And there is doubtless a certain poetic unity and irony in gathering
together three or four of the crudest and most cocksure of the modern
theorists, with their shrill voices and metallic virtues, under the
fulness and the sonorous sanity of Christian bells. But the figures
satirised in _The Chimes_ cross each other's path and spoil each other
in some degree. The main purpose of the book was a protest against that
impudent and hard-hearted utilitarianism which arranges the people only
in rows of men or even in rows of figures. It is a flaming denunciation
of that strange mathematical morality which was twisted often unfairly
out of Bentham and Mill: a morality by which each citizen must regard
himself as a fraction, and a very vulgar fraction. Though the particular
form of this insolent patronage has changed, this revolt and rebuke is
still of value, and may be wholesome for those who are teaching the poor
to be provident. Doubtless it is a good idea to be provident, in the
sense that Providence is provident, but that should mean being kind, and
certainly not merely being cold.
_The Cricket on the Hearth_, though popular, I think, with many sections
of the great army of Dickensians, cannot be spoken of in any such
abstract or serious terms. It is a brief domestic glimpse; it is an
interior. It must be remembered that Dickens was fond of interiors as
such; he was like a romantic tramp who should go from window to window
looking in at the parlours. He had that solid, indescribable delight in
the mere solidity and neatness of funny little humanity in its funny
little houses, like doll's houses. To him every house was a box, a
Christmas box, in which a dancing human doll was tied up in bricks and
slates instead of string and brown paper. He went from one gleaming
window to another, looking in at the lamp-lit parlours. Thus he stood
for a little while looking in at this cosy if commonplace interior of
the carrier and his wife; but he did not stand there very long. He was
on his way to quainter towns and villages. Already the plants were
sprouting upon the balcony of Miss Tox; and the great wind was rising
that flung Mr. Pecksniff against his own front door.