June 26, 1585.] 



♦ KNOWLEDGE 



537 



AN ILLUSXRATED '^l- 



MAGAZINE OF SCIENCE 

 PlainlyWorded -ExactlyDescribed 



LOXDON: FRIDAY, JUNE 26, 1885. 



Contents op No. 191, 



Dickena and Thsckenr. Bt B. A. 



Proctor ;. .". 637 



The PhilosophT of ClothinR. XI. 



Bj W. Mtttieu Williams 638 



Optical Reortations. {Iltus.) 6-10 



Chats on Geometrical Measure- 

 ment. (Itlut.) Bj Bichard A. 



Proctor 641 



Irish Seaside Beiorls. Bt Percy 



RusseU : 542 



The Toong Electrician. (Hlm.) 



BtW. Slingo 643 



To Strengthen the Arms. By B. 



A. Proctor 645 



The Teredo and its Work. (lUui.) 64« 



Vivisection 6-18 



First Star Lessons, (With Map.) 



By Richard A. Proctor 618 



Pleasant Hours witli the Micro- 



8.x)po. (yHiis.) By H. J. Slack ol8 

 Tricycles in 1S85. By John Brown- 

 ing 550 



Editorial Gossip 550 



Correspondence ; Recent Largo Sun- 

 spot (///«,«.)— Lnnes, iic 652 



Our Inventors* Column 658 



Our Chess Column 657 



Our Whist Column 668 



DICKENS AND THACKERAY. 



By RicHAHD A. Proctok. 



{Continued from p. 520.) 



BUT while Thackeray's success in delineating characters 

 ordinarily met with in the world must be admitted 

 by all who give the matter a thought, there are many who 

 deny to Thackeray the power which Dickens is regarded as 

 possessing in a very eminent degree — that, namely, of deli- 

 neating such strange and whimsical characters as are less 

 frequently met with. 



Probably, if Thackeray had allowed himself the same 

 license as Dickens in such matters, he would have been as 

 succesaful in presenting in an amusing manner the 

 grotesque, the fanciful, and the weird. The license I 

 mean is that of combining in the same character in- 

 congruous characteristics. ThLs license, indeed, Dickens 

 took with characters of all orders ; and not only so, but 

 he took the further license of distributing among different 

 characters the peculiarities of one and the same person 

 whom he knew in real life. For instance, we know that 

 some of the peculiarities of Micawber were copied from 

 what Dickens had seen in his own father, while others were 

 taken from other originals. So Mrs. Micawber has many 

 ways which Dickens had noted in his own mother, while 

 others of her peculiarities were not such as characterised 

 Mrs. John Dickens. But we find also that while the 

 oddities of Micawber and of his wife were borrowed from 

 different sources, so the characteristics of Dickens' father and 

 mother were distributed among different characters — Mr. 

 and Mrs. Nickleby, Mr. and Mrs. Micawber, and so forth. 



One of the most remarkable illustrations of Dickens's 

 manner in such matters, a manner unquestionably resulting 

 from deficiency of the creative faculty (which, until the real 

 origin of many of his characters had come to be known, 

 was mistakenly supposed Vjy ine.xperienced readers to be 

 possessed hiy Dickens in a very large degree), is to be found 

 in Dora and Flora. Copperfield's first meeting with Dora 

 is Dickens's meeting (when little more than a boy) with a 

 lady by no means so young as Dora is there represented. 

 The courtship ia derived from his youthful love for the 

 original of Flora. The married life with Dora, so far as 



her household ways are concerned, presents Dickens's own 

 experii-ncc, so that Dora there represents a third person, 

 and that person his wife. And lastly the death of Dora, 

 and Copperfield's sorrow during the following years, are 

 drawn from the death of his wife's younger sister, Mary, 

 and the sorrow Dickens felt for years thereafter. Yet, 

 though the real Flora furnished only one of these four 

 copies from which the Dora of fiction was combined, we 

 find her forming part of two distinct and very unlike cha- 

 racters, the characteristics of her later years being in part 

 reproduced in Flora — but only in part, for some of Dora's 

 ways were derived from other sources. 



Nor can it bo said that, after all, Dickens so artistically 

 combines and distributes what he had observed that they 

 become effective as if they were real creations. For no one 

 possessing any power of critical discrimination had failed 

 to recognise the incongruity of many — ont; may almost say 

 all — of Dickens's characters long before it became known 

 that he had constructed them of heterogeneous materials 

 and applied his materials to heterogeneous purposes. 



Another remarkable illu.stration of 1 )ickens's manner of 

 writing is to be found in a picture which is commonly, and 

 in some respects justly, very much admired — the childhood 

 and death of little Paul Dombey; yet the ways of the old- 

 fashioned child were borrowed from one child, a child with 

 whom Dickens had been exceptionally well acquainted 

 (himself), while the latter scenes were, it is needless to say, 

 taken from a different experience.* 



And here I feel tempted to remark on a peculiarity of 

 Dickens' manner of treating his subjects which would of 

 itself show that he did not belong to that class of creative 

 writers which includes all the really great names in lite- 

 rature. 



Paul Richter used to say, " If an author has to stop and 

 ask himself, ' What shall I make such and such a character 

 do or say at .such and such a point in the narrrative 1 ' to 

 the devil with him," implying that such a writer may 

 possess superficial cleverness, but no genius. I wonder 

 what Richter would have said of an author who not only 

 thus hesitated, as we find that Dickens repeatedly did, but 

 asked and took the advice of his friends about so critical a 

 question as the fate of his principal characters, or even 

 after writing the closing passages of a story adopted, at a 

 friend's suggestion, an entirely different conclusion t 



No one knew better than Dickens the requirements of 

 true art. Nay, he often describes himself as living in his 



* By the way, does any one know why the original deBcription of 

 the death scene was altered by Dickens in the later editions of 

 "Dombey and Son"? I took up, on one occasion, a copy of 

 "Dombey and Son" to read the account of Paul Domhey's death, 

 after I had been speaking blaaphemies about " the inimitable," for 

 I knew that reading that scene would put me in a better frame of 

 mind. I then found for the first time that a remark made by Miss 

 Tox, after the child's death, has been excised. Tho account of 

 Paul's death is followed by the words, " the old, old fashion Death ! 

 Oh thank God, all who see it, for that older fashion yet of Immor- 

 tality ! And look upon us, angels of young children, with regards 

 not quite estranged, when the swift river bears us to the ocean !" 

 And these remain in later editions; but in the original description 

 there followed after a break, these words : — " ' Dear me, dear me ! 

 To think,' said Miss Tox, bursting out afresh that night as if her 

 heart were broken. ' that Dombey and Son should be a Daughter 

 after all.' " In my essay on the " Shield of Achilles " (" Light 

 Science for Leisure Hours," 1st Series) I touch on Dickens's fre- 

 quent association of the humorous and the pathetic ; and this par- 

 ticular instance had always seemed to me one of the most striking 

 and effective. Dickens probably removed Miss Tox's quaint re- 

 mark at the suggestion of Forster or some other injudicious friend. 

 He failed, however, to remember another passage which should 

 have been removed at the same time — viz., where Miss Tox, after 

 Florence's return to her father, says : — " And so Dombey and Son, 

 as I remarked upon a certain sad occasion, is indeed a daughter 

 after all." 



