Charles Dickens (Gissing, 1898)/Chapter 8

To write of Dickens at all, is to presuppose his humour. The plan of my essay has necessitated a separate consideration of the various features of his work, and at moments it may have appeared that I found fault without regard to a vast counterbalance; but it was never possible for me to lose sight of that supreme quality of his genius which must be now dwelt upon with undivided attention. It was as a humorist that Dickens made his name; and in a retrospect of his life's activity one perceives that his most earnest purposes depended for their furtherance upon this genial power, which he shares with nearly all the greatest of English writers. Holding, as he did, that the first duty of an author is to influence his reader for good, Dickens necessarily esteemed as the most precious of his gifts that by virtue of which he commanded so great an audience. Without his humour, he might have been a vigorous advocate of social ​reform, but as a novelist assuredly he would have failed; and as to the advocacy of far-reaching reforms by men who have only earnestness and eloquence to work with, English history tells its tale. Only because they laughed with him so heartily, did multitudes of people turn to discussing the question his page suggested. As a story-teller pure and simple, the powers that remain to him, if humour be subtracted, would never have ensured popularity. Nor, on the other hand, would they have availed him in the struggle for artistic perfection, which is a better thing. Humour is the soul of his work. Like the soul of man, it permeates a living fabric which, but for its creative breath, could never have existed.

In his earliest writing we discover only the suggestion of this quality. The Sketches have a touch of true humour, but (apart from the merits of acute observation and great descriptive power) there is much more of merely youthful high spirits, tending to the farcical. Such a piece as The Tuggs at Ramsgate is distinct farce, and not remarkably good of its kind. This vein Dickens continued to work throughout his career, and often with great success. One must distinguish between the parts of his writing which stir to mere hilarity, ​and his humour in the strict sense of the word. It is none of my business to define that term, which has long ago been adequately expounded; enough that the humorist has by no means invariably a chuckle in his throat; at moments of his supreme success, he will hardly move us to more of merriment than appears in a thoughtful smile. But there is a perfectly legitimate, and tolerably wide, range for the capers of a laughing spirit, and as a writer of true farce I suppose Dickens has never been surpassed. Pickwick abounds in it, now quite distinct from, and now all but blending with, the higher characteristic. One can imagine that the public approval of his Sketches had given the author an impetus which carried him of a sudden into regions of extravagant buoyancy and mirthfulness. The first few pages are farce of the frankest. Winkle, Snodgrass, and Tupman remain throughout farcical characters, but not so Mr. Pickwick himself. Farce is the election at Eatanswill, and the quarrel of the rival Editors, and many another well-remembered passage. Only a man of genius has the privilege of being so emphatically young. "Though the merriment was rather boisterous, still it came from the heart and not from the lips; and this is the right sort of merriment after all." How ​could one better describe, than in these words from the book itself, that overflowing cheeriness which conquered Dickens's first public? Or take the description of old Wardle coming through the early sunshine to bid Mr. Pickwick good morning,—"out of breath with his own anticipations of pleasure." Alas! old gentlemen, however jolly, do not get breathless in this fashion; but the young may, and Dickens, a mere boy himself, was writing for the breathless boyhood of many an age to come.

The farce in his younger work always results from this exuberance of spirits; later, he introduces it deliberately; with conscious art save perhaps at those moments when the impulse of satire is too much for him. One easily recalls his best efforts in this direction. The wild absurdity of the Muffin Company at the beginning of Nickleby shows him still in his boyish mood, and the first chapter of Chuzzlewit finds him unluckily reverting to it at the moment when he was about to produce a masterpiece of genuine humour. Mr. Mantalini is capital fun; he never quite loses his hold upon one, and to the end we shall laugh over the "demnition egg" and the "demnition bow-wows." At this stage Dickens was capable of a facetiousness of descriptive phrase which hints the peril ​involved in a reputation such as he had won. "Madame Mantalini wrung her hands for grief and rung the bell for her husband; which done, she fell into a chair and a fainting fit simultaneously." When he had written that passage, and allowed it to stand, his genius warned him; I remember nothing so dangerous in after time. Quilp, at his best, is rich entertainment; in Dick Swiveller we touch higher things. The scene between little David Copperfield and the waiter (chap, v.) seems to me farce, though very good; country innkeepers were never in the habit of setting a dish-load of cutlets before a little boy who wanted dinner, and not even the shrewdest of waiters, having devoured them all, could make people believe that it was the little boy's achievement; but the comic vigour of the thing is irresistible. Better still is the forced marriage of Jack Bunsby to the great M'Stinger. Here, I think, Dickens reaches his highest point. We cannot call it "screaming" farce; it appeals not only to the groundlings. Laughter holding both his sides was never more delightfully justified; gall and the megrims were never more effectually dispelled. It is the ludicrous in its purest form, tainted by no sort of unkindliness, and leaving behind it nothing but the healthful aftertaste of self-forgetful mirth.

