The trouble is that Balzac's idea
of a satisfying crime is as wild as his hold upon facts is sober, so
that an impossible strain is thrown upon his method of reconciling the
two. Do what he will, his romance remains staringly false in its
contrast with his reality; there is an open gap between the wonderful
pictures of the town in Illusions Perdues and the theatrical drama of
the old convict which they introduce. Yet his method was a right one,
though it was perverse of Balzac to be occupied at all with such
devices, when he might have rejected his falsity altogether. In
another man's work, where there is never this sharp distinction
between true and false, where both are merged into something different
from either--in Dickens's work--the method I refer to is much more
successfully followed; and there, in any of Dickens's later books, we
find the clearest example of it.
I have already been reminded of Stevenson's word upon this matter;
Stevenson noted how Dickens's way of dealing with his romantic
intrigues was to lead gradually into them, through well-populated
scenes of character and humour; so that his world is actual, its air
familiar, by the time that his plot begins to thicken. He gives
himself an ample margin in which to make the impression of the kind of
truth he needs, before beginning to concentrate upon the fabulous
action of the climax.
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