THACKERAY
The habit of those who appraise the relative worth of Dickens
and Thackeray to fall into hostile camps, swearing by one, and
at the other, has its amusing side but is to be deprecated as
irrational. Why should it be necessary to miss appreciation of
the creator of "Vanity Fair" because one happens to like "David
Copperfield"? Surely, our literary tastes or standards should be
broad enough to admit into pleasurable companionship both those
great early Victorian novelists.
Yet, on second thought, there would appear to be some reason for
the fact that ardent lovers of Thackeray are rarely devotees of
the mighty Charles--or vice versa. There is something mutually
exclusive in the attitude of the two, their different
interpretation of life. Unlike in birth, environment, education
and all that is summed up in the magic word personality, their
reaction to life, as a scientist would say, was so opposite that
a reader naturally drawn to one, is quite apt to be repelled by
(or at least, cold to) the other. If you make a wide canvass
among booklovers, it will be found that this is just what
happens. Rarely does a stanch supporter of Dickens show a more
than Laodicean temper towards Thackeray; and for rabid
Thackerians, Dickens too often spells disgust. It is a rare and
enjoyable experience to meet with a mind so catholic as to
welcome both. The backbone of the trouble is personal, in the
natures of the two authors. But I think it is worth while to say
that part of the explanation may be found in the fact that
Thackeray began fiction ten years later than his rival and was
in a deeper sense than was Dickens a voice of the later century.
This means much, because with each decade between 1830 and 1860,
English thought was moving fast toward that scientific faith,
that disillusionment and that spirit of grim truth which
culminated in the work of the final quarter of the century.
Thackeray was impelled more than was Dickens by the spirit of
the times to speak the truth in his delineations of contemporary
mankind: and this operated to make him a satirist, at times a
savage one. The modern thing in Dickens--and he had it--was the
humanitarian sympathy for the submerged tenth; the modern thing
in Thackeray, however, was his fearlessness in uncovering the
conventional shams of polite society. The idols that Dickens
smashed (and never was a bolder iconoclast) were to be seen of
all men: but Thackeray's were less tangible, more subtle, part
and parcel of his own class. In this sense, and I believe
because he began his major novel-writing about 1850, whereas the
other began fifteen years before, Thackeray is more modern, more
of our own time, than his great co-mate in fiction. When we
consider the question of their respective interpretations of
Life it is but fair to bear in mind this historical
consideration, although it would be an error to make too much of
it. Of course, in judging Thackeray and trying to give him a
place in English fiction, he must stand or fall, like any other
writer, by two things: his art, and his message. Was the first
fine, the other sane and valuable--those are the twin tests.
A somewhat significant fact of their literary history may be
mentioned, before an attempt is made to appreciate Thackeray's
novels. For some years after Dickens' death, which, it will be
remembered, occurred six years after Thackeray's, the latter
gained in critical recognition while Dickens slowly lost. There
can be little question of this. Lionized and lauded as was the
man of Gadshill, promptly admitted to Westminster Abbey, it came
to pass in time that, in a course on modern English literature
offered at an old and famous New England college, his name was
not deemed worthy of even a reference. Some critics of repute
have scarce been able to take Dickens seriously: for those who
have steadily had the temerity to care for him, their patronage
has been vocal. This marks an astonishing shift of opinion from
that current in 1870. Thackeray, gaining in proportion, has been
hailed as an exquisite artist, one of the few truly great and
permanent English figures not only of fiction but of letters.
But in the most recent years, again a change has come: the
pendulum has swung back, as it always does when an excessive
movement carries it too far beyond the plumb line. Dickens has
found valiant, critical defenders; he has risen fast in
thoughtful so well as popular estimation (although with the
public he has scarcely fluctuated in favor) until he now enjoys
a sort of resurrection of popularity. What is the cause of this
to-and-fro of judgment? The main explanation is to be found in
the changing literary ideals from 1850 to 1900. When Dickens was
active, literature, broadly speaking, was estimated not
exclusively as art, but as human product, an influence in the
world. With the coming of the new canon, which it is convenient
to dub by the catch-phrase, Art for Art's Sake, a man's
production began to be tested more definitely by the technique
he possessed, the skilled way in which he performed his task.
