“BOZ”
(Charles Dickens)
From a drawing
by S. Laurence, in the
possession of Horace N. Pym
Rischgitz Collection
THE BIRTHPLACE OF DICKENS: No. 387, COMMERCIAL ROAD, LANDPORT, PORTSEA
(From “Rambles in Dickens-Land,” by R. Allbut. Reproduced by kind permission of Messrs. S. T. Freemantle & Co.)
We can never understand a writer of the old romantic school, even if he is as great and splendid as Dickens is great and splendid, until we realise this preliminary fact to which I have drawn attention. The fact that these merely technical changes are merely technical, and have nothing whatever to do with the force and truth behind. We are bound to find a considerable amount of Dickens’s work, especially the pathetic and heroic passages, artificial and pompous. But that is only because we are far enough off his trick or device to see that it is such. Our own trick and device we believe to be as natural as the eternal hills. It is no more natural, even when compared with the Dickens devices, than a rockery is natural, even when compared with a Dutch flower bed. The time will come when the wildest upheaval of Zolaism, when the most abrupt and colloquial dialogue of Norwegian drama, will appear a fine old piece of
