Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens | Page 4

not only a Member of Parliament, but a
Cabinet Minister; the times when the very soul and spirit of Fledgeby
carried war into Africa. Dickens can be criticised as a contemporary of
Bernard Shaw or Anatole France or C. F. G. Masterman. In talking of
him one need no longer talk merely of the Manchester School or
Puseyism or the Charge of the Light Brigade; his name comes to the
tongue when we are talking of Christian Socialists or Mr. Roosevelt or
County Council Steam Boats or Guilds of Play. He can be considered
under new lights, some larger and some meaner than his own; and it is
a very rough effort so to consider him which is the excuse of these
pages. Of the essays in this book I desire to say as little as possible; I
will discuss any other subject in preference with a readiness which
reaches to avidity. But I may very curtly apply the explanation used
above to the cases of two or three of them. Thus in the article on David
Copperfield I have done far less than justice to that fine book
considered in its relation to eternal literature; but I have dwelt at some

length upon a particular element in it which has grown enormous in
England after Dickens's death. Thus again, in introducing the Sketches
by Boz I have felt chiefly that I am introducing them to a new
generation insufficiently in sympathy with such palpable and
unsophisticated fun. A Board School education, evolved since
Dickens's day, has given to our people a queer and inadequate sort of
refinement, one which prevents them from enjoying the raw jests of the
Sketches by Boz, but leaves them easily open to that slight but
poisonous sentimentalism which I note amid all the merits of David
Copperfield. In the same way I shall speak of Little Dorrit, with
reference to a school of pessimistic fiction which did not exist when it
was written, of Hard Times in the light of the most modern crises of
economics, and of The Child's History of England in the light of the
most matured authority of history. In short, these criticisms are an
intrinsically ephemeral comment from one generation upon work that
will delight many more. Dickens was a very great man, and there are
many ways of testing and stating the fact. But one permissible way is to
say this, that he was an ignorant man, ill-read in the past, and often
confused about the present. Yet he remains great and true, and even
essentially reliable, if we suppose him to have known not only all that
went before his lifetime, but also all that was to come after.
From this vanishing of the Victorian compromise (I might say the
Victorian illusion) there begins to emerge a menacing and even
monstrous thing--we may begin again to behold the English people. If
that strange dawn ever comes, it will be the final vindication of
Dickens. It will be proved that he is hardly even a caricaturist; that he is
something very like a realist. Those comic monstrosities which the
critics found incredible will be found to be the immense majority of the
citizens of this country. We shall find that Sweedlepipe cuts our hair
and Pumblechook sells our cereals; that Sam Weller blacks our boots
and Tony Weller drives our omnibus. For the exaggerated notion of the
exaggerations of Dickens (as was admirably pointed out by my old
friend and enemy Mr. Blatchford in a Clarion review) is very largely
due to our mixing with only one social class, whose conventions are
very strict, and to whose affectations we are accustomed. In cabmen, in
cobblers, in charwomen, individuality is often pushed to the edge of

insanity. But as long as the Thackerayan platform of gentility stood
firm all this was, comparatively speaking, concealed. For the English,
of all nations, have the most uniform upper class and the most varied
democracy. In France it is the peasants who are solid to uniformity; it is
the marquises who are a little mad. But in England, while good form
restrains and levels the universities and the army, the poor people are
the most motley and amusing creatures in the world, full of humorous
affections and prejudices and twists of irony. Frenchmen tend to be
alike, because they are all soldiers; Prussians because they are all
something else, probably policemen; even Americans are all something,
though it is not easy to say what it is; it goes with hawk-like eyes and
an irrational eagerness. Perhaps it is savages. But two English cabmen
will be as grotesquely different as Mr. Weller and Mr. Wegg. Nor is it
true to say that I see this variety because it is in my own people. For I
do