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No, we can none of us afford to despise Dickens’ prose. This passage comes from one of his earliest books: if you would learn how he (ever a learner) learned to consolidate his style, study that neglected work of his, The Uncommercial Traveller—study such essays as that on “Wapping Workhouse” or that on “The City Churchyards”—study them with Thackeray’s Roundabout Papers—and tell me if these two great Victorian novelists, after shaking the dust of an Esmond or a David Copperfield off their palms, cannot, as a parergon, match your Augustans—your Steele or your Addison—on their own ground. Few recognise it, this pair being otherwise so great: but it is so.
And because you will probably disbelieve me at first going-off, I shall add the testimony of one you will be apter to trust—that of George Gissing. I have spoken of one chapter in David Copperfield, to commend it.
But, says Gissing:
In the story of David Copperfield’s journey on the Dover road we have as good a piece of narrative prose as can be found in English. Equally good, in another way, are those passages of rapid retrospect in which David tells us of his later boyhood, a concentration of memory perfumed with the sweetest humour. It is not an easy thing to relate, with perfect proportion of detail, with interest that never for a moment drops, the course of a year or two of wholly uneventful marriage: but read the chapter entitled Our Domestic Life and try to award adequate praise to the great artist who composed it. One can readily suggest how the chapter could have been spoiled; ever so little undue satire, ever so little excess of sentiment; but who can point to a line in which it might be bettered? It is perfect writing: one can say no more and no less.