The Argosy — page 304: what you’re looking at

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

The Tendency of Dickens’s Works. 285 has no idea of its own name; that it is very quick to detect itself in others, and to feel true contempt for itself; that nothing so soon rouses its real admiration as the sight of a man without it; and that, when those of us who may claim it do get a view of our own wrong, it often works in us a repentance that needs no repenting of, as in the case of the two Chuzzlewits. And now I must just touch on one more character before I leave this book, and that is Tom Pinch, the man who must have come so near the heart of Dickens, for we feel its generous, healthy pulses as we read. Who besides Dickens could or would have drawn such a hero as Tom Pinch? A man with no rare mental gifts, no personal beauty, no favourite of fortune, and yet a man around whom our best thoughts love to linger even though they call up self-reproach. A man whose greatness simply meant his goodness. <A hero in the sense of one who ruleth his spirit rather than one who taketh a city. Single-heartedness, unselfishness, steadfastness of purpose place Tom Pinch on as high a moral platform as any hero of fiction ; and yet so creat was the simplicity of words and manners which accompanied these gifts,so ordinary and unremarkable the circumstances which developed them, that we are unavoidably led to see how perfectly natural such Christian graces might become to our own every-day life. The next book was ‘“‘ Dombey and Son,” and the leading passion here portrayed is pride. Mr. Dombey is a stern, hard man, immovable and impenetrable as some dark, towering, granite rock, impervious to all outside in- fluences, except such as touched his pride; pride of his wealth, his position, his family name, and all these things centred in his little motherless son, Paul, who was to perpetuate the great name of Dombey. All the care that wealth and thought could procure was lavished on the boy in his infancy. ‘Then, before he had quite left that period, his intellect was taken in hand to be developed and expanded when it had as yet barely shown itself, and, of course, the natural consequence followed. ‘The frail little sapling of the great Dombey tree drooped and died; the proud man had to bow his will to God’s over-ruling power; and the idol at whose shrine he had sacrificed all the higher and better capabilities of his soul was brought to the ground. It was only after many long years of bitterness and obstinacy of spirit that he was at length brought to the knowledge that his extremity had been God’s opportunity of doing him good and not evil. We will pass over ‘‘ David Copperfield,” which contains so much of the author’s personal experience, and just touch on “ Little Dorrit.” The name gives you the key-note of the book. It is one long ser- mon on the beauty of unselfishness, practically shown in the life of the heroine. It 1s by no means one of his best books, and yet Dickens seems to me to have draped “ Little Dorrit” in his most beautiful gar- CoOnnicloo® (A) (CO)