The subject has been much more gravely treated in Mr. Robert Bridges’s “Achilles in Scyros.” Conjecture may cease, as Mr. Morris has translated the Odyssey. For Helen Pendennis, see the “Letters,” p. 97. Mr. Henley has lately, as a loyal Dickensite, been defending the plots of Dickens, and his tragedy. Pro captu lectoris; if the reader likes them, then they are good for the reader: “good absolute, not for me though,” perhaps. The plot of “Martin Chuzzlewit” may be good, but the conduct of old Martin would strike me as improbable if I met it in the “Arabian Nights.” That the creator of Pecksniff should have taken his misdeeds seriously, as if Mr. Pecksniff had been a Tartuffe, not a delight, seems curious. |
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