Letters to Dead Authors | Page 6

you a
little (especially your later works), and never to have read anything else.
Now familiarity with the pages of 'Our Mutual Friend'and 'Dombey and
Son' does not precisely constitute a liberal education, and the
assumption that it does is apt (quite unreasonably) to prejudice people
against the greatest comic genius of modern times.
On the other hand, Time is at last beginning to sift the true admirers of
Dickens from the false. Yours, Sir, in the best sense of the word, is a
popular success, a popular reputation. For example, I know that, in a
remote and even Pictish part of this kingdom, a rural household,
humble and under the shadow of a sorrow inevitably approaching, has
found in 'David Copperfield' oblivion of winter, of sorrow, and of
sickness. On the other hand, people are now picking up heart to say that
'they cannot read Dickens,' and that they particularly detest 'Pickwick.' I

believe it was young ladies who first had the courage of their
convictions in this respect. 'Tout sied aux belles,' and the fair, in the
confidence of youth, often venture on remarkable confessions. In your
'Natural History of Young Ladies' I do not remember that you describe
the Humorous Young Lady (1). She is a very rare bird indeed, and
humour generally is at a deplorably low level in England.
(1) I am informed that the NaturalHistoryofYoungLadies is attributed,
by some writers, to another philosopher, the author of TheArtofPluck.
Hence come all sorts of mischief, arisen since you left us; and, it may
be said, that inordinate philanthropy, genteel sympathy with Irish
murder and arson, Societies for Badgering the Poor, Esoteric
Buddhism, and a score of other plagues, including what was once
called Aestheticism, are all, primarily, due to want of humour. People
discuss, with the gravest faces, matters which properly should only be
stated as the wildest paradoxes. It naturally follows that, in a period
almost destitute of humour, many respectable persons 'cannot read
Dickens,' and are not ashamed to glory in their shame. We ought not to
be angry with others for their misfortunes; and yet when one meets the
cre'tins who boast that they cannot read Dickens, one certainly does
feel much as Mr. Samuel Weller felt when he encountered Mr. Job
Trotter.
How very singular has been the history of the decline of humour. Is
there any profound psychological truth to be gathered from
consideration of the fact that humour has gone out with cruelty? A
hundred years ago, eighty years ago --nay, fifty years ago--we were a
cruel but also a humorous people. We had bull-baitings, and
badger-drawings, and hustings, and prize-fights, and cock-fights; we
went to see men hanged; the pillory and the stocks were no empty
'terrors unto evil-doers,' for there was commonly a malefactor
occupying each of these institutions. With all this we had a broad
blown comic sense. We had Ho-garth, and Bunbury, and George
Cruik-shank, and Gilray; we had Leech and Surtees, and the creator of
Tittlebat Titmouse; we had the Shepherd of the 'Noctes,' and, above all,
we had you.

From the old giants of English fun--burly persons delighting in broad
caricature, in decided colours, in cockney jokes, in swashing blows at
the more prominent and obvious human follies--from these you derived
the splendid high spirits and unhesitating mirth of your earlier works.
Mr. Squeers, and Sam Weller, and Mrs. Gamp, and all the
Pickwickians, and Mr. Dowlet, and John Browdie--these and their
immortal companions were reared, so to speak, on the beef and beer of
that naughty, fox-hunting, badger-baiting old England, which we have
improved out of existence. And these characters, assuredly, are your
best; by them, though stupid people cannot read about them, you will
live while there is a laugh left among us. Perhaps that does not assure
you a very prolonged existence, but only the future can show.
The dismal seriousness of the time cannot, let us hope, last for ever and
a day. Honest old Laughter, the true lutin of your inspiration, must
have life left in him yet, and cannot die; though it is true that the taste
for your pathos, and your melodrama, and plots constructed after your
favourite fashion ('Great Expectations' and the 'Tale of Two Cities' are
exceptions) may go by and never be regretted. Were people simpler, or
only less clear-sighted, as far as your pathos is concerned, a
generation ago? Jeffrey, the hard-headed shallow critic, who declared
that Wordsworth 'would never do,' cried, 'wept like any-thing,' over
your Little Nell. One still laughs as heartily as ever with Dick Swiveller;
but who can cry over Little Nell?
Ah, Sir, how could you--who knew so intimately, who remembered so
strangely well the fancies, the dreams, the sufferings of childhood--how
could you 'wallow naked in the pathetic,' and