Those familiar with the man and his works are aware how close he always stood to the playhouse and its product.  He loved it from early youth, all but went on the stage professionally, knew its people as have few of the writing craft, was a fine amateur actor himself, wrote for the stage, helped to dramatize his novels and gave delightful studies of theatrical life in his books.  Shall we ever forget Mr. Crummles and his family?  He had an instinctive feeling for what was scenic and effective in the stage sense.  When he appeared as a reader of his own works, he was an impersonator; and noticeably careful to have the stage accessories exactly right.  And when all this, natural and acquired, was applied to fiction, it could not but be of influence.  As a result, Dickens sometimes forced the note, favored the lurid, exaggerated his comic effects.  To put it in another way, this theater manner of his now and then injured the literature he made.  But that is only one side of the matter:  it also helped him greatly and where he went too far, he was simply abusing a precious gift.  To speak of Dickens’ violent theatricality as if it expressed his whole being, is like describing the wart on Cromwell’s face as if it were his set of features.  Remove from Dickens his dramatic power, and the memorable master would be no more:  he would vanish into dim air.  We may be thankful—­in view of what it produced—­that he possessed even in excess this sense of the scenic value of character and situation:  it is not a disqualification but a virtue, and not Dickens alone but Dumas, Hugo and Scott were great largely because of it.

In the praise naturally enough bestowed upon a great autobiographical Novel like “David Copperfield,” the fine art of a late work like “Great Expectations” has been overlooked or at least minimized.  If we are to consider skilful construction along with the other desirable qualities of the novelist, this noble work has hardly had justice done it:  moreover, everything considered,—­story value, construction, characters, atmosphere, adequacy of style, climactic interest, and impressive lesson, I should name “Great Expectations,” published when the author was fifty, as his most perfect book, if not the greatest of Charles Dickens’ novels.  The opinion is unconventional:  but as Dickens is studied more as artist progressively skilful in his craft, I cannot but believe this particular story will receive increasing recognition.  In the matter of sheer manipulation of material, it is much superior to the book that followed it two years later, the last complete novel:  “Our Mutual Friend.”  It is rather curious that this story, which was in his day and has steadily remained a favorite with readers, has with equal persistency been severely handled by the critics.  What has insured its popularity?  Probably its vigor and variety of characterization, its melodramatic tinge, the teeming world of dramatic contrasts it opens, its bait to our sense of mystery.