rts, we may say that there is not much
unity of form, but there is much unity of colour. In most of the novels
this can be seen. _Nicholas Nickleby_, as I have remarked, is full of a
certain freshness, a certain light and open-air curiosity, which
irradiates from the image of the young man swinging along the Yorkshire
roads in the sun. Hence the comic characters with whom he falls in are
comic characters in the same key; they are a band of strolling players,
charlatans and poseurs, but too humane to be called humbugs. In the same
way, the central story of _Oliver Twist_ is sombre; and hence even its
comic character is almost sombre; at least he is too ugly to be merely
amusing. Mr. Bumble is in some ways a terrible grotesque; his apoplectic
visage recalls the "fire-red Cherubimme's face," which added such horror
to the height and stature of Chaucer's Sompnour. In both these cases
even the riotous and absurd characters are a little touched with the
tint of the whole story. But this neglected merit of Dickens can
certainly be seen best in _The Old Curiosity Shop_.

The curiosity shop itself was a lumber of grotesque and sinister things,
outlandish weapons, twisted and diabolic decorations. The comic
characters in the book are all like images bought in an old curiosity
shop. Quilp might be a gargoyle. He might be some sort of devilish
door-knocker, dropped down and crawling about the pavement. The same
applies to the sinister and really terrifying stiffness of Sally Brass.
She is like some old staring figure cut out of wood. Sampson Brass, her
brother, again is a grotesque in the same rather inhuman manner; he is
especially himself when he comes in with the green shade over his eye.
About all this group of bad figures in _The Old Curiosity Shop_ there is
a sort of _diablerie_. There is also within this atmosphere an
extraordinary energy of irony and laughter. The scene in which Sampson
Brass draws up the description of Quilp, supposing him to be dead,
reaches a point of fiendish fun. "We will not say very bandy, Mrs.
Jiniwin," he says of his friend's legs, "we will confine ourselves to
bandy. He is gone, my friends, where his legs would never be called in
question." They go on to the discussion of his nose, and Mrs. Jiniwin
inclines to the view that it is flat. "Aquiline, you hag! Aquiline,"
cries Mr. Quilp, pushing in his head and striking his nose with his
fist. There is nothing better in the whole brutal exuberance of th