he wants to marry or
which new religion he believes in; we still give this knock-kneed cad
the name of hero.'

This is, I think, unfair. The modern novel is very often still a good
healthy love tale; the hero is more often than not a gentleman who has
not the brains to be a cad; his trouble about marriage is that he wants
to marry the right woman to their mutual well being; he is neither a cad
nor a hero, but an ordinary Englishman whom we need not walk half a mile
to see; he usually marries a girl who can be seen in any suburb or at
any church bazaar. I have dwelt on this at some length, as Chesterton
has a tendency to despise modern novelists while being one himself.

At this period, when 'Pickwick' had once and for all brought fame to
Dickens, it will be interesting to see why Dickens attained the enormous
popularity he did. He was, our critic thinks, a 'great event not only in
literature but also in history.'

He considers that Dickens was popular in a sense that we of the
twentieth century cannot understand. In fact, he goes so far as to say
that there are no really popular authors to-day.

This is probably not entirely true. When we say an author is popular we
do not mean that necessarily, as Chesterton seems to suggest, he is a
'best seller'; rather we call him popular in the sense that a large
number of people find pleasure in reading him, even if the subject is
not a pleasant one. Dickens was popular in a different way: he was read
by a public who wished his story might never end. They not only loved
his books, they loved his characters even more. No matter that there
might be five sub-stories running alongside of the main one, the central
character retained the public affection. His characters were known
outside their particular stories, and not only that, this was by no
means confined to the principal ones.

They were known, as Chesterton points out, as Sherlock Holmes is known
to-day. But even so there is again a difference. People do not speak of
the minor characters of Conan Doyle's tales as they do, for instance, of
Smike.

* * * * *

It is now convenient to turn to the Christmas literature of Dickens. I
am convinced that Chesterton has very badly misconstrued the character
of Scrooge, that delightful person whose one virtue was consistency.

Above everything, Scrooge was consistent; he hated Christmas as we hate
anything that does not agree with our temperam