Quote Originally Posted by Alex Bragi
“"It was the worst of times; it was the best of times”? Oh, but shouldn’t that really be, “"It was the worst of times; it was the best of times…” ?
Just to stop an interesting thread coming to an end I thought I would chip in. The Dicken's version is more poetic and therefore worthy of breaking grammatical rules. Rules are there to be broken but should only be broken to make a better or more powerful poetic sense. Metaphysical connections can say a lot more than literal meaning.

The irony of the poetry in Dicken's work, is that he was a really lousy poet.