown into perhaps, sir,' said the Vice, holding up commonplace rhymes. No one who reads his glass, and rising a little way off his the farce called "The Lamplighter" will seat, and sitting down again, in token that feel the least surprise that even so dear a he recognized and returned the complifriend of Charles Dickens as Macready ment, perhaps you will add to that confound it impossible to accept it, while he descension by telling us who Tom Grig will find it very difficult to understand was, and how he came to be connected in how so great a humorist as Dickens ever your mind with Francis Moore, physicame to write either that, or the disagree- cian.'" That is not a sample of Dickens's able rubbish which he called "Is She his humor, but it is a sample of that easy, Wife? or Something Singular." The only keen observation which makes so admirsurprise of these volumes will be the dis- able a background for his humor; and it covery that the plays in which Dickens is certain that half the intolerable vulwas assisted by men of much less genius garity of the farce is removed by the framethan himself, i.e. Mark Lemon and Wilkie work in which it is set in the paper, where Collins, are unquestionably superior to it becomes a legendary narrative, told by those of which he alone was the author. their chairman to the assembled lamplighters in a tavern. It may be remembered how utterly another great humorist, Charles Lamb, failed, when he exchanged the easy, slipshod style of the essay, for the commedietta and the farce. The fact is, no doubt, that the dramatic form is as highly artificial a form of art as it is pos sible to conceive, as artificial as sculp

All this may be a puzzle to those who remember, first, how much of dialogue, absolutely unrivalled in its way, Dickens has embodied in his greatest books; and next, how very great he himself was as an actor, and, what was the next thing to

* W. H. Allen and Co.

ture itself, which separates outline, and | fertile in humor of the two. Wonderful
curve, and figure from all the other acces- as the dialogue often is, the marvellous
sories of the human body, and attempts humor of it may generally be detected in
to recall by a single set of characteristics its germ in the previous descriptions.
what most men are accustomed to asso- Thus, one of the few good touches in
ciate with different combinations of these "The Lamplighter" is a touch obviously
in union with a great variety of quite born of humorous observation, and not
other characteristics. Drama, in the same in the least due to dramatic instinct,
way, is an attempt to make character and the lament ascribed to the old oil-lamp-
adventure visible by conversation alone, lighter over the discovery of gas. "I
and very few have the gift requisite to foresee in this,' says Tom's uncle faintly,
succeed in this. Sir Walter Scott, for and taking to his bed as he spoke, 'I fore-
instance, failed in the attempt, and to see in this,' he says, 'the breaking-up of
some extent, no doubt, for the same reason our profession. There's no more going
for which Dickens failed in it, that, ad- the rounds to trim by daylight, no more
mirable as his dialogues often were, they dribbling-down of the oil on the hats and
depended for half their effect on previous bonnets of ladies and gentlemen, when
descriptions, or on touches of interposed one feels in spirits. Any low fellar can
comment, so that even the dialogues them-light a gas-lamp.' That, no doubt, is
selves would not seem half as admirable, put into the form of a speech, but it is a
if they were not so often interpreted or speech which has not the slightest bear-
illustrated by the author himself, speaking on the action of the piece, and which
ing in his own person. Take, for exam- obviously owed its origin to Dickens's
ple, the scene between the Antiquary and
Ede Ochiltree, in which the old bedesman
confounds his adversary by saying: "Præ-
torian here, prætorian there, I ken the
bigging o't!" and see how difficult it
would be to get the humor of that passage
of arms into a dramatic scene without
narrative accessories. And so it is with
Dickens's very best dialogues. The im-
mortal quarrel between Mrs. Gamp and
Mrs. Prig would be utterly spoiled with
out large extracts from Dickens's easy
descriptive sketches of the two ruffianly
old nurses, explanatory of the motives
with which they met, and the animosities
which, under the inflammatory influence
of drink, broke out into mutual hatred.
These wide, miscellaneous, roundabout
observers, who catch so many of the side-
points of every scene which most men But yet it will be said that since Dick-
miss, seem to be struck with a sort of ens was so great a comic actor, and as so
paralysis, when they are deprived of the many of his most popular stories, his
right to present us with those innumerable Christmas stories especially, — gravitate
side-lights and unexpected glimpses by towards melodrama, there must have been
which so many of their most telling effects a certain amount of dramatic bent and
are produced. Even Mrs. Gamp's con- talent in him. Of the bent and talent for
versation would be robbed of half its rendering dramatic effects, we have no
flavor, if you had not had the fullest pos- manner of doubt. What we do entirely
sible description of her bedroom, of her | deny is that he had any genius at all for
demeanor in waiting upon other people, concentrating naturally in dialogue the
of her servility to the undertaker and his drift of any sort of story, tragic or comic.
wife, of her brutality to Mr. Chufey. All Dickens's finest dialogues are dia-
With Dickens, description suggests the logues of pure humor, in which the story
dialogue, and the dialogue results in more hardly progresses at all. Think of the in-
description. Without the one, the other numerable clever dialogues in "Oliver
is sure to be starved; and no one who Twist" between the Beadle and the
knows his greatest books can doubt that Matron, between Noah Claypole and
the descriptive power is much the more Charlotte, between the Dodger and Char-
original and originating, much the more ley Bates, between flash Toby Crackit and