​We may notice how Dickens makes use of farcical extravagance to soften the bitterness of truth. When Sally Brass goes down into the grimy cellar-kitchen to give the little slavey her food, we are told that she cut from the joint "two square inches of cold mutton," and bade her victim never say that she had not had meat in that house. This makes one laugh; who can refrain? If he had avoided exaggeration, and shown us the ragged, starving child swallowing the kind of meal which was really set before her, who could have endured it? The point is vastly important for an understanding of Dickens's genius and his popularity. That "two square inches" makes all the difference between painful realism and fiction universally acceptable; it is the secret of Dickens's power for good. Beside it may be set another instance. Judy Smallweed, in Bleak House, likewise has her little slavey over whom she tyrannizes; a child, too, who has won our sympathy in a high degree, and whom we could not bear to see brutally used. She is brutally used; but then Judy Smallweed is a comical figure; so comical that no one takes her doings with seriousness. Harsh words and broken meats are again provocative of laughter, when in very truth we should sob. With Dickens's end in view, how wise his method! After merriment ​comes the thought: but what a shame! And henceforth the reader thinks sympathetically of poor little girls whether ruled by vicious trollops or working under easier conditions. Omit the jest and the story becomes too unpleasant to remember.

Between Dickens's farce and his scenes of humour the difference is obvious. In Mantalini or Jack Bunsby we have nothing illuminative; they amuse, and there the matter ends. But true humour always suggests a thought, always throws light on human nature. The humorist may not be fully conscious of his own meaning; he always, indeed, implies more than he can possibly have thought out; and therefore it is that we find the best humour inexhaustible, ever fresh when we return to it, ever, as our knowledge of life increases, more suggestive of wisdom.

Both the Wellers are creations strictly humorous. For one thing, each is socially representative; each, moreover, is a human type, for ever recognizable beneath time's disguises. Be it noticed that neither the old coachman nor his son is ever shown in a grotesque, or improbable, situation; there is no cutting of capers, even when they make us laugh the loudest. The fantastic is here needless; nature has wrought with roguish intention, and we ​are aware of it at every moment of their common life. No one takes Mantalini to his heart; but Tony and Sam become in very truth our friends, and for knowing them, improbable as it might seem, we know ourselves the better. They are surprising incarnations of the spirit of man, which is doomed to inhabit so variously. The joke consists in perceiving how this spirit adjusts itself to an odd situation, reconciles itself with queerest circumstance. In old Weller, it is a matter of stress; his difficulties, never too severe, bring out the quaint philosophy of the man, and set us smiling in fellowship. Sam, at ease in the world, makes life his jest, and we ask nothing better than to laugh with one who sees so shrewdly, feels so honestly. Sam cannot away with a humbug—in this respect, Dickens's own child. Put him face to face with Job Trotter, and how his countenance shines, how his tongue is loosed! It is a great part of Sam's business in life to come into genial conflict with Job Trotter; his weapon of mockery is in the end irresistible, and a Cockney serving-man strikes many a stroke for the good of human-kind. Of course he does not know it; that is our part, as we look on, and feel in our hearts the warmth of kindly merriment and give thanks to the great humorist who teaches us so much.

​To survey all his humorous characters would be to repeat, in substance, the same remarks again and again. I have no space for a discussion, from this point of view, of the figures which have already passed before us. But of Mrs. Gamp one word. She sometimes comes into my thought together with Falstaff, and I am tempted to say that there is a certain propriety in the association. Where else since Shakespeare shall we find such force in the humorous presentment of gross humanity? The two figures, of course, stand on different planes. In Falstaff, intellect and breeding are at issue with the flesh, however sorely worsted; in Sarah Gamp, little intellect and less breeding are to be looked for, and the flesh has its way; but I discover some likeness of character. If Betsy Prig's awful assertion regarding Mrs. Harris must be held as proved, is there not a hint of resemblance between the mood that elaborated this delicious fiction and the temper native to the hero of Gadshill? A fancy; let it pass. But to my imagination the thick-tongued, leering, yet half-genial woman walks as palpably in Kingsgate Street as yon mountain of a man in Eastcheap. The literary power exhibited in one and the other portrait is of the same kind; the same perfect method of idealism is put to use in converting to a source ​of pleasure things that in life repel or nauseate; and in both cases the sublimation of character, of circumstance, is effected by a humour which seems unsurpassable.

