y writer of our age, Charles Dickens has
his own accustomed nook at every fireside: he is a familiar friend, a
welcome guest; we remember the glance of his eye; we have held his
hand, as it were, in our own. The children brighten up as his step is
heard; the chairs are drawn round the hearth, and a fresh glow is given
to the room. We do not criticise one whom we love, nor do we suffer
others to do so. And there is perhaps a wider sympathy with Charles
Dickens as a person than with any other writer of our time. For this
reason there has been hardly any serious criticism or estimate of
Dickens as a great artist, apart from some peevish and sectional
disparagement of his genius, which has been too much tinged with
academic pedantry and the bias of aristocratic temper or political
antagonism.

I am free to confess that I am in no mood to pretend making up my mind
for any impartial estimate of Charles Dickens as an abiding power in
English literature. The "personal equation" is in my own case somewhat
too strong to leave me with a perfectly "dry light" in the matter. I
will make a clean breast of it at once by saying, that I can remember
reading some of the most famous of these books in their green covers,
month by month, as they came out in parts, when I was myself a child or
"in my 'teens." That period included the first ten of the main works
from _Pickwick_ down to _David Copperfield_. With _Bleak House_, which
I read as a student of philosophy at Oxford beginning to be familiar
with Aristotelian canons, I felt my enjoyment mellowed by a somewhat
more measured judgment. From that time onward Charles Dickens threw
himself into a great variety of undertakings and many diverse kinds of
publication. His _Hard Times_, _Little Dorrit_, _Our Mutual Friend_,
_Great Expectations_, _Tale of Two Cities_, were never to me anything
like the wonder and delight that I found in Oliver Twist, Nickleby, and
Copperfield. And as to the short tales and the later pieces down to
_Edwin Drood_, I never find myself turning back to them; the very
memory of the story is fading away; and I fail to recall the characters
and names. A mature judgment will decide that the series after _David
Copperfield_, written when the author was thirty-eight, was not equal
to the series of the thirteen years preceding. Charles Dickens will
always be remembered by _Pickwick_, _Oliver Twist_, _Nickleby_, and
_Copperfield_. And though these tales will lon