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In another part of the Lecher we have extracted from this week s ™ < £ . HousehoU Words the opening article , entitled < Carious Misprint in the Edinburgh Review / in which Mr . Dickens points out the gross and ludicrous blunders committed by a writer who recently attacked him m the pages of that respectable Blue-book . As a general rule , it is no doubt alike needless and unwise for authors of established reputation to notice such attacks at all ; but exceptions now and then occur . If the attack , for instance , is particularly false and foolish , and the journal in which it appears is at the same time one of marked authority and influence , it may be desirable for the sake of the
public , as well as of the journal itself , that the author who is assailed should point this out . Thus * when a similar attack to this of the Edinburgh Review on Mr . Dickens , was made some years ago in the Times on Mr . Thackeray , he replied , as our readers will remember , in the delightful ' Essay on Thunder and Small Beer , ' which utterly extinguished the insignificant but pompous critic . Mr . Dickens ' s reply to the rash charges and inept illustrations of the Edin . burgh Reviewer is equally happy and triumphant . The exposure of critical incompetence and assumption is so amusing , as well as so instructive , that it was certainly well worth while to make it ; and we are glad , therefore , that Mr . Dickens has broken through the common rule of silence in the present
case . The article in question is one entitled The Licence of Modem Novelists . ' Our readers may remember that in speaking of the Review we noticed this paper , and laughed good-naturedly at the solemn judicial airs the writer assumed , at the absurdity of which he was guilty in demanding from a humorist a De Lome-like treatise on the Constitution , instead of a pleasant satire of existing abuses , and in attempting to convict a novelist of a serious moral offence on the ground of some trivial discrepancies between his story and the Blue-book account of the events to which he was supposed to refer . But we were charitable enough to believe that , however deficient in taste and judgment , a Avriter who professed such exquisite moral sensibility would at least be scrupulously accurate and just in his own statements . This , it now
appears , is an entire mistake . Towards the close of his attack on Mr . Dickens , the critic feels he is exposed to the charge of " fighting shadows of his own raising , " and it seems he really combated them with fictions of his own creation . Theonly accuracy he can pretend to is the narrow lawyer-like accuracy which consists iu the careful comparison of words and pages , of dates and numbers , aud cannot be safely trusted for much beyond . If he ventures on a general statement , or an historical illustration , he is likely enough to be utterly false in the one , and ludicrously out in the other . Mr . Dickens gives examples of both . As an illustration of the former , the reviewer states unconditionally that " the catastrophe of Little Dorr it is borrowed from the recent fall of houses in Tottenham-court-road . " This statement is not only altogether untrue , but one which " a person of ordinary fairness and information" might easily have known to be false .
But the most amusing part of ' Mr . Dickens ' s article is his exposure of the critic ' s disgraceful ignorance in dealing even with recent facts . The reviewer is , indeed , peculiarly unhappy iu the historic proofs of his positions , which he is , nevertheless , rather fond of parading . He reduces Mr . Dickens ' s principal charges against the Government to three , of which the two first—the only ones he deals wi th—are these ;—'• That the business of the country is done very slowly and ill ; and that inventors and projectors of improvements are treated with neglect . " These charges he undert akes to answer by an appeal to facts . How doos he succeed ? In reply to the first lie satisfies himself with the statement that the revenue of the
country is collected and spent annually , and that this is a complex and tedious business . Could there possibly bo a more trivial and irrelevant reply ? In answer to the second charge—that useful plans are neglected—ho appeals triumphantly to the Penny Post and Mr . Rowland Hill . The Government , he says , at onco " adopted his scheme , and gave him a leading sliaro in oarrying it out . " This is a purely historic myth , which exists only in the mind of the reviewer . For a detailed statement of how the Government really dealt with Mr . Rowland Hill we refer our readers to Mr . Dickens ' s paper . The fuels of the caso are briefly those : —Mr . Rowland Hill proposed his plan to the country , and brought it before Parliament , twenty years ago , in 1837 5 the Government opposed it , and thwarted his efforts in every way , and' did
not accept it until oompcllcd to do so throo years later , as a condition of retaining office . They still , however , refused to give the projoctor any share in carrying out his scheme , quietly shelving him in the Treasury at first , and soon aftonvards getting rid of him ultogothor . Public opinion , however , was aroused on his behalf , sixteen thousand pounds was collooted and prcsoutcd to him , and at longth , nearly ton years aftor tho plan was first proposed , through the pressure from without , its author waa appointed to a place in tho Post-ofiloe . This post , however , being a subordinate one , ho was still continuall y opposed , aud unable to follow his plans fully out . . It was only throo years ago , just sevontcon aftor ho first proposed his scheme to tlio Government , that they gave him . tho ' loading share in currying it out ; ' and it is
only since then that he has been enabled to effect the more extensive reforms that have made the Post-office what it now is . Our readers will agree with , us , that if this is the only instance the reviewer could bring in reply to the charge , that the Government is prone to neglect useful plans , lie had much better have offered no evidence at all in support of his sweeping assertions and indignant rhetoric . So much for the critic ' s facts . Such stolid blundering is amusing enough , but it is also instructive . It shows that those who bluster moral condemna
tion against the alleged unveracity of others are not , therefore , to be trusted themselves ; that the man who comes forward with the solemn fuss of pharasaic zeal to take the mote from a brother ' s eye , has possibly a beam in his own . And it enables us to estimate at their true worth the facts and assertions of writers who , because their knowledge of law may happen to be a little beyond 'that of an attorney ' s clerk , ' assume the airs of jurists and philosophers , think themselves entitled to sit in judgment on poets and humorists of the highest genius , and to impose laws on literature and art .
