The method which he finally worked out for himself was exactly what he
required. There might be much to say of it, for it is by no means
simple, but I am only concerned with one or two points in it. The
chief characteristic I take to be this careful introduction of violent
drama into a scene already prepared to vouch for it--a scene so alive
that it compels belief, so queer that almost anything might happen
there naturally. The effect which Dickens gets from the picture in his
novels, as opposed to the action, is used as a sort of attestation of
the action; and it surely fulfils its mission very strikingly in the
best of his work--the best from this point of view--Bleak House,
Dombey and Son, Our Mutual Friend. His incurable love of labyrinthine
mystification, when it really ran away with him, certainly defeated
all precautions; not even old Dorrit's Marshalsea, not even Flora and
Mr. F.'s Aunt, can do anything to carry off the story of the Clennams.
But so long as he was content with a fairly straightforward romance,
all went well; the magnificent life that he projected was prepared to
receive and to speed it. Blimber and Mrs. Pipchin and Miss Tox, the
Podsnaps and Twemlow and the Veneerings, all contribute out of their
overflow of energy to the force of a drama--a drama in which they may
take no specific part, but which depends on them for the furnishing of
an appropriate scene, a favouring background, a world attuned.
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