Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens | Page 9

was absurd
enough to laugh at he laughed at it: so far he was on sure ground. But
about all the small human projects that lie between the extremes of the
sublime and the ridiculous, his criticism was apt to have an accidental
quality. As Matthew Arnold said of the remarks of the Young Man
from the Country about the perambulator, they are felt not to be at the
heart of the situation. On a great many occasions the Uncommercial
Traveller seems, like other hasty travellers, to be criticising elements
and institutions which he has quite inadequately understood; and once
or twice the Uncommercial Traveller might almost as well be a
Commercial Traveller for all he knows of the countryside.
An instance of what I mean may be found in the amusing article about
the nightmares of the nursery. Superficially read it might almost be
taken to mean that Dickens disapproved of ghost stories--disapproved
of that old and genial horror which nurses can hardly supply fast
enough for the children who want it. Dickens, one would have thought,
should have been the last man in the world to object to horrible stories,
having himself written some of the most horrible that exist in the world.
The author of the Madman's Manuscript, of the disease of Monk and
the death of Krook, cannot be considered fastidious in the matter of
revolting realism or of revolting mysticism. If artistic horror is to be
kept from the young, it is at least as necessary to keep little boys from

reading Pickwick or Bleak House as to refrain from telling them the
story of Captain Murderer or the terrible tale of Chips. If there was
something appalling in the rhyme of Chips and pips and ships, it was
nothing compared to that infernal refrain of "Mudstains, bloodstains"
which Dickens himself, in one of his highest moments of hellish art,
put into Oliver Twist.
I take this one instance of the excellent article called "Nurse's Stories"
because it is quite typical of all the rest. Dickens (accused of
superficiality by those who cannot grasp that there is foam upon deep
seas) was really deep about human beings; that is, he was original and
creative about them. But about ideas he did tend to be a little superficial.
He judged them by whether they hit him, and not by what they were
trying to hit. Thus in this book the great wizard of the Christmas ghosts
seems almost the enemy of ghost stories; thus the almost melodramatic
moralist who created Ralph Nickleby and Jonas Chuzzlewit cannot see
the point in original sin; thus the great denouncer of official oppression
in England may be found far too indulgent to the basest aspects of the
modern police. His theories were less important than his creations,
because he was a man of genius. But he himself thought his theories the
more important, because he was a man.

SKETCHES BY BOZ
The greatest mystery about almost any great writer is why he was ever
allowed to write at all. The first efforts of eminent men are always
imitations; and very often they are bad imitations. The only question is
whether the publisher had (as his name would seem to imply) some
subconscious connection or sympathy with the public, and thus felt
instinctively the presence of something that might ultimately tell; or
whether the choice was merely a matter of chance and one Dickens was
chosen and another Dickens left. The fact is almost unquestionable:
most authors made their reputation by bad books and afterwards
supported it by good ones. This is in some degree true even in the case
of Dickens. The public continued to call him "Boz" long after the
public had forgotten the Sketches by Boz. Numberless writers of the

time speak of "Boz" as having written Martin Chuzzlewit and "Boz" as
having written David Copperfield. Yet if they had gone back to the
original book signed "Boz" they might even have felt that it was vulgar
and flippant. This is indeed the chief tragedy of publishers: that they
may easily refuse at the same moment the wrong manuscript and the
right man. It is easy to see of Dickens now that he was the right man;
but a man might have been very well excused if he had not realised that
the Sketches was the right book. Dickens, I say, is a case for this
primary query: whether there was in the first work any clear sign of his
higher creative spirit. But Dickens is much less a case for this query
than almost all the other great men of his period. The very earliest
works of Thackeray are much more unimpressive than those of Dickens.
Nay, they are much more vulgar than those of Dickens. And worst