He must have had a wonderful charm; for his friends in life
are his literary partisans, his uncompromising partisans, even to
this day. They will have no half-hearted admiration, and scout him
who tries to speak of Dickens as of an artist not flawless, no less
than they scorn him who cannot read Dickens at all. At one time
this honourable enthusiasm (as among the Wordsworthians) took the
shape of "endless imitation." That is over; only here and there is
an imitator of the master left in the land. All his own genius was
needed to carry his mannerisms; the mannerisms without the genius
were an armour that no devoted David had proved, that none could
wear with success.
Of all great writers since Scott, Dickens is probably the man to
whom the world owes most gratitude. No other has caused so many sad
hearts to be lifted up in laughter; no other has added so much mirth
to the toilsome and perplexed life of men, of poor and rich, of
learned and unlearned. "A vast hope has passed across the world,"
says Alfred de Musset; we may say that with Dickens a happy smile, a
joyous laugh, went round this earth. To have made us laugh so
frequently, so inextinguishably, so kindly--that is his great good
deed. It will be said, and with a great deal of truth, that he has
purged us with pity and terror as well as with laughter. But it is
becoming plain that his command of tears is less assured than of
old, and I cannot honestly regret that some of his pathos--not all,
by any means--is losing its charm and its certainty of appeal.
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