VI

CHARLES DICKENS

It is a fearsome thing to venture to say anything now about Charles
Dickens, whom we have all loved, enjoyed, and laughed over: whose tales
are household words in every home where the English tongue is heard,
whose characters are our own school-friends, the sentiment of our
youthful memories, our boon-companions and our early attachments. To
view him in any critical light is a task as risky as it would be to
discuss the permanent value of some fashionable amusement, a favourite
actor, a popular beverage, or a famous horse. Millions and millions of
old and young love Charles Dickens, know his personages by heart, play
at games with his incidents and names, and from the bottom of their
souls believe that there never was such fun, and that there never will
be conceived again such inimitable beings, as they find in his
ever-fresh and ever-varied pages. This is by itself a very high title
to honour: perhaps it is the chief jewel in the crown that rests on the
head of Charles Dickens. I am myself one of these devotees, of these
lovers, of these slaves of his: or at least I can remember that I have
been. To have stirred this pure and natural humanity, this force of
sympathy, in such countless millions is a great triumph. Men and women
to-day do not want any criticism of Charles Dickens, any talk about him
at all. They enjoy him as he is: they examine one another in his
books: they gossip on by the hour about his innumerable characters, his
never-to-be-forgotten waggeries and fancies.