Did he play the game well? That was the first question. Often it
was the first and last. If he did, his subject-matter, and his
particular vision of Life, were pretty much his own affair. And
this modern touchstone, applied to the writings of our two
authors, favored Thackeray. Simple, old-fashioned readers
inclined to give Dickens the preference over him because the
former's interpretation of humanity was, they averred, kindlier
and more wholesome. Thackeray was cynical, said they; Dickens
humanitarian; but the later critical mood rebounded from
Dickens, since he preached, was frankly didactic, insisted on
his mission of doing good--and so failed in his art. Now,
however, that the l'art pour art shibboleth has been sadly
overworked and is felt to be passing or obsolete, the world
critical is reverting to that broader view which demands that
the maker of literature shall be both man and artist: as a
result, Dickens gains in proportion. This explanation makes it
likely that, looking to the future, while Thackeray may not
lose, Dickens is sure to be more and more appreciated. A return
to a saner and truer criterion will be general and the confines
of a too narrow estheticism be understood: or, better yet, the
esthetic will be so defined as to admit of wider application.
The Gissings and Chestertons of the time to come will insist
even more strenuously than those of ours that while we may have
improved upon Dickens' technique--and every schoolboy can tinker
his faults--we shall do exceedingly well if we duplicate his
genius once in a generation. And they will add that Thackeray,
another man of genius, had also his malaises of art, was
likewise a man with the mortal failings implied in the word. For
it cannot now be denied that just as Dickens' faults have been
exaggerated, Thackeray's have been overlooked.
Thackeray might lose sadly in the years to come could it be
demonstrated that, as some would have it, he deserved the title
of cynic. Here is the most mooted point in Thackeray
appreciation: it interests thousands where the nice questions
concerning the novelist's art claim the attention of students
alone. What can be said with regard to it? It will help just
here to think of the man behind the work. No sensible human
being, it would appear, can become aware of the life and
personality of Thackeray without concluding that he was an
essentially kind-hearted, even soft-hearted man. He was keenly
sensitive to praise and blame, most affectionate and constant
with his friends, generous and impulsive in his instincts,
loving in his family, simple and humble in his spiritual nature,
however questioning in his intellect. That is a fair summary of
Thackeray as revealed in his daily walk--in his letters, acts
and thoughts. Nothing could be sweeter and more kindly than the
mass of his writings in this regard, pace "The Book of Snobs"--even
in such a mood the satire is for the most part unbitter.
The reminiscential essays continually strike a tender note that
vibrates with human feeling and such memorials as the paper he
wrote on the deaths of Irving and Macaulay represent a frequent
vein. Thackeray's friends are almost a unit in this testimony:
Edward Fitzgerald, indeed--"dear old Fitz," as Tennyson loved to
call him--declares in a letter to somebody that he hears
Thackeray is spoiled: meaning that his social success was too
much for him. It is true that after the fame of "Vanity Fair,"
its author was a habitue of the best drawing-rooms, much sought
after, and enjoying it hugely. But to read his letter to Mrs.
Brookfield after the return home from such frivolities is to
feel that the real man is untouched. Why Thackeray, with such a
nature, developed a satirical bent and became a critic of the
foibles of fashion and later of the social faults of humanity,
is not so easy perhaps to say--unless we beg the question by
declaring it to be his nature. When he began his major fiction
at the age of thirty-seven he had seen much more of the seamy
side of existence than had Dickens when he set up for author.
Thackeray had lost a fortune, traveled, played Bohemian, tried
various employments, failed in a business venture--in short, was
an experienced man of the world with eyes wide open to what is
light, mean, shifty and vague in the sublunary show. "The Book
of Snobs" is the typical early document expressing the
subacidulous tendency of his power: "Vanity Fair" is the full-length
statement of it in maturity. Yet judging his life by and
large (in contrast with his work) up to the day of his sudden
death, putting in evidence all the testimony from many sources,
it may be asserted with considerable confidence that William
Makepeace Thackeray, whatever we find him to be in his works,
gave the general impression personally of being a genial, kind
and thoroughly sound-hearted man. We may, therefore, look at the
work itself, to extract from it such evidence as it offers,
remembering that, when all is said, the deepest part of a man,
his true quality, is always to be discovered in his writings.
First a word on the books secondary to the four great novels. It
is necessary at the start in studying him to realize that
Thackeray for years before he wrote novels was an essayist, who,
when he came to make fiction introduced into it the essay touch
and point of view. The essay manner makes his larger fiction
delightful, is one of its chief charms and characteristics. And
contrariwise, the looseness of construction, the lack of careful
architecture in Thackeray's stories, look to the same fact.
