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Updated: May 19, 2025
Dickens suffered from too little of what some of us have too much of- -criticism. His work met with too little resistance to call forth his powers. Too often his pathos sinks to bathos, and this not from want of skill, but from want of care.
There are portions of the poem where the narrative is literally carried on through a succession of highly wrought comparisons, each paragraph beginning with an 'As' followed by a correlative 'So' half a page further on. No such series of pictures, however fairly wrought and Browne's too often end in bathos can possibly convey the impression of continuons action. It is the same with periphrasis.
Deny him the right to sit among the elect, if you will; talk of his tendency to farce and caricature; call his humour low comedy, and his pathos bathos although you shall say none of these things in my presence unchallenged; the fact remains that every child, in America at least, knows more of England its almshouses, debtors' prisons, and law-courts, its villages and villagers, its beadles and cheap-jacks and hostlers and coachmen and boots, its streets and lanes, its lodgings and inns and landladies and roastbeef and plum-pudding, its ways, manners, and customs, knows more of these things and a thousand others from Dickens's novels than from all the histories, geographies, biographies, and essays in the language.
My words why, the devil had been quoting Scripture again! The bathos of it! My sacred task forgotten and honour thrown to the winds, and Jacqueline helpless there! I hung my head in misery and shame. But very sweetly she raised hers and spoke to me.
I was not going to give it up, however, so I shocked myself into a torpid animation with a cold bath, it being mid-winter, and betwixt bath and bathos, managed to keep agoing till daylight. Once since then I was very happy, and could not keep my eyes shut.
It was as if she had said: "You cannot surprise me by any narrative of imbecility or turpitude or bathos. All the same, I am dying to hear the latest eccentricity of this village." "Well?" parried Audrey, holding one hand behind her. They did not shake hands. People who call at ten o'clock in the morning cannot expect to have their hands shaken. Miss Ingate certainly expected nothing of the sort.
The first objection is that the same smell of bathos haunts the soul in the case of all deliberate and elaborate visits to "beauty spots," even by persons of the most elegant position or the most protected privacy. Specially visiting the Coliseum by moonlight always struck me as being as vulgar as visiting it by limelight.
Theresa blushed and swallowed. Fortunately her sense of humour was limited; but, even so, she could not but be aware of a dangerous decline. Not only of bathos, but of vulgar bathos, from which gentility revolted, must she be the exponent, thanks to Damaris' indiscretion!
There are times when the inexpressiveness of life comes near to overwhelming me, when it seems to me we are all asleep or entranced, and but a little way above the still cows who stand munching slowly in a field. Why couldn't we and why didn't we talk together?... We fear bathos too much, are shyly decent to the pitch of mania. We have neither the courage of our bodies nor of our souls....
"As a preliminary to a pleasant chat, may I suggest a cup of tea for each of us?" The ladies were manifestly astonished. Tea! When broken hearts were scattered around! The suggestion was pure bathos. Margaret, with a touch of severity, permitted Brett to ring, and coldly agreed with Helen's declaration that she could not think of touching any species of refreshment at such a moment.
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