, I say, is a case for this primary query:
whether there was in the first work any clear sign of his higher
creative spirit. But Dickens is much less a case for this query than
almost all the other great men of his period. The very earliest works of
Thackeray are much more unimpressive than those of Dickens. Nay, they
are much more vulgar than those of Dickens. And worst of all, they are
much more numerous than those of Dickens. Thackeray came much nearer to
being the ordinary literary failure than Dickens ever came. Read some of
the earliest criticisms of Mr. Yellowplush or Michael Angelo Titmarsh
and you will realise that at the very beginning there was more potential
clumsiness and silliness in Thackeray than there ever was in Dickens.
Nevertheless there was some potential clumsiness and silliness in
Dickens; and what there is of it appears here and there in the admirable
_Sketches by Boz_.

Perhaps we may put the matter this way: this is the only one of
Dickens's works of which it is ordinarily necessary to know the date. To
a close and delicate comprehension it is indeed very important that
_Nicholas Nickleby_ was written at the beginning of Dickens's life, and
_Our Mutual Friend_ towards the end of it. Nevertheless anybody could
understand or enjoy these books, whenever they were written. If _Our
Mutual Friend_ was written in the Latin of the Dark Ages we should still
want it translated. If we thought that _Nicholas Nickleby_ would not be
written until thirty years hence we should all wait for it eagerly. The
general impression produced by Dickens's work is the same as that
produced by miraculous visions; it is the destruction of time. Thomas
Aquinas said that there was no time in the sight of God; however this
may be, there was no time in the sight of Dickens. As a general rule
Dickens can be read in any order; not only in any order of books, but
even in any order of chapters. In an average Dickens book every part is
so amusing and alive that you can read the parts backwards; you can read
the quarrel first and then the cause of the quarrel; you can fall in
love with a woman in the tenth chapter and then turn back to the first
chapter to find out who she is. This is not chaos; it is eternity. It
means merely that Dickens instinctively felt all his figures to be
immortal souls who existed whether he wrote of them or not, and whether
the reader read of them or not. There is a peculiar quality as of
celestial pre-exi