It can not justly be said of these earlier and minor writings
that, taken as a whole, they reveal a cynic. They contain many
thrusts at the foolishness and knavery of society, especially
that genteel portion of it with which the writer, by birth,
education and experience, was familiar. When Thackeray, in the
thirties, turned to newspaper writing, he did so for practical
reasons: he needed money, and he used such talents as were his
as a writer, knowing that the chances were better than in art,
which he had before pursued. It was natural that he should have
turned to account his social experiences, which gave him a power
not possessed by the run of literary hacks, and which had been
to some extent disillusioning, but had by no means soured him.
Broadly viewed, the tone of these first writings was genial, the
light and shade of human nature--in its average, as it is seen
in the world--was properly represented. In fact, often, as in
"The Great Hoggarty Diamond," the style is almost that of
burlesque, at moments, of horse-play: and there are too touches
of beautiful young-man pathos. Such a work is anything rather
than tart or worldly. There are scenes in that enjoyable story
that read more like Dickens than the Thackeray of "Vanity Fair."
The same remark applies, though in a different way, to the
"Yellowplush Papers." An early work like "Barry Lyndon," unique
among the productions of the young writer, expresses the deeper
aspect of his tendency to depict the unpleasant with satiric
force, to make clear-cut pictures of rascals, male and female.
Yet in this historical study, the eighteenth century setting
relieves the effect and one does not feel that the author is
speaking with that direct earnestness one encounters in
"Pendennis" and "The Newcomes." The many essays, of which the
"Roundabout Papers" are a type, exhibit almost exclusively the
sunnier and more attractive side of Thackeray's genius. Here and
there, in the minor fiction of this experimental period, there
are premonitions of he more drastic treatment of later years:
but the dominant mood is quite other. One who read the essays
alone, with no knowledge of the fiction, would be astonished at
a charge of cynicism brought against the author.
And so we come to the major fiction: "Vanity Fair," "Pendennis,"
"The Newcomes," and "Esmond." Of "The Adventures of Philip" a
later word may be said. "The Virginians" is a comparatively
unimportant pendant to that great historical picture, "Henry
Esmond." The quartet practically composes the fundamental
contribution of Thackeray to the world of fiction, containing as
it does all his characteristic traits. Some of them have been
pointed out, time out of mind: others, often claimed, are either
wanting or their virtue has been much exaggerated.
Of the merits incontestable, first and foremost may be mentioned
the color and motion of Life which spread like an atmosphere
over this fiction. By his inimitable idiom, his knowledge of the
polite world, and his equal knowledge of the average human being
irrespective of class or condition, Thackeray was able to make
his chronicle appear the very truth. Moreover, for a second
great merit, he was able, quite without meretricious appeals, to
make that truth interesting. You follow the fortunes of the folk
in a typical Thackeray novel as you would follow a similar group
in actual life. They interest because they are real--or seem to
be, which, for the purposes of art, is the same thing. To read
is not so much to look from an outside place at a fictive
representation of existence as to be participant in such a piece
of life--to feel as if you were living the story. Only masters
accomplish this, and it is, it may be added, the specialty of
modern masters.
For another shining merit: much of wisdom assimilated by the
author in the course of his days is given forth with pungent
power and in piquant garb in the pages of these books: the
reader relishes the happy statements of an experience profounder
than his own, yet tallying in essentials: Thackeray's remarks
seem to gather up into final shape the scattered oracles of the
years. Gratitude goes out to an author who can thus condense and
refine one's own inarticulate conclusions. The mental palate is
tickled by this, while the taste is titillated by the grace and
fitness of the style.
Yet in connection with this quality is a habit which already
makes Thackeray seem of an older time--a trifle archaic in
technique. I refer to the intrusion of the author into the story
in first-personal comment and criticism. This is tabooed by the
present-day realist canons. It weakens the illusion, say the
artists of our own day, this entrance of an actual personality
upon the stage of the imagined scene. Thackeray is guilty of
this lovable sin to a greater degree than is Dickens, and it may
be added here that, while the latter has so often been called
preacher in contrast with Thackeray the artist, as a matter of
fact, Thackeray moralizes in the fashion described fully as
much: the difference being that he does it with lighter touch
and with less strenuosity and obvious seriousness: is more
consistently amusing in the act of instruction.