From a mention of Mrs. Harris, one passes very naturally to Spenlow and Jorkins an only less happy bit of humour. Of course it was taken straight from life; we know that without any authority; at this moment, be sure of it, more than one Mr. Spenlow is excusing his necessity or his meanness with the plea of Mr. Jorkins' inflexibility. But only the man of genius notes such a thing, and records it for ever among human traits.

Very rich is Dickens's humour in those passages which serve rather as illustrations of manners than of individual character. Take the scene at Mrs. Kenwig's confinement; a shining chapter in the often weak and crude pages of Nickleby. So quietly it is done, yet so vividly; never a note of the extravagant; every detail of the scene set before us as it must have been shown in fact, but invested with such mirthful significance. Or, again, the servants' hall at Mr. Dombey's; so much better, because done with so much geniality, than the life that went on upstairs. Or Mr. Smallwood giving his friend Jobling a dinner at the chop-house; where we hear the chink ​of plates and glasses, and feel hungry at Jobling's acceptance of each new succulent suggestion, and see the law-clerk's wink as he reckons up with Polly the waitress. Among things supreme stands "Todgers's." Whenever I chance to come within sight of the Monument, it is not of the fire of London that I think, but of Todgers's; one feels that the house must be still existing, discoverable by sufficiently earnest search. It is inconceivable that any age which has not outgrown our language should forget this priceless description; every line close-packed with humorous truth. And how generous the scale! Here is no "hitting off" in a page or so; a broad canvas filled with detail that never tires, and no touch ever superfluous. Not only are the inhabitants of Todgers's made real to us, collectively and individually, by the minutest portraiture; but the very fabric and its furniture fix themselves in the mind, so described that each room, each table, becomes symbolic, instinct with a meaning which the ordinary observer would never have suspected. The grim old city of London has of a sudden revealed to us a bit of its very self, and we see in it a museum of human peculiarities, foibles, and vices. There this little group of people lives squeezed amid the brick and mortar ​labyrinth; each so vastly important to himself, so infinitesimal in the general view. They remind us of busy ants, running about with what seems such ridiculous earnestness; yet we know that their concerns are ours, and turn from laughing at them—to go and do likewise.

The subtlest bit of humour in all Dickens's books is, to my mind, that scene I have already mentioned as a triumph of characterization, the Father of the Marshalsea entertaining his old pensioner Nandy. But public favour turns to pictures of life that have more familiarity. Dickens was always happy when dealing with that common object of his time—nothing like so common nowadays—the travelling show; were it dramatic, or equestrian, waxworks, or Punch and Judy. From Mr. Crummies and his troupe in Nickleby down to Chops the Dwarf in a story written for All the Tear Round, he never failed in such humorous picturing. Codlin and Short are typical instances. These figures never become farcical; they are always profoundly true, and amuse by pure virtue of their humanity. Akin to this order of beings is another with which he had remarkable acquaintance the inn waiter. Read again (or only too possibly read for the first time) the waiter's ​autobiography in Somebody's Luggage. Here is no satire, but very fact made vocal; made, at the same time, such a delightful example of unconscious self-disclosure that we cannot sufficiently wonder at the author's sympathetic knowledge.

No one has equalled him in bringing out the humours of stupidity. One of his masterpieces is old Willet, the landlord of the Maypole. Willet is all but a born idiot, in the proper sense of the word; and that "all but" becomes in Dickens's hand the opportunity for elaborate portraiture. You may compare the man with the weakest-minded of Dickens's lower class women (whichever that may be), and find in the parallel a rich subject of speculation. Being masculine, Willet is sparing of his words; his great resource is a blank stare of imbecile resentment, implying an estimate of his own importance at which the very gods might stand fixed between amaze and laughter. Inimitable the skill with which this asserter of human dignity is shown at last suffering from mental shock—a shock so severe that it all but reduces him to the condition of a dumb mute. We had thought it impossible that he could fall intellectually lower; when it comes, we can only acknowledge the author's reserve of power. There ​he sits, amid the wreck of his fine old inn, staring at his old-time companion, the kitchen boiler. Seeing him thus, we have it brought to mind that he really was, in his way, a capable landlord, and had kept the Maypole spick and span for many a long year; which possibly suggests an aspect of English character, and English conservatism, not out of keeping with some of Dickens's views on such subjects.

