YOUR notice of Dr. Fennel's "mite towards the clearer appreciation of a masterpiece" tempts me to offer another "mite." To understand 'Drood' we must consider Dickens's methods in 'Great Expectations.' In 'Great Expectations' Dickens through about half the tale bluffed gloriously and successfully. Had it been truncated in the middle of its appearance, as was 'Drood,' every one would still believe that Pip's income came from the strange old lady in the curious big house. Dickens built up a scheme of things for the sheer joy of shattering it. He was legitimately and splendidly a gigantic bluffer of his readers. He took the same course in 'Drood,' with every likelihood of making an even more triumphant effect. In 'Great Expectations' what till then had been the controlling idea of the tale was smashed in the middle of the book. |