Thackeray again has less story to tell than his greatest
contemporary and never gained a sure hand in construction, with
the possible exception of his one success in plot, "Henry
Esmond." Nothing is more apparent than the loose texture of
"Vanity Fair," where two stories centering in the antithetic
women, Becky and Amelia, are held together chronicle fashion,
not in the nexus of an organism of close weave. But this very
looseness, where there is such superlative power of
characterization with plenty of invention in incident, adds to
the verisimilitude and attraction of the book. The impression of
life is all the more vivid, because of the lack of proportioned
progress to a climax. The story conducts itself and ends much as
does life: people come in and out and when Finis is written, we
feel we may see them again--as indeed often happens, for
Thackeray used the pleasant device of re-introducing favorite
characters such as Pendennis, Warrington and the descendants
thereof, and it adds distinctly to the reality of the ensemble.
"Vanity Fair" has most often been given precedence over the
other novels of contemporary life: but for individual scenes and
strength of character drawing both "Pendennis" and "The
Newcomes" set up vigorous claims. If there be no single triumph
in female portraiture like Becky Sharp, Ethel New-come (on the
side of virtue) is a far finer woman than the somewhat insipid
Amelia: and no personage in the Mayfair book is more successful
and beloved than Major Pendennis or Colonel Newcome. Also, the
atmosphere of these two pictures seems mellower, less sharp,
while as organic structures they are both superior to "Vanity
Fair." Perhaps the supremacy of the last-named is due most of
all to the fact that a wonderfully drawn evil character has more
fascination than a noble one of workmanship as fine. Or is it
that such a type calls forth the novelist's powers to the full?
If so, it were, in a manner, a reproach. But it is more
important to say that all three books are delightfully authentic
studies of upper-class society in England as Thackeray knew it:
the social range is comparatively restricted, for even the
rascals are shabby-genteel. But the exposure of human nature
(which depends upon keen observation within a prescribed
boundary) is wide and deep: a story-teller can penetrate just as
far into the arcana of the human spirit if he confine himself to
a class as if he surveyed all mankind. But mental limitations
result: the point of view is that of the gentleman-class: the
ideas of the personal relation to one's self, one's fellow men
and one's Maker are those natural to a person of that station.
The charming poem which the author set as Finis to "Dr. Birch
and His Young Friends," with its concluding lines, is an
unconscious expression of the form in which he conceived human
duty. The "And so, please God, a gentleman," was the cardinal
clause in his creed and all his work proves it. It is wiser to
be thankful that a man of genius was at hand to voice the view,
than to cavil at its narrow outook. In literature, in-look is
quite as important. Thackeray drew what he felt and saw, and
like Jane Austen, is to be understood within his limitations.
Nor did he ever forget that, because pleasure-giving was the
object of his art, it was his duty so to present life as to make
it somehow attractive, worth while. The point is worth urging,
for not a little nonsense has been written concerning the
absolute veracity of Thackeray's pictures: as if he sacrificed
all pleasurableness to the modern Moloch, truth. Neither he nor
any other great novelist reproduces Life verbatim et literatim.
Trollope, in his somewhat unsatisfactory biography of his fellow
fictionist, very rightly puts his finger on a certain scene in
"Vanity Fair" in which Sir Pitt Crawley figures, which departs
widely from reality. The traditional comparison between the two
novelists, which represents Dickens as ever caricaturing,
Thackeray as the photographer, is coming to be recognized as
foolish.
It is all merely a question of degree, as has been said. It
being the artist's business to show a few of the symbols of life
out of the vast amount of raw material offered, he differs in
the main from his brother artist in the symbols he selects. No
one of them presents everything--if he did, he were no artist.
Thackeray approaches nearer than Dickens, it is true, to the
average appearances of life; but is no more a literal copyist
than the creator of Mrs. Gamp. He was rather one of art's most
capable exemplars in the arduous employment of seeming-true.
It must be added that his technique was more careless than an
artist of anything like his caliber would have permitted himself
to-day. The audience was less critical: not only has the art of
fiction been evolved into a finer finish, but gradually the
court of judgment made up of a select reading public, has come
to decide with much more of professional knowledge. Thus,
technique in fiction is expected and given. So much of gain
there has been, in spite of all the vulgarization of taste which
has followed in the wake of cheap magazines and newspapers. In
"Vanity Fair," for example, there are blemishes which a careful
revision would never have suffered to remain: the same is true
of most of Thackeray's books. Like Dickens, Thackeray was
exposed to all the danger of the Twenty Parts method of
publication. He began his stories without seeing the end; in one
of them he is humorously plaintive over the trouble of making
this manner of fiction. While "Vanity Fair" is, of course,
written in the impersonal third person, at least one passage is
put into the mouth of a character in the book: an extraordinary
slip for such a novelist.
