The Argosy — page 170: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

156 a OUR LOG-BOOK. HERE have been some stirrings in our waters during the past month. The joint-effort of Mr. Dickens and Mr. Wilkie Collins, apart from its ments or demerits, must excite curiosity and interest. It is clear that in ‘‘ No Thoroughfare” the latter gentleman has had the lion’s share of the labour, whatever of lion’s share may fall to him besides. Mr. Dickens’s portion is merely incidental, though some of his touches are surpassing fine and unmistakeably marked. Mr. Collins’s superb inventive faculty shows itself throughout, though under a little re- striction here—unfolding, doubling up, coiling, and uncoiling in its brilliant, baffling, serpentine fashion. And the result is exactly such as might be expected. Mr. Wilding is a little over-done, but full of humour; and Joey Ladle, the cellarman—who insists on being a good pecking-machine—is admirable. This is one of Joey’s happiest de- jiverances :—‘ Gentlemen, it is all wery well for you that has been accustomed to take your wine into your systems by the conwivial ‘channel of your throttles, to put a lively face upon it ; but I says, ‘I have been accustomed to take my wine in at the pores of the skin, and took that way, it acts different.’” But we mustn’t say more on the matter, at once for our own sake and that of both writers and readers. Then, Mr. Mark Lemon—supreme in his own walk—has actually sur- passed himself in “Golden Fetters.” Ofcourse, everybody who 1s in the least familiar with the fiction of the day, knows Mr.—we must write Mark —lLemon’s genuine humour. Pure and fine, rather than deep, it plays naturally over the surface of his subject (let that be the gravest or the driest) ; although it must be said that it never breaks very far through the outer covering. But now and then it gathers itself up, so to speak, into a jet of diverse-coloured flickering flame, the light, reflected from varied faces of fact, falling back from all sides into the most grotesque shapes and kaleidoscopic combinations: and this, too, without the least sacrifice of truth. ‘“ Golden Fetters” gives many instances of this. The interview between the rascally lawyer Daw and Oldy—we mean Alder- winkle, is inimitable in its mingled grimness and waggery ; as well as that scene after the burning of Mr. Perryonet’s theatre, where, through all Alderwinkle’s sympathy, the gleams of his roguish wit shoot forth like the sun’s rays through November mist. And this _ peculiar faculty saves Mr. Mark ILemon from any tendency to two vices which are very common just now with novelists. ‘The one is the conscious overdrawing of character for the sake of sharp contrasts, the other cari- comicaooks GO)