IX
Yes, but there is something else.
What else—no mere artistic secret—ties this phantasmagoric world to ