The pirates were so close upon us at this time that the foremost of them were already before the gate. More and more came up with a great noise, and shouting loudly. When we believed from the sound that they were all there, we gave three English cheers. The poor little children joined, and were so fully convinced of our being at play, that they enjoyed the noise, and were heard clapping their hands in the silence that followed.
Defoe within his limits does that sort of thing to perfection: but then Defoe’s world observes the limits of the “real” (as we absurdly call everything that is not spiritual), has little emotion, scintillates scarce a glimmer of humour. Dickens handles it in a phantasmagoric world, charged even to excess with emotion, and is not in the least afraid to employ it—I quote Mr. Saintsbury again:
Of invading those confines of nonsense which Hazlitt proudly and wisely claimed as the appanage and province of every Englishman.
I need but to instance a writer whose acquaintance Hazlitt had not the joy to make, nor Lamb—woe upon these divisions of time!—Lewis Carroll, in whom both would have revelled for his insane logicality of detail—or, if you prefer it, I will fall back upon Lear’s Nonsense Books or even upon A Midsummer-Night’s Dream—to convince you that, as a nation, we have this appanage: and if it bewilder a foreigner, or he deride it, why then we will give him a look, and pass.
IX
Yes, but there is something else.
What else—no mere artistic secret—ties this phantasmagoric world to ours and makes it universal with ours, conterminous, and so real?
It is no dodge or trick of artistry that can work so incredible a feat—that can open our hearts to such beings as Dick Swiveller and Mrs. Gamp (whom in private life you or I would avoid like the plague)—to enjoy their company, to hang on every word they utter. It must be some very simple catholic gift, thus to unite the unreal with the real, thus to make brothers and sisters of all men and women, high or low.
It is: nor shall I delay you by elaborate pretence to search for it. For I know; and you know, or will recognise it as soon as I utter the word. It is Charity; the inestimable gift of Charity that Dickens flings over all things as his magic mantle: so that, whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away; and whether there be little critics tormented about Dickens’ style, in the folds of that mantle they shall be folded and hushed:
That it may please Thee to preserve all that travel by land or by water, all women labouring of child, sick persons, and young children; and to shew Thy pity upon all prisoners and captives.