Charles Dickens

Charles Dickens
Part One

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Charles Dickens by G. K. Chesterton

Published:

1906

Pages:

159

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3,568

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Charles Dickens
Part One

By

0
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A critical study of Dickens, intended "as a general justification of that author, and of the whole of the gigantesque English humour of which he was the last and not the least gigantic survival."

Book Excerpt

uraged anybody to be anything. And in England and literature its living expression was Dickens.

We shall consider Dickens in many other capacities, but let us put this one first. He was the voice in England of this humane intoxication and expansion, this encouraging of anybody to be anything. His best books are a carnival of liberty, and there is more of the real spirit of the French Revolution in "Nicholas Nickleby" than in "The Tale of Two Cities." His work has the great glory of the Revolution, the bidding of every man to be himself; it has also the revolutionary deficiency: it seems to think that this mere emancipation is enough. No man encouraged his characters so much as Dickens. "I am an affectionate father," he says, "to every child of my fancy." He was not only an affectionate father, he was an over-indulgent father. The children of his fancy are spoilt children. They shake the house like heavy and shouting schoolboys; they smash the story to pieces like so much furniture. When we moderns writ

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