Every child in England and America to-day should be grateful to Dickens, for the present happy condition of children is due in no small degree to his unremitting efforts in their behalf. Under the Puritan régime, there was no place for children, while to-day we have gone so far in the other direction that many households revolve about the nursery, and the caprices of the child are carefully studied and gratified by doting parents. This is the golden age for children, and I suppose they are making the most of it, and will continue to do so, while the kindergarten and nature-study take the place of discipline. But in Dickens's boyhood the influence of the Puritan autocracy of maturity had by no means passed away. Our novelist must have suffered continual mortification as a child to write about the bad manners of elders toward children with such mordant bitterness. What he emphasised was not so much the material discomfort constantly suffered by children as the daily insults to their dignity. They were repressed, they were beaten, they were starved; but worse than that, they were treated with a grinning condescension more odious than deliberate insult. Dickens, with all the force of his genius, insisted on the inherent dignity of childhood. I confess I cannot read without squirming those passages in Great Expecta

tions where every visitor greeted the small boy by ruffling his hair; and I think most of us can remember without any difficulty and with a flush of joy those extremely rare cases in our own childhood when some grown-up visitor treated us with real, instead of with mock, respect. It is perhaps the final test of a gentleman — his attitude toward children.

Dickens's novels are unequal in value, but, unlike many writers, he had no single great period and no prolonged lack of inspiration. Pickwick Papers and Oliver Twist, which came very early in his career, are great books, but so indubitably are Great Expectations and Our Mutual Friend which came very late. Indeed, I think, with the single exception of David Copperfield, Great Expectations is his finest work. And yet it followed hard upon the only two novels of his that I dislike, Little Dorrit, and A Tale of Two Cities. As for Little Dorrit, it is not too much of a good thing so much as it is too much of a bad thing; and as for the much-praised Tale of Two Cities, it rings to my ears false from first to last. His genius was not fitted for historical romance, any more than it was for the writing of history, as his Child's History of England abundantly demonstrates. Indeed, I think that the Tale of Two Cities is as inferior to David Copperfield as to refer to that splendid

reincarnation of Dickens in our own day, long life to him! - An Affair of Dishonour is to Joseph Vance. All we can say of these two historical romances is that they are better than most contemporary attempts in the same direction. But of genius we always expect works of genius, which is sometimes very hard on the genius.

Two things constantly said of Dickens seem to me in the last analysis untrue that he was primarily a caricaturist and that he was careless as an artist. A caricaturist is not by nature original: he must have a model; otherwise he cannot work, and the point of his caricature is lost. Now, Dickens was profoundly and in the highest sense an original writer; his creation of character had that originality possessed only by genius. Sam Weller, Dick Swiveller, Ham, Steerforth, Tom Pinch, Mr. Boffin, to select out of what an astonishing number and variety! are not caricatures; they are original creations, imperishable additions to our literary acquaintances. And if one really doubts that Dickens was a serious and sincere artist, one should read again that chapter in David Copperfield where the profound conviction of his life was expressed, namely, that the one sure road to failure is to belittle one's own calling and efforts, and to take one's chosen work in the world in a flippant or ironical way. I am sure that many

readers cannot see those words staring at them from the page without a wave of shame.

Some years ago I organised among my undergraduate students a Faerie Queene Club. The sole requirement for active membership was that the candidate should have read every word of that vast poem. One of the youths, writing an essay on his sensations after concluding his task, said, "The Faerie Queene is so great that it is absurd to attempt to measure its greatness; we can only measure ourselves by it." The remark betrayed healthy modesty and true insight, and the boy who said it has already achieved literary distinction. I am glad to adapt his words to Dickens. He is so great that we can only measure ourselves by him. There are many who fancy they have outgrown Dickens; but I suspect that they would change their minds if only they would read him. Those who think they have outgrown him really need him the most; just as no one needs faith so much as those who have lost it. They need to be cheered up. And Dickens was engaged in the great work of cheering us all up.

V

CARLYLE'S LOVE-LETTERS

TIME has dealt ironically with the man who requested that no biography of him should be written. From earliest youth to extreme old age he resented the intrusion of curious eyes within his own four walls. Writing to Miss Welsh, 12 October 1823, discoursing eloquently on the thought that after death our friends will remember us with love alone, and all our faults be forgotten, he exclaims, "The idea that all my deformities shall be hid beneath the grass that covers me, and I shall live like a stainless being in the hearts of those that loved me, often of itself almost reconciles me to the inexorable law of fate." What a motto this sentence would have been for Froude to have placed on the title-page of his biography! And we know that Froude had read these very words in Carlyle's own manuscript. The "stainless being" has had his "deformities" subjected to a ruthless searchlight. The idlest vagaries of his dreams and the most hasty imprecations of transient irritation have received the permanent mould of cold type. His best friend and most ardent disciple, in an