ncy, to
expound the inner meanings of "Dickens in relation to Criticism," and to
show that, though he had a splendid genius and a wonderful imagination,
yet the objectors were to be excused who called him only a stagy
sentimentalist and a clever caricaturist. This critical essay appeared
in the _Fortnightly Review_ for February 1872, with the signature of Mr.
George Henry Lewes; and the pretentious airs of the performance, with
its prodigious professions of candour, force upon me the painful task of
stating what it really is. During Dickens's life, especially when any
fresh novelist could be found available for strained comparison with
him, there were plenty of attempts to write him down: but the trick of
studied depreciation was never carried so far or made so odious as in
this case, by intolerable assumptions of an indulgent superiority; and
to repel it in such a form once for all is due to Dickens's memory.

The paper begins by the usual concessions--that he was a writer of vast
popularity, that he delighted no end of people, that his admirers were
in all classes and all countries, that he stirred the sympathy of masses
not easily reached through literature and always to healthy emotion,
that he impressed a new direction on popular writing, and modified the
literature of his age in its spirit no less than its form. The very
splendour of these successes, on the other hand, so deepened the shadow
of his failures, that to many there was nothing but darkness. Was it
unnatural? Could greatness be properly ascribed, by the fastidious, to a
writer whose defects were so glaring, exaggerated, untrue, fantastic,
and melodramatic? Might they not fairly insist on such defects as
outweighing all positive qualities, and speak of him with condescending
patronage or sneering irritation? Why, very often such men, though their
talk would be seasoned with quotations from, and allusions to, his
writings, and though they would lay aside their most favourite books to
bury themselves in his new "number," had been observed by this critic to
be as niggardly in their praise of him as they were lavish in their
scorn. He actually heard "_a very distinguished man_," on one occasion,
express measureless contempt for Dickens, and a few minutes afterwards
admit that Dickens had "entered into his life." And so the critic betook
himself to the task of reconciling this immense popularity and this
critical contempt, which he does after the following man