I must not omit mention of those sketches of genuine grotesques—not Quilp-like extravagances—which now and then flash upon us at some odd moment of the story; wonders of swift character-drawing, and instinct with humour. The finest examples I can remember are the figure of Mr. Nadgett, in Chuzzlewit (chap, xxvii.), and that of the old woman called Tamaroo, in the same book (chap, xxxii.). Language cannot do more in the calling up of a vivid image before the mind; and how much of this result is traceable to the writer's humorous insight. There could be no better illustration of the difference between Dickens's grasp and presentment of a bit of human nature, a bit of observable fact, and that method which the critics of to-day, inaccurately but intelligibly, call photographic. Nadgett, the tracker of sordid mysteries, and Tamaroo, successor of young Bailey at Todgers's, acquire ​an imaginative importance like in kind (however different in degree) to that of the grandest figures in fiction. Every stroke of such outlines is a manifestation of genius.

Inseparable from the gift of humour is that of pathos. It was Dickens's misfortune that, owing to habits of his mind already sufficiently discussed, he sometimes elaborated pathetic scenes, in the theatrical sense of the word. I do not attribute to him the cold insincerity so common in the work of playwrights; but at times he lost self-restraint and unconsciously responded to the crude ideals of a popular audience. Emphasis and reiteration, however necessary for such hearers, were out of place in pathetic narrative. Thus it comes about that he is charged with mawkishness, and we hear of some who greatly enjoy his humour rapidly turning the pages meant to draw a tear. Chiefly, I suppose, it is the death of Paul Dombey that such critics have in mind; they would point also to the death of Jo, the crossing-sweeper, and to that of Little Nell. On a re-perusal of these chapters, I feel that nothing can be said in defence of Jo; on his death-bed he is an impossible creature, and here for once moral purpose has been undeniably fatal to every quality of art. Regarding the other narratives, it strikes me that they ​have been too hastily condemned. The one line which describes the death of Paul's mother is better, no doubt, than the hundreds through which we follow the fading of Paul himself; but these pages I cannot call mawkish, for I do not feel that they are flagrantly untrue. The tear may rise or not—that depends upon how we are constituted—but we are really standing by the bed of a gentle little child, precociously gifted and cruelly over-wrought, and, if the situation is to be presented at all, it might be much worse done. Such pathos is called "cheap." I can only repeat that in Dickens' s day, the lives, the happiness of children were very cheap indeed, and that he had his purpose in insisting on their claims to attention. As for the heroine of The Old Curiosity Shop, distaste for her as a pathetic figure seems to me unintelligent. She is a child of romance; her death is purely symbolical, signifying the premature close of any sweet, innocent, and delicate life. Heaven forbid that I should attribute to Dickens a deliberate allegory; but, having in mind those hapless children who were then being tortured in England's mines and factories, I like to see in Little Nell a type of their sufferings; she, the victim of avarice, dragged with bleeding feet along the hard roads, ever pursued by heart​less self-interest, and finding her one safe refuge in the grave. Look back upon the close of that delightful novel, and who can deny its charm? Something I shall have to say presently about the literary style; but as a story of peaceful death it is beautifully imagined and touchingly told.

Of true pathos, Dickens has abundance. The earliest instance I can call to mind is the death of the Chancery prisoner in Pickwick, described at no great length, but very powerful over the emotions. It worthily holds a place amid the scenes of humour enriching that part of the book. We feel intensely the contrast between the prisoner's life and that which was going on in the free world only a few yards away; we see in his death a pitifulness beyond words. A scene in another book, Bleak House—this, too, connected with that accursed system of imprisonment for debt, shows Dickens at his best in bringing out the pathos of childlife. The man known to Mr. Skimpole as "Coavinses" has died, and Coavinses' children, viewed askance by neighbours because of their father's calling, are living alone in a garret. They are presented as simply as possible—nothing here of stage emphasis—yet the eyes dazzle as we look. I must quote a line or two. "We were looking at one another," says ​Esther Summerson, "and at these two children, when there came into the room a very little girl, childish in figure but shrewd and older-looking in the face—pretty faced too—wearing a womanly sort of bonnet much too large for her, and drying her bare arms on a womanly sort of apron. Her fingers were white and wrinkled with washing, and the soapsuds were yet smoking which she wiped off her arms. But for this, she might have been a child playing at washing and imitating a poor working-woman with a quick observation of the truth." It is Charley, of course, who had found a way to support herself and the younger ones. We see how closely the true pathetic and a "quick observation" are allied. Another picture shown us in Esther's narrative, that of the baby's death in the starved labourer's cottage, moves by legitimate art. Still more of it is felt in the story of Doctor Marigold, the Cheap Jack, whose child is dying in his arms, whilst for daily bread he plays buffoon before the crowd. This is a noble piece of work and defies criticism. The tale is told by the man himself as simply as possible; he never insists upon the pitifulness of his position. We hear his whispers to the child, between his hoarse professional shoutings and the guffaws in front; then he finds his word of tenderness brings no ​response—he looks closer—he turns from the platform. A piece of work that might atone for literary sins far worse than Dickens ever committed.