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It is gratifying to observe that the intemperate and indecent assaults of the Barnacle species of critics upon a great and honoured name in our national literature , have had an effect the very reverse , we imagine , of that which the genial Fraternity of Prigs had designed . The sense of the honour due , and of the debt of gratitude and reverence ( which only the petty and perverse are incapable of paying ) to genius nobly exercised , has been deeply stirred and warmly vindicated . Among many other acknowledgments , we find in the August number of The Train a paper , under the title of ' Dialogues of the Living , ' written with true feeling , and with singular discretion and felicity of language , on < Mr . Dickens and his Critics . We gladly borrow the sentences , with which the ' Dialogue ' concludes : —
When the turmoil of the present century , with all the virulence of its political debate and all the petty jealousies of its literature shall have passed away , when those who penned the stinging epigram or the caustic satire shall be weak , or dead , or dying —dying and anxious to give worlds to cancel many a brilliant injustice which their hasty pens have put upon record—then , and not till then , shall we arrive at a calm estimate of the value of the writings of Charles Dickens . Even now I love to picture him far from the din of the critical Babel , surrounded by those delicate and beautiful creations of his fancy , that ideal family , the children of his pen . There , in the twilight of his study , do I see him sitting with his arm round Nell , the favourite but when she looks in hi it then be
child ! Her face seems worn and sad , up s eyes , - comes suffused with heavenly light . At his feet rest little Dombey and his sister , hand in hand , and nestling to the father who has called them into birth . Poor Joe is there , the fungus of the streets , crouching like a dog beside the fire , grateful for food and warmth and shelter . I hear the clumping of a little crutch upon the stairs , and in hops Tiny Tim , the crippled child . Above them hover the shadowy forms of other children , children who on earth were poor and suffering drudges , workhouse outcasts that the world had turned adrift , but which are now on high a blessed band of angels . And yet this man , great critics , is only a mere buffoon , and nothing more ? Truly a fit companion for that low player of the olden time , who wrote King Lear , and acted at the Globe .
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The current numbers of the Revue Des Deux Mondes contain two elaborate articles on Miss Bronte ' s life and works , by M . Emile Mont&gut ; the first devoted to her domestic life and early years , the second to her literary life and last days . After all that has been written on the subject in this country , these papers may still be read with interest . The writer ' s sympathies are delicate and strong , his judgment clear , truthful , and discriminating , his style fresh and vigorous , and , above all , his point of view is new . This is the striking feature of the articles . Being a foreigner , M . Montegut is able to estimate the relation of faculty and circumstance in the formation of Curbeu Bell ' s character , the significance of her life and works as a phenomenon of English society , as no Englishman could . In judging of the novels and the
novelist , we cannot separate ourselves from the ; native soil and the national life out of which they sprang . The reader and the critic share , to some extent at least , the sunshine and the gloom , the laughter and the tears , the strong passions , and stronger restraints , which helped to form the one and are reflected in the other . We are too much immersed in tho social life of tho time to become fully conscious of its deepest and most subtle characteristics ; but these are the very features which a morbidly sensitive nature , a profoundly passionate heart , a curious and keenly analytic intellect like Currior Bell ' s would naturally xeproduce . Her contemporaries , therefore , can scarcely fully estimate tho historical significance of her life and works as exponents of English socioty . Bat a foreigner , if fitly prepared f or the work , may do this perfectly . Being a calm spectator of the social
artist and the national life , he can carefully compare the portrait with the original , and judge impartially of both . The diffcrenco of national character thus effects ut once , abroad , tlio needful isolation which only distanco of time can produce at homo , and foreign criticism becomes a kind of contemporary posterity . To M . Montbgut , Miss Bronte ' s memoir is something more than tho biography of an authoress ; it is a profound and instructive revelation of English life , an historic dooument of tho greatest value He tolls us , at the outset , that , in his view , it marks a transition , not only between two generations , but between two different statos of society , two ways of thinkin" and fooling—tho old and now English life . Tho history of tho Buontb family , tho whole life at Haworth , strikingly illustrates this transition , of which , while it affootod every member of tho family , Charlotte was , in a peculiar degree , tho victim and the martyr . Having indicated the general , nature of this change , M . MonttSgut disoussos tho English national character ,
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T * . 884 . -Atotot 1 , 1857 . 1 THE LEAMB . 737
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Leader (1850-1860), Aug. 1, 1857, page 737, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2203/page/17/
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