From The Illustrated London News, (February 3, 1844), 67. [The novel was published by Chapman and Hall, London, on 17 December 1843.]
We have but space for one quotation.--
TO CHARLES DICKENS,
ON HIS "CHRISTMAS CAROL."
Honour to Genius! When its lofty speech
Stirs through the soul, and wakes its echoing strings:
But honour tenfold! When its day-words reach
The selfish heart, and there let loose the springs
Of pity, gushing blood-warm from a breach
Rent in its close-bound, stony coverings.
Yea! Tenfold honour, and the love of men,
The kind, the good, attend on Genius then,
And bless and sanctify those words divine.
Such words, Charles Dickens, truly have been thine;
And thou hast earned true glory with all love:
Long may the torch of Christmas gladly shine
Upon thy home, while voices from above
Music thy carol and again impart
Mirth and good tidings to the poor man's heart. W. W. G.
On 10 February 1844, the theatre reviewer for the ILN praised Dickens's original novella as well as the recently opened dramatic adaptation upon which Dickens had collaborated with Edward Stirling and which featured the renowned Victorian actor O. Smith as Scrooge:
ADELPHI.
When a late celebrated scholar and critic made the witty remark that Boz "would go up like a rocket and come down like a stick," * he forgot in his prediction to say how long the rocket's brilliancy would endure! In our thinking the said rocket has taken root (if we may be allowed the expression) in the sky of intellect, and with its offshoots of light, every one of which becomes more luminous daily, we might say voluminous indeed, will, we have no doubt, be considered by future literary astronomers, a constellation!
Dickens is a great man — a moral chymist who has analyzed the human heart to a nicety. "Shewing the poison and the honey there."
His "Christmas Carol; or Past, Present, and Future," dramatised by Mr. Stirling in a most sterling manner, from the prose story of the modern Fielding, was produced on last Monday with most decided success. The acting of O. Smith, as old Scrooge, the miser, was, throughout, admirable. Wright as Bob Cratchit, the miser's clerk, presiding over his family party, was exceedingly droll. The story on which the piece is founded is too well known to enter into particulars of it: suffice it to say, that it is one of those home-bred, natural esculents that a true dramatic palate likes to enjoy, and as such, from its enthusiastic reception, will no doubt be universally relished, and ought to correct and improve the taste of those who fly to the Continent ** for what can be so abundantly supplied at home.
* "a stick" = a pun based on the rod on which the blackpowder rocket is launched and a late eighteenth-century British theatrical term for an utter incompetent (an analagous expression is "wooden" in the sense of "dull."
** An allusion to the English taste for farces translated from the French.
Last Modified 9 January 2004