come: but we pawn our jewels to keep things going a little longer."
Dickens is included with this "didactic" trio, not so
much because he belongs with them as because he does
not belong with the others. He cannot be classed as a
negative example, but his positive contributions are relatively
small. His artistic superiority to Thackeray in
this respect comes, however, not from a greater knowledge
of artistry, and even less from greater care for it,
but through the happy accident of a vivid, dramatic
temperament. He refrains from much moralizing not,
we are sure, because he loves moralizing less but because
he loves people and actions more. His overwhelming
interest in these, his affection and respect for the doings
and sayings of his characters, is too intense to allow of
their being interrupted by anything. He is thus something
of an artist unaware. He does not work out his
own salvation by taking thought or by deliberating over
ways and means; but through a fortunate preoccupation,
an absorbing engagement with the concrete, he almost
unconsciously dispenses with the abstract, or expresses
it in terms of the specific.
It is true also that he segregates a good deal of his reflection in his Prefaces; but it crops up too often in the course of the narrative to be disregarded. One of the first showings occurs in connection with Mr. Bumble's relinquishment of the beadle's costume together with that office, and his pensive cogitations thereupon.[1]
"There are some promotions in life, which, independent of
the more substantial rewards they offer, acquire peculiar value
and dignity from the coats and waistcoats connected with them.
- ↑ Oliver Twist, 350. The idea was possibly suggested by Sartor Resartus.
