Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens

Appreciations and Criticisms of
the Works
by G. K. Chesterton

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Title: Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens
Author: G. K. Chesterton
Release Date: August 20, 2007 [EBook #22362]
Language: English
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[Illustration: Charles Dickens, Circa 1840 From an oil painting by R. J.
Lane.]
APPRECIATIONS AND CRITICISMS OF THE WORKS OF
CHARLES DICKENS
BY
G. K. CHESTERTON
[Illustration]
1911
LONDON: J. M. DENT & SONS, LTD. NEW YORK: E. P. DUTTON
& CO.
All rights reserved

CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. INTRODUCTION vii II. SKETCHES BY BOZ 1 III. PICKWICK
PAPERS 13 IV. NICHOLAS NICKLEBY 26 V. OLIVER TWIST 38
VI. OLD CURIOSITY SHOP 50 VII. BARNABY RUDGE 65 VIII.
AMERICAN NOTES 76 IX. PICTURES FROM ITALY 87 X.
MARTIN CHUZZLEWIT 90 XI. CHRISTMAS BOOKS 103 XII.
DOMBEY AND SON 114 XIII. DAVID COPPERFIELD 129 XIV.
CHRISTMAS STORIES 140 XV. BLEAK HOUSE 148 XVI.
CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND 160 XVII. HARD TIMES 169
XVIII. LITTLE DORRIT 178 XIX. A TALE OF TWO CITIES 188
XX. GREAT EXPECTATIONS 197 XXI. OUR MUTUAL FRIEND
207 XXII. EDWIN DROOD 218 XXIII. MASTER HUMPHREY'S
CLOCK 229 XXIV. REPRINTED PIECES 239

ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
CHARLES DICKENS, CIRCA 1840 Frontispiece From an oil painting
by R. J. Lane.
CHARLES DICKENS, 1842 76 From a bust by H. Dexter, executed
during Dickens's first visit to America.
CHARLES DICKENS, 1844 90 From a miniature by Margaret Gillies.
CHARLES DICKENS, 1849 130 From a daguerreotype by Mayall.
CHARLES DICKENS, 1858 184 From a black and white drawing by
Baughiet.
CHARLES DICKENS, 1859 188 From an oil painting by W. P. Frith,
R.A.
CHARLES DICKENS, CIRCA 1860 198 Photograph by J. & C.
Watkins.
CHARLES DICKENS, 1868 218 From a photograph by Gurney.

INTRODUCTION
These papers were originally published as prefaces to the separate
books of Dickens in one of the most extensive of those cheap libraries
of the classics which are one of the real improvements of recent times.
Thus they were harmless, being diluted by, or rather drowned in
Dickens. My scrap of theory was a mere dry biscuit to be taken with the
grand tawny port of great English comedy; and by most people it was
not taken at all--like the biscuit. Nevertheless the essays were not in
intention so aimless as they appear in fact. I had a general notion of
what needed saying about Dickens to the new generation, though

probably I did not say it. I will make another attempt to do so in this
prologue, and, possibly fail again.
There was a painful moment (somewhere about the eighties) when we
watched anxiously to see whether Dickens was fading from the modern
world. We have watched a little longer, and with great relief we begin
to realise that it is the modern world that is fading. All that universe of
ranks and respectabilities in comparison with which Dickens was called
a caricaturist, all that Victorian universe in which he seemed vulgar--all
that is itself breaking up like a cloudland. And only the caricatures of
Dickens remain like things carved in stone. This, of course, is an old
story in the case of a man reproached with any excess of the poetic.
Again and again when the man of visions was pinned by the sly dog
who knows the world,
"The man recovered of the bite, The dog it was that died."
To call Thackeray a cynic, which means a sly dog, was indeed absurd;
but it is fair to say that in comparison with Dickens he felt himself a
man of the world. Nevertheless, that world of which he was a man is
coming to an end before our eyes; its aristocracy has grown corrupt, its
middle class insecure, and things that he never thought of are walking
about the drawing-rooms of both. Thackeray has described for ever the
Anglo-Indian Colonel; but what on earth would he have done with an
Australian Colonel? What can it matter whether Dickens's clerks talked
cockney now that half the duchesses talk American? What would
Thackeray have made of an age in which a man in the position of Lord
Kew may actually be the born brother of Mr. Moss of Wardour Street?
Nor does