INTRODUCTION. BY EDWIN P. WHIPPLE. "A TALE OF TWO CITIES" is one of the most thrilling narratives in the whole range of the literature of fiction. Considered apart from all the other works of Dickens, it would enti tle him to a very high rank among romancers. The provoking pauses in the progress of his other stories, made for the purpose of introducing new characters, are not observable in this, which seems to be spurred and driven on by some overmastering power above and back of the author, making him, — "Like one, that on a lonesome road Doth walk in fear and dread, And having once turned round, walks on, And turns no more his head; Because he knows a frightful fiend Doth close behind him tread." The stimulant which kindled Dickens's imagination was Carlyle's wonderful prose epic, "The French Revolution," which so captivated him that he re-read it a score of times with ever new delight. After he had decided to write the tale, Carlyle furnished him with many of the books he had himself used in preparing his work, and which aided Dickens in gaining a vivid conception of the condition of France, both while the Revolution was impending and after it had rushed into its worst excesses. The idea of the story was working vaguely in his mind when he was specially disturbed by his domestic troubles; it grew into shape gradually; and, after his quarrel with the publishers of " Household Words" had impelled him to estab 66 to lish the weekly periodical of "All the Year Round," he inaugurated his new enterprise by publishing on April 30, 1859, the opening portions of "A Tale of Two Cities." The story at once carried the circulation of the weekly up to an average sale, varying between thirty and forty thousand copies. Before venturing on the publication, he had the usual correspondence with Forster, as to choosing an appropriate title. "One of These Days' was his first choice; then came "Buried Alive!" then "The Thread of Gold;" then "The Doctor of Beauvais." The idea of the plot had been brooding in his mind nearly a year before he finally decided on something which would fit, as he said, the opening of the story a T," "A Tale of Two Cities." As the work went on, he was gratified by a letter from Carlyle warmly praising it. "I set myself to the task," he wrote to Forster, "of making a picturesque story, rising in every chapter, with characters true to nature, but whom the story should express more than they should express themselves by dialogue. I mean, in other words, that I fancied a story of incident might be written (in place of the odious stuff that is written under that pretence), pounding the characters in its own mortar, and beating their interest out of them." To Forster's historical objections, that the feudal cruelties did not come within the date of the action sufficiently to justify his use of them, Dickens returned a ready answer. "I had, of course," he said, "full knowledge of the formal surrender of the feudal privileges, but these had been bitterly felt quite as near to the time of the Revolution as the doctor's narrative, which you will remember dates long before the Terror. With the slang of the new philosophy on the one side, it was surely not unreasonable or unallowable, on the other, to suppose a nobleman wedded to the old cruel ideas and representing the time going out, as his nephew represents the time coming in. If there be anything certain on earth, I take it that the condition of the French peasant generally at that day was intolerable. No later inquiries or provings by figures will hold water against the tremendous testimony of men living at the |