Page:Works of Charles Dickens, ed. Lang - Volume 31.djvu/20

xii been that of discouraging a tendency to commence Hermit. This is not a very widespread inclination, but the topic allows Dickens to fire his broadside, as usual, at the good old times. He denounces eremites in general, without regard to religious and social conditions. It is scarcely worth while to defend the early Scottish and Irish hermits here, or to say a word in favour of the dwellers in the Thebaid, or the Forest sages of India. They did not at all resemble Dickens's dirty Mr. Mopes, who, in truth, is a mere peg whereon to hang Christmas stories. The actual hermit lived near Stevenage, and was visited by Dickens, Mr. Helps, and Lord Orford, in 1861. In the melodramatic piece, "No Thoroughfare," Dickens's share, as far as composition goes, was slight. He wrote the Overture (in which the dialogue is decidedly of the stage) and the Third Act. The rest was by Mr. Wilkie Collins, who turned the whole into a play for Fechter, while Dickens was on his second visit to America. Mr. Collins was a friend of Dickens's for about twenty years, and his method in fiction had a good deal of influence upon the elaborate plots of the later novels.

"The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices" commemorates a real expedition made by Dickens (Goodchild) and Wilkie Collins (Idle) to the north of England, at the end of August, 1857. It was "a little tour in search of an article, and in avoidance of railroads." The "article" was found, fiction being freely intermingled with descriptions of real adventures, such as the ascent of Carrock Fell (1500 feet) in the rain and mist. Though Carrock Fell is only, in Dr. Johnson's words, "a considerable protuberance," mist makes all climbing dangerous, and the tourists might be thankful that they were not caught by the darkness a little further north, at