art from the drawings for the "Sketches" and
"Oliver Twist," and the first few drawings by Seymour, and two
drawings by Buss,[28] in "Pickwick," and some drawings by Cattermole
in _Master Humphrey's Clock_, and by Samuel Palmer in the "Pictures
from Italy," and by various hands in the Christmas stories--apart from
these, Browne, or "Phiz," had executed the illustrations to Dickens'
novels. Nor, with all my admiration for certain excellent qualities
which his work undeniably possessed, do I think that this was
altogether a good thing. Such, I know, is not a popular opinion. But I
confess I am unable to agree with those critics who, from their
remarks on the recent jubilee edition of "Pickwick," seem to think his
illustrations so pre-eminently fine that they should be permanently
associated with Dickens' stories. The editor of that edition was, in
my view, quite right in treating Browne's illustrations as practically
obsolete. The value of Dickens' works is perennial, and Browne's
illustrations represent the art fashion of a time only. So, too, I am
unable to see any great cause to regret that Cruikshank's artistic
connection with Dickens came to an end so soon.[29] For both Browne
and Cruikshank were pre-eminently caricaturists, and caricaturists of
an old school. The latter had no idea of beauty. His art, very great
art in its way, was that of grotesqueness and exaggeration. He never
drew a lady or gentleman in his life. And though Browne, in my view
much the lesser artist, was superior in these respects to Cruikshank,
yet he too drew the most hideous Pecksniffs, and Tom Pinches, and Joey
B.'s, and a whole host of characters quite unreal and absurd. The
mischief of it is, too, that Dickens' humour will not bear
caricaturing. The defect of his own art as a writer is that it verges
itself too often on caricature. Exaggeration is its bane. When, for
instance, he makes the rich alderman in "The Chimes" eat up poor
Trotty Veck's little last tit-bit of tripe, we are clearly in the
region of broad farce. When Mr. Pancks, in "Little Dorrit," so far
abandons the ordinary ways of mature rent collectors as to ask a
respectable old accountant to "give him a back," in the Marshalsea
court, and leaps over his head, we are obviously in a world of
pantomime. Dickens' comic effects are generally quite forced enough,
and should never be further forced when translated into the sister art
of drawing. Rather, if anything, should they be atte