Page:Works of Charles Dickens, ed. Lang - Volume 18.djvu/14

xii blank verse is probably a token of intellectual fatigue. The whole subject of unconscious blank verse is curious, and a study of it might reward an inquirer. I have not observed it in Scott, nor in Thackeray, who writes it printed as prose, for amusement merely. But one should examine several authors carefully in search of this automatic form of poetical expression. I have noticed it in the work of excited lady novelists, and an American translation of the Odyssey nominally in prose, is largely in blank verse. Observing this, I examined a prose version of the Odyssey in which I had a hand, and found more blank verse than I liked, or expected. However, this is probably natural in translating poetry. We may attribute Dickens's "dropping into poetry" to earnestness or to fatigue, or to both. He was, at all events, sensible of his tendency. His earnestness, which was unfeigned, relieves him from much of the reproach conveyed in the undignified term which has been cited. But he was working against time, and invita Minerva. In letters to Bulwer Lytton, who admired the piece, he recognised his need of more space, and more time, if he was to do justice to his conception. That conception is somewhat "stagey," and the story has been adapted for the stage both in France and England.

"The very ghostly and wild idea" of The Haunted Man occurred to Dickens in 1846, dimly conceived; but the book, postponed in 1847, was composed in 1848. Dombey interfered, and 1847 was without a Christmas book. The idea of The Haunted Man is one that might have occurred to Hawthorne, but even he could scarcely have made it plausible in the exposition. Dickens does not seem to have rated Hawthorne high. "The psychological part of the Scarlet Letter is very much overdone," he says; and