The Immortal Dickens

What one misses most of all, perhaps, in Barnaby Rudge is a note of high spirits. It is altogether a less vivacious book (Sim Tappertit notwithstanding) than the others of Dickens’s early time. One need not seek an explanation in stress of work; the subject sufficiently accounts for a subdued tone. Dennis the Hangman does not provoke hilarity, and after reading the case of Mary Jones (recited at length in the Preface to Barnaby), one’s only wonder is that an author who wrote with that story in his mind could still preserve so much of his native humour.