Little Dorrit is strong in pathos, as in humour. Dickens's memories of childhood made his touch very sure whenever he dealt with the squalid prison-world, and life there was for him no less fertile in pathos than death. Very often it is inextricably blended with his humour; in the details of the Marshalsea picture, who shall say which element of his genius prevails? Yet, comparing it with the corresponding scenes in Pickwick, we perceive a subdual of tone, which comes not only of advancing years, but of riper art; and, as we watch the Dorrits step forth from the prison-door, it is in another mood than that which accompanied the release of Mr. Pickwick. Pathos of this graver and subtler kind is the distinguishing note of Great Expectations, a book which Dickens meant, and rightly meant, to end in the minor key. The old convict, Magwitch, if he cannot be called a tragical personality, has feeling enough to move the reader's deeper interest, and in the very end acquires through suffering a dignity which makes him very impressive. Rightly seen, is there not much pathos in the story of Pip's ​foolishness? It would be more manifest if we could forget Lytton's imbecile suggestion, and restore the author's original close of the story.

To the majority of readers it seemed—and perhaps still seems—that Dickens achieved his best pathos in the Christmas books. Two of those stories answered their purpose admirably; the other two showed a flagging spirit; but not even in the Carol can we look for anything to be seriously compared with the finer features of his novels. The true value of these little books lies in their deliberate illustration of a theme which occupied Dickens's mind from first to last. Writing for the season of peace, good-will, and jollity, he sets himself to exhibit these virtues in an idealization of the English home. The type of domestic beauty he finds, as a matter of course, beneath a humble roof. And we have but to glance in memory through the many volumes of his life's work to recognize that his gentlest, brightest humour, his simplest pathos, occur in those unexciting pages which depict the everyday life of poor and homely English folk. This is Dickens's most delightful aspect, and I believe it is the most certainly enduring portion of what he has left us.

His genius plays like a warm light on the characteristic aspects of homely England. No ​man ever loved England more; and the proof of it remains in picture after picture of her plain, old-fashioned—life in wayside inns and cottages, in little dwellings hidden amid the city's vastness and tumult, in queer musty shops, in booths and caravans. Finding comfort or jollity, he enjoys it beyond measure, he rubs his hands, he sparkles, he makes us laugh with him from the very heart. Coming upon hardship and woe, he is moved as nowhere else, holds out the hand of true brotherhood, tells to the world his indignation and his grief. There would be no end of selecting passages in illustration, but we must recall a few for the mere pleasure of the thing. Try to imagine the warmest welcome of a cosy little inn, at the end of a long lonely road, on a night of foul weather; you must needs have recourse to the Jolly Sandboys, where Nell and her grandfather and the wandering showmen all found shelter. "There was a deep ruddy blush upon the room, and when the landlord stirred the fire, sending the flames skipping and leaping up—when he took off the lid of the iron pot, and there rushed out a savoury smell, while the bubbling sound grew deeper and more rich, and an unctuous steam came floating out, hanging in a delicious mist above their heads—when he did this, Mr. Codlin's heart was touched" (Old ​Curiosity Shop, chap. xxviii.). And whose is not? What dyspeptic exquisite but must laugh with appetite over such a description?

