Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens | Page 7

which he has really
observed the worth and the weakness of the aristocrat. He is quite right
when he suggests that such a man has intelligence enough to despise
the invitations which he has not the energy to refuse. He is quite right
when he makes Eugene (like Mr. Balfour) constantly right in argument
even when he is obviously wrong in fact. Dickens is quite right when
he describes Eugene as capable of cultivating a sort of secondary and
false industry about anything that is not profitable; or pursuing with
passion anything that is not his business. He is quite right in making
Eugene honestly appreciative of essential goodness--in other people.
He is quite right in making him really good at the graceful combination
of satire and sentiment, both perfectly sincere. He is also right in
indicating that the only cure for this intellectual condition is a violent
blow on the head.
DAVID COPPERFIELD
The real achievement of the earlier part of David Copperfield lies in a
certain impression of the little Copperfield living in a land of giants. It
is at once Gargantuan in its fancy and grossly vivid in its facts; like
Gulliver in the land of Brobdingnag when he describes mountainous
hands and faces filling the sky, bristles as big as hedges, or moles as
big as molehills. To him parents and guardians are not Olympians (as

in Mr. Kenneth Grahame's clever book), mysterious and dignified,
dwelling upon a cloudy hill. Rather they are all the more visible for
being large. They come all the closer because they are colossal. Their
queer features and weaknesses stand out large in a sort of gigantic
domesticity, like the hairs and freckles of a Brobdingnagian. We feel
the sombre Murdstone coming upon the house like a tall storm striding
through the sky. We watch every pucker of Peggotty's peasant face in
its moods of flinty prejudice or whimsical hesitation. We look up and
feel that Aunt Betsey in her garden gloves was really
terrible--especially her garden gloves. But one cannot avoid the
impression that as the boy grows larger these figures grow smaller, and
are not perhaps so completely satisfactory.
CHRISTMAS BOOKS
And there is doubtless a certain poetic unity and irony in gathering
together three or four of the crudest and most cocksure of the modern
theorists, with their shrill voices and metallic virtues, under the fulness
and the sonorous sanity of Christian bells. But the figures satirised in
The Chimes cross each other's path and spoil each other in some degree.
The main purpose of the book was a protest against that impudent and
hard-hearted utilitarianism which arranges the people only in rows of
men or even in rows of figures. It is a flaming denunciation of that
strange mathematical morality which was twisted often unfairly out of
Bentham and Mill: a morality by which each citizen must regard
himself as a fraction, and a very vulgar fraction. Though the particular
form of this insolent patronage has changed, this revolt and rebuke is
still of value, and may be wholesome for those who are teaching the
poor to be provident. Doubtless it is a good idea to be provident, in the
sense that Providence is provident, but that should mean being kind,
and certainly not merely being cold.
The Cricket on the Hearth, though popular, I think, with many sections
of the great army of Dickensians, cannot be spoken of in any such
abstract or serious terms. It is a brief domestic glimpse; it is an interior.
It must be remembered that Dickens was fond of interiors as such; he
was like a romantic tramp who should go from window to window

looking in at the parlours. He had that solid, indescribable delight in the
mere solidity and neatness of funny little humanity in its funny little
houses, like doll's houses. To him every house was a box, a Christmas
box, in which a dancing human doll was tied up in bricks and slates
instead of string and brown paper. He went from one gleaming window
to another, looking in at the lamp-lit parlours. Thus he stood for a little
while looking in at this cosy if commonplace interior of the carrier and
his wife; but he did not stand there very long. He was on his way to
quainter towns and villages. Already the plants were sprouting upon the
balcony of Miss Tox; and the great wind was rising that flung Mr.
Pecksniff against his own front door.
TALE OF TWO CITIES
It was well for him, at any rate, that the people rose in France. It was
well for him, at any rate, that the guillotine was set up in the Place de la
Concorde. Unconsciously, but not accidentally, Dickens was here
working out the whole true comparison