United States or Luxembourg ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
As one whose cordial genius was, in truth, a bond of sympathy between the two great kindred nationalities, Charles Dickens indeed went forth in one sense at that time, it might almost have been said, in a semi-ambassadorial character, not between the rulers, but between the peoples.
Many persons have testified to these occurrences, many of them being matter-of-fact, unimaginative people, who had never even heard of the doctrine of Reincarnation. Charles Dickens, in one of his books of foreign travel, tells of a bridge in Italy which produced a peculiar effect upon him.
And though the English nationality has probably not much more to do with the Vikings than the French nationality or the Irish nationality, the English have certainly been the children of the Vikings in the matter of tears and kisses. It is not merely true that all the most typically English men of letters, like Shakespeare and Dickens, Richardson and Thackeray, were sentimentalists.
"Got to cram for that examination or be plucked again; and one more plucking will settle this child's university career!" "Oh, let the examinations go to the dickens! What 's the use? all the same a hundred years hence. The idea of cramming Friday night! Come on!" "Can't do it, old chaps; but next time goes. See you Monday. Ta-ta!" Polly peeped cautiously from behind her tree.
That Jane Austen was an acute observer, that Dickens was a great humourist, that George Eliot had a deep knowledge of provincial character, that our living romancers are so full of life that they are neither to hold nor to bind we know, we have repeated, we have told each other a thousand times; it is no wonder if attention flags when we hear it all again.
The seemingly quaint custom of comparing Dickens and Thackeray existed in their own time, and no one will dismiss it with entire disdain who remembers that the Victorian tradition was domestic and genuine, even when it was hoodwinked and unworldly. There must have been some reason for making this imaginary duel between two quite separate and quite amiable acquaintances.
"I didn't know; I'd kinda lost count uh the days." Whereupon he made a great splashing in his corner and let her go without more words, feeling more than ever that he needed time to think. "Just visiting 'cause it's Sunday, eh? The dickens it is!"
Here, under the chapter-heading of "Home, Sweet Home," the author, still reminiscent of Dickens, but delightfully compact and laconic, describes the miserable dwelling of the Ginx's with a bitterness of humor that mocks the sentiment of Howard Payne's song. As a specimen of clean realism, this description is more effective than anything of Zola's; for Zola's realism is idealism gone mad.
Hardly one of the novelists of our age, beginning with Dickens and ending with George Sand and Spielhagen, has succeeded in doing it so compactly and tersely, with such an absence of the DIDATIC element which is almost always present in the works of the above-mentioned authors, the now kings of western literatures, with such a full insight into the very heart of the life movement which is reflected in the novel.
Her face fell as she spoke. But Storran dismissed the matter with a smile. "Oh, I can buy clean collars and shirts as I go along," he replied, entirely unruffled. "The dickens was to get on to the train at all! They assured me there wasn't a seat. However, I make a point of never believing official statements on principle."
Word Of The Day