Wild flowers are
his--great poet--wild winds, wild lights, wild heart, wild eyes!
DICKENS AS A MAN OF LETTERS
It was said for many years, until the reversal that now befalls the
sayings of many years had happened to this also, that Thackeray was the
unkind satirist and Dickens the kind humourist. The truth seems to be
that Dickens imagined more evil people than did Thackeray, but that he
had an eager faith in good ones. Nothing places him so entirely out of
date as his trust in human sanctity, his love of it, his hope for it, his
leap at it. He saw it in a woman's face first met, and drew it to
himself in a man's hand first grasped. He looked keenly for it. And if
he associated minor degrees of goodness with any kind of folly or mental
ineptitude, he did not so relate sanctity; though he gave it, for
companion, ignorance; and joined the two, in Joe Gargery, most tenderly.
We might paraphrase, in regard to these two great authors, Dr. Johnson's
famous sentence: "Marriage has many pains, but celibacy has no joys."
Dickens has many scoundrels, but Thackeray has no saints. Helen
Pendennis is not holy, for she is unjust and cruel; Amelia is not holy,
for she is an egoist in love; Lady Castlewood is not holy, for she too is
cruel; and even Lady Jane is not holy, for she is jealous; nor is Colonel
Newcome holy, for he is haughty; nor Dobbin, for he turns with a taunt
upon a plain sister; nor Esmond, for he squanders his best years in love
for a material beauty; and these are the best of his good people.
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