But peccadilloes such as these, which it is well to realize in
view of the absurd claims to artistic impeccability for
Thackeray made by rash admirers, melt away into nothing when one
recalls Rawdon Crawley's horsewhipping of the Marquis; George
Osborn's departure for battle, Colonel Newcome's death, or the
incomparable scene where Lady Castlewood welcomes home the
wandering Esmond; that "rapture of reconciliation"! It is by
such things that great novelists live, and it may be doubted if
their errors are ever counted against them, if only they can
create in this fashion.
In speaking of Thackeray's unskilful construction the reference
is to architectonics; in the power of particular scenes it is
hard to name his superior. He has both the pictorial and the
dramatic sense. The care with which "Esmond" was planned and
executed suggests too that, had he taken his art more seriously
and given needed time to each of the great books, he might have
become one of the masters in that prime excellence of the craft,
the excellence of proportion, progress and climax. He never
quite brought himself to adopt the regular modern method of
scenario. "Philip," his last full length fiction, may be cited
as proof.
Yet it may be that he would have given increased attention to
construction had he lived a long life. It is worth noting that
when the unfinished "Denis Duval" dropt from a hand made inert
by death, the general plan, wherefrom an idea of its
architecture could be got, was among his effects.
To say a word now of Thackeray's style. There is practical
unanimity of opinion as to this. Thackeray had the effect of
writing like a cultivated gentleman not self-consciously making
literature. He was tolerant of colloquial concessions that never
lapsed into vulgarity; even his slips and slovenlinesses are
those of the well-bred. To pass from him back to Richardson is
to realize how stiffly correct is the latter. Thackeray has
flexibility, music, vernacular felicity and a deceptive ease. He
had, too, the flashing strokes, the inspirational sallies which
characterize the style of writers like Lamb, Stevenson and
Meredith. Fitness, balance, breeding and harmony are his chief
qualities. To say that he never sinned or nodded would be to
deny that he was human. He cut his cloth to fit the desired
garment and is a modern English master of prose designed to
reproduce the habit and accent of the polite society of his age.
In his hortatory asides and didactic moralizings with their
thees and thous and yeas, he is still the fine essayist, like
Fielding in his eighteenth century prefatory exordiums. And here
is undoubtedly one of his strongest appeals to the world of
readers, whether or no it makes him less perfect a fictionist.
The diction of a Thackeray is one of the honorable national
assets of his race.
Thackeray's men and women talk as they might be expected to talk
in life; each in his own idiom, class and idiosyncrasy. And in
the descriptions which furnish atmosphere, in which his
creatures may live and breathe and have their being, the hand of
the artist of words is equally revealed. Both for dialogue and
narration the gift is valid, at times superb. It would be going
too far to say that if Thackeray had exercised the care in
revision bestowed by later reputable authors, his style might
not have been improved: beyond question it would have been, in
the narrow sense. But the correction of trifling mistakes is one
thing, a change in pattern another. The retouching, although
satisfying grammar here and there, might have dimmed the
vernacular value of his speech.
But what of Thackeray's view, his vision of things? Does he bear
down unduly upon poor imperfect humanity? and what was his
purpose in satire? If he is unfair in the representation his
place among the great should suffer; since the truly great
observer of life does general justice to humankind in his
harmonious portrayal.
We have already spoken of Thackeray's sensitive nature as
revealed through all available means: he conveys the impression
of a suppressed sentimentalist, even in his satire. And this
establishes a presumption that the same man is to be discovered
in the novels, the work being an unconscious revelation of the
worker. The characteristic books are of satirical bent, that
must be granted: Thackeray's purpose, avowed and implicit in the
stories, is that of a Juvenal castigating with a smiling mouth
the evils of society. With keen eye he sees the weaknesses
incident to place and power, to the affectations of fashion or
the corruptions of the world, the flesh and the devil. Nobody of
commonsense will deny that here is a welcome service if
performed with skill and fair-mindedness in the interests of
truth. The only query would be: Is the picture undistorted? If
Thackeray's studies leave a bad taste in the mouth, if their
effect is depressing, if one feels as a result that there is
neither virtue nor magnanimity in woman, and that man is
incapable of honor, bravery, justice and tenderness--then the
novelist may be called cynic. He is not a wholesome writer,
however acceptable for art or admirable for genius. Nor will the
mass of mankind believe in and love him.
