mask of brooses both
blue and green likewise two forms are steepled in his Goar. . . . Me and my
brother were then the victims of his feury since which we have suffered
very much which leads us to the arrowing belief that we have received
some injury in our insides, especially as no marks of violence are
visible externally. I am screaming out loud all the time I write and so
is my brother which takes off my attention rather and I hope will excuse
mistakes". . . .

Thus rapidly may be indicated some elements that contributed to the
sudden and astonishingly wide popularity of these books. I purposely
reserve from my present notices of them, which are biographical rather
than critical, any statement of the reasons for which I think them
inferior in imagination and fancy to some of the later works; but there
was continued and steady growth in them on the side of humor,
observation, and character, while freshness and raciness of style
continued to be an important help. There are faults of occasional
exaggeration in the writing, but none that do not spring from animal
spirits and good humor, or a pardonable excess, here and there, on the
side of earnestness; and it has the rare virtue, whether gay or grave,
of being always thoroughly intelligible and for the most part thoroughly
natural, of suiting itself without effort to every change of mood, as
quick, warm, and comprehensive as the sympathies it is taxed to express.
The tone also is excellent. We are never repelled by egotism or
conceit, and misplaced ridicule never disgusts us. When good is going
on, we are sure to see all the beauty of it; and when there is evil, we
are in no danger of mistaking it for good. No one can paint more
picturesquely by an apposite epithet, or illustrate more happily by a
choice allusion. Whatever he knows or feels, too, is always at his
fingers' ends, and is present through whatever he is doing. What Rebecca
says to Ivanhoe of the black knight's mode of fighting would not be
wholly inapplicable to Dickens's manner of writing: "There is more than
mere strength, there seems as if the whole soul and spirit of the
champion were given to every blow he deals." This, when a man deals his
blows with a pen, is the sort of handling that freshens with new life
the oldest facts, and breathes into thoughts the most familiar an
emotion not felt before. There seemed to be not much to add to our
knowledge of London until his books came upon us, but each in th