!

keen observation and humorous insight into the mischievous motive of the lamplighters, when they were "in spirits." Dickens's dialogue is always best when it grows most obviously out of his descriptions. Indeed, his greatest characters are impersonations of the external circumstances most appropriate to them, Mrs. Gamp, of the surroundings of the bad old monthly nurse; Mr. Pecksniff, of those of the ideal hypocrite; Bumble, of those of pure Bumbledom; and so forth. Where Mr. Pecksniff, for instance, begins to walk on tiptoe about a mile and a half from home, in order, as he says, to take his dear girls by surprise, you see at once how perfectly Dickens's best touches are conceptions improved by the imagination from hints caught in actual observation.

lously "earnest," which means, of course, that he threw his whole mind into the attitude of the moment. And that we can well believe. But then he so often threw his whole mind into a thoroughly unreal and affected attitude, that this is no evidence at all of dramatic capacity as an author. When, for instance, he makes Florence Dombey throughout a whole conversation insist on personally addressing the old mathematical-instrument maker as "Walter's Uncle," the reader is positively outraged by the intolerable sentimentality of this melodramatic "ear. nestness ;" and, no doubt, if Dickens could have acted a girl's part, he would have insisted on this odious conceit with supreme "earnestness." Dickens was doubtless a very effective actor, for he could take up in this way a totally false attitude of mind with as much zeal and " earnest

Sikes, and you will find that the merit of | almost all of them lies in their humor and the vivid descriptive effects, and not in the least in their development of the story. And just the same is true of "Pickwick," "Nicholas Nickleby," "Martin Chuzzlewit," and all the rest. The best dialogues are altogether non-esseatial to the story, and are enjoyed on their own account, not in the least because they promote the action of the piece. Directly Dickens sat down to write comedy or farce, he failed, because he felt the fetters of the drama. He had to make a story tell itself in dialogue, and to this his genius was really not suited. The nearest things he produced to effects of this kind were melodramatic effects, such as the final " explanations" in "The Battle of Life," and others of the Christmas tales. And we do not hesitate to say that all these melodramatic effects, even thoughness” as a true attitude. But he was no in a sense highly wrought, are utterly un- dramatist. He describes the effects of true to nature, and extremely disagree- character far better than he impersonates able in their artistic effect. Dickens, as action in speech. His dramas are as poor we think, was quite at his best when he as his poetry, and much more vulgar; and was freely inventing humorous variations though he could write melodrama, that and caricatures of the effects which his only means that he could spoil very good quick and laughing eye had seized, varia- conceptions by stimulating his imaginary tions and caricatures which were not in characters into attitudes of passion, and the least dramatic, but rather imaginative conflict, and self-vindication, in which extensions of his wide and quaint experi- every sentiment became artificial, and ence. Directly he tried to tie himself every note was uttered in a falsetto key. down to telling a story in dialogue, he be- The genuine admirer of Dickens should came either poor, feeble, and conventional, speak of these vulgar plays and convenor disagreeably excited and melodramatic. tional verses only in the subdued lanIt is said that as an actor he was marvel-guage of apology and extenuation.

66

AT the meeting of the Wordsworth Society | oracle of all the publics in the district. Wordslately, Mr. Rawnsley read a most amusing paper on the opinions of Wordsworth entertained by the poor Cumberland folk about Rydal. He "interviewed" the now aged butcher-boy who in former days served Wordsworth's family; the innkeeper who was formerly the poet's garden-boy, and who, when drunk, recollects all about the poet better than when he is sober; the waller who built walls and chimneys, etc.; and then gave their racy report in the dialect and its twang. Wordsworth was but a poor creature beside "lile Hartley," little Hartley Coleridge, "the philosopher" as he was called. The poet never went into a public house and made himself at home with his neighbors; whereas "lile Hartley" was the

worth used to go "bumming and bumming," but no one there read his poetry; his real line was chimleys" he had ideas about their being built round-and trees, which he did not like to be cut down. He also objected to stones being broken up or moved. He was no good at wrestling, or any other sport except skating, and was generally of not much account. His wife was "terrible sharp on the butchering-book." His sister used to put down the scraps of his " pomes as he "bummed 'em out." We hope that some cnterprising magazine editor will soon print Mr. Rawnsley's paper. His two raciest reports on the poet he had no time to read. Academy.

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