Naturally we are here on ground where the personal equation
influences judgment. There can never be complete agreement. Some
readers, and excellent people they are, will always be offended
by what they never tire of calling the worldly tone of
Thackeray; to others, he will be as lovable in his view of life
as he is amusing. Speaking, then, merely for myself, it seems to
me that for mature folk who have had some experience with
humanity, Thackeray is a charming companion whose heart is as
sound as his pen is incisive. The very young as a rule are not
ready for him and (so far as my observation goes) do not much
care for him. That his intention was to help the cause of
kindness, truth and justice in the world is apparent. It is late
in the day to defend his way of crying up the good by a frank
exhibition of the evil. Good and bad are never confused by him,
and Taine was right in calling him above all a moralist. But
being by instinct a realist too, he gave vent to his passion for
truth-telling so far as he dared, in a day when it was far less
fashionable to do this than it now is. A remark in the preface
to "Pendennis" is full of suggestion: "Since the author of 'Tom
Jones' was buried, no writer of fiction among us has been
permitted to depict to his utmost power a Man. We must drape him
and give him a certain conventional simper. Society will not
tolerate the Natural in our Art."
It will not do to say (as is often said) that Thackeray could
not draw an admirable or perfect woman. If he did not leave us a
perfect one, it was perhaps for the reason alleged to have been
given by Mr. Howells when he was charged with the same
misdemeanor: he was waiting for the Lord to do it first! But
Thackeray does no injustice to the sex: if Amelia be stupid
(which is matter of debate), Helen Warrington is not, but rather
a very noble creature built on a large plan: whatever the small
blemishes of Lady Castlewood she is indelible in memory for
character and charm. And so with others not a few. Becky and
Beatrix are merely the reverse of the picture. And there is a
similar balance in the delineation of men: Colonel Newcome over
against Captain Costigan, and many a couple more. Thackeray does
not fall into the mistake of making his spotted characters all-black.
Who does not find something likable in the Fotheringay
and in the Campaigner? Even a Barry Lyndon has the redeeming
quality of courage. And surely we adore Beatrix, with all her
faults. Major Pendennis is a thoroughgoing old worldling, but it
is impossible not to feel a species of fondness for him. Jos.
Sedley is very much an ass, but one's smile at him is full of
tolerance. Yes, the worst of them all, the immortal Becky (who
was so plainly liked by her maker) awakens sympathy in the
reader when routed in her fortunes, black-leg though she be. She
cared for her husband, after her fashion, and she plays the game
of Bad Luck in a way far from despicable. Nor is that easy-going,
commonplace scoundrel, Rawdon, with his dog-like devotion
to the same Becky, denied his touch of higher humanity. Behind
all these is a large tolerance, an intellectual breadth, a
spiritual comprehension that is merciful to the sinner, while
never condoning the sin. Thackeray is therefore more than story-teller
or fine writer: a sane observer of the Human Comedy; a
satirist in the broad sense, devoting himself to revealing
society to itself and for its instruction. It is easy to use
negations: to say he did not know nor sympathize with the middle
class nor the lower and outcast classes as did Dickens; that his
interest was in peccadilloes and sins, not in courageous
virtues: and that he judged the world from a club window. But
this gets us nowhere and is aside from the critic's chief
business: which is that of an appreciative explanation of his
abiding power and charm. This has now been essayed. Thackeray
was too great as man and artist not to know that it was his
function to present life in such wise that while a pleasure of
recognition should follow the delineation, another and higher
pleasure should also result: the surprising pleasure of beauty.
"Fiction," he declared, "has no business to exist, unless it be
more beautiful than reality," And again: "The first quality of
an artist is to have a large heart." With which revelatory
utterances may be placed part of the noble sentence closing "The
Book of Snobs": "If fun is good, truth is better still, and love
best of all." To read him with open mind is to feel assured that
his works, taken in their entirety, reflect these humane
sentiments. It is a pity, therefore, for any reader of the best
fiction, through intense appreciation of Dickens or for any
other reason, to cut himself off from such an enlightening
student of humanity and master of imaginative literature.