confidentially foretold. The plot of the romance is therefore
universally admitted to be the best that Dickens has ever invented. Its
leading events are, as we read the story consecutively, artistically
necessary, yet, at the same time, the processes are artistically
concealed. We follow the movement of a logic of passion and character,
the real premises of which we detect only when we are startled by the
conclusions.

The plot of "Great Expectations" is also noticeable as indicating,
better than any of his previous stories, the individuality of Dickens's
genius. Everybody must have discerned in the action of his mind two
diverging tendencies, which, in this novel, are harmonized. He possesses
a singularly wide, clear, and minute power of accurate observation,
both of things and of persons; but his observation, keen and true to
actualities as it independently is, is not a dominant faculty, and is
opposed or controlled by the strong tendency of his disposition to
pathetic or humorous idealization. Perhaps in "The Old Curiosity Shop"
these qualities are best seen in their struggle and divergence, and
the result is a magnificent juxtaposition of romantic tenderness,
melodramatic improbabilities, and broad farce. The humorous
characterization is joyously exaggerated into caricature,--the serious
characterization into romantic unreality, Richard Swiveller and Little
Nell refuse to combine. There is abundant evidence of genius both in the
humorous and the pathetic parts, but the artistic impression is one of
anarchy rather than unity.

In "Great Expectations," on the contrary, Dickens seems to have attained
the mastery of powers which formerly more or less mastered him. He has
fairly discovered that he cannot, like Thackeray, narrate a story as if
he were a mere looker-on, a mere "knowing" observer of what he describes