As good is the picture of Ruth Pinch at the butcher's. "To see him slap the steak before he laid it on the block, and give his knife a sharpening, was to forget breakfast instantly. It was agreeable, too—it really was—to see him cut it off, so smooth and juicy. There was nothing savage in the act. Although the knife was large and keen, it was a piece of high art . . . Perhaps the greenest cabbage leaf ever grown in a garden was wrapped about this steak before it was delivered over to Tom. But the butcher had a sentiment for his business, and knew how to refine upon it. When he saw Tom putting the cabbage-leaf into his pocket awkwardly, he begged to be allowed to do it for him ; 'for meat,' he said with some emotion, 'must be humoured and not drove'!" (Chuzzlewit, chap. xxxix.). Reading this, how does one regret that Dickens should have filled with melodrama many a page which might have been given to the commonest doings of the humble street!

There is a great chapter of The Old Curiosity Shop (chap. xxxix.),where Kit and Barbara, with their respective mothers, with little Jacob, too, and the Baby, go to spend the evening at ​Astley's. It would have seemed impossible to get so much kindly fun out of a group of the London poor. Dickens does it by dint of his profound, his overflowing sympathy with them. He glows with delight when they are delighted; he understands precisely what they enjoy and why; it does his very soul good to hear Kit's guffaws and the screaming laugh of little Jacob. Where else in literature is there such infinite good-feeling expressed with such wondrous whimsicality? After the circus. Kit takes all his companions to have an oyster supper (by the way, in those days, as Sam Weller assures us, poverty and oysters always went together). And not one of them enjoyed the meal more than he who gaily described it. How the London poor should love Dickens! But—with his books always obtainable—they can scarce be said to read him at all.

Remember that such a scene as this was new in literature, a bold innovation. Dickens had no model to imitate when he sat down to tell of the joys of servant-lads and servant-girls with their washerwomen and sempstress mothers. But in spirit he continues the work of two writers whom he always held dear, Goldsmith and Sterne. Goldmith's sweetness and compassion, Sterne's sensitive humanity, necessarily had their part, and that no small one, in form​ing Dickens. There is a foretaste of his humour in Moses ("Boz," as we know), the son of the Vicar of Wakefield, and in the would-be fine company; there is a palpable hint to him in the Vicar preaching among poor prisoners. Turning to Uncle Toby, to Corporal Trim, we are perforce reminded of those examples of grotesque goodness, of sweet humility under the oddest exteriors, upon which Dickens lavished his humour and his love.

Captain Cuttle is as well known as any of them. In what terms of literary criticism shall one describe that scene (Dombey, chap, xlix.) where the Captain sits in Solomon Gill's parlour and Florence mixes his grog for him? It is a sort of fairy tale of modern life. No one can for a moment believe that two such persons ever were in such relations; but so irrelevant an objection never occurs to us. All we know is, that a spell is laid upon us; that we pass from smiles to laughter, and from laughter to smiles again. Who ever paused to think that the old coasting Captain, Mrs. M'Stinger's lodger, must have been in person and manners and speech not a little repulsive to a young lady straight from a great house in the west of London? It is not germane to the matter. These are actors in the world of humour and imagination, raised above the ​unessentials of life. Dickens's thought was to make a picture delightful to every heart which can enjoy fun, respect innocence, and sympathize with kindness. Moreover, he wished to point a contrast between the stately house, inhabited by wealth and pride, the atmosphere of which had grown poisonous from the evil passions nurtured in it; and the little back parlour of a shop somewhere amid the City's noisiest streets, where the homeliest—and therefore the most precious—virtues have a secure abode. Fleeing from the home that is none, the mansion where her womanly instincts have been outraged, Florence betakes herself to this poor haven of refuge, and lives there guarded and honoured as any queen in her palace. What could make stronger appeal to the sensibilities of English readers? No national foible is here concerned: we respond with the very best that is in us. We feel that these are the ideals of English life. We are proud of the possibility underlying a fancy of such irresistible charm.

For his own fame, Dickens, I think, never puts his genius to better use than in the idealization of English life and character. Whatever in his work may be of doubtful interest to future time, here is its enduring feature. To be truly and profoundly national is great ​strength in the maker of literature. What a vast difference from all but every point of view between Dickens and Tennyson; yet it is likely enough that these two may survive together as chosen writers of the Victorian age. They are at one in their English sentiment. They excite the same emotion whenever they speak of the English home; none, I think, of their contemporaries touches so powerfully that island note. In Tennyson's glorious range, humour is not lacking; it exercises itself on a theme of the most intimately national significance, and his Northern Farmer will live as long as the poet's memory. Of humour the very incarnation, Dickens cannot think of his country without a sunny smile. In our hearts we love him for it, and so, surely, will the island people for many an age to come.