Page:Works of Charles Dickens, ed. Lang - Volume 31.djvu/17

Rh solidity and activity of the agent in the banker's narrative. It opens well, but the supernatural is distinctly overdone, and the terrible yields place to the absurd. The tale of the signal-man(vol. ii. p. 189) makes less overwhelming demands on the judicial faculties of the reader. It is probably based on some real story of the kind, some anecdote of premonitions. There are scores in the records of the Society for Psychical Research. These interests, and this element in Dickens's character, connect him with many persons of genius, but, of course, are not preponderant factors in his intellect. Away from such dark corners are Mrs. Lirriper, that jewel of a landlady, and the waiter in "Somebody's Luggage," and Doctor Marigold. All these are the result of Dickens's intense powers of observation, and unwearied interest both in the commonplace and the odd aspects of humanity. Mrs. Lirriper, whose inclusive and Thucydidean style is a masterpiece, must be pronounced the most sympathetic, while only Dickens could have collected, as it were, such queer specimens as her Wandering Christians, and motley array of servant-girls. The waiter illustrates that vein of intellectual high spirits which had been almost worked out, as far as the long novels were concerned. Indeed, a critic might have something to say for himself who argued that there is more of the genuine, fresh, early Dickens in these papers, than in the more laboured novels of his closing years. He writes with more freedom and less responsibility: he "lets himself go" joyously, whereas joyousness is remote indeed from Little Dorrit and Our Mutual Friend, with their ambitious aims and social satire. Dickens is more at home with a plump Head Waiter at the Cock or elsewhere, with a sentimental Cheap Jack on a common, with a garrulous good landlady in the gritty calm of a June evening in Norfolk