I
To take up our tale—
It has already been objected against these lectures on Dickens—or against such parts of them as the newspapers honour me by quoting—that they treat Dickens as a genius of the first class. That term has little meaning for me who seldom or never think—can hardly bring myself to think—of great men in class-lists, in terms of a Tripos. (I reserve that somewhat crude method of criticism to practise it upon those who are going to be great men; and even so—if you will credit me—derive scant enjoyment from it.) But I foresaw the objection, and forestalled it by quoting a famous saying of Tasso, and I take my stand on that: as I take not the smallest interest in weighing Chaucer against Pope, Shakespeare against Milton, Scott against Burns, or Dickens against Thackeray. Chaucer, Shakespeare, Scott, Dickens—their other qualities apart—are grand creators, lords of literature all, by this specific virtue; and, were there sense in challenging, with this quadriga alone we could securely challenge any literature in any living tongue. Note you, moreover: it is to this creative power that other artists less creative, but great and therefore generous, instinctively pay homage: Dryden, for instance, or Byron:
’Tis to create, and in creating live
A being more intense that we endow
With form our fancy, gaining as we give
The life we image, even as I do now.
What am I? Nothing: but not so art thou,
Soul of my thought!...
(Childe Harold, III. 6.)
Or again:
The mind can make
Substance, and people planets of its own
With beings brighter than have been, and give
A breath to forms which can outlive all flesh....
(The Dream, st. 1.)
Note you particularly, if you will, the words “planets of its own....” We talk too often, perhaps (I have talked in this fashion myself unheedingly), as if these men had been makers of picture-galleries, lining their walls with lively characters, brilliant portraits. But in truth neither Chaucer’s Prologue nor Shakespeare’s succession of women, neither Redgauntlet nor David Copperfield, is a gallery of characters; but a planet rather, with its own atmosphere which the characters breathe; in which as proper inhabitants they move easily and have their natural being: while for us all great literature is a catholic hostelry, in which we seat ourselves at the board with Falstaff, Dugald Dalgetty, Sam Weller, the Wife of Bath, Mrs. Gamp and Mrs. Quickly, and wonder how soon Don Quixote, My Uncle Toby, or The Three Musketeers will knock in to share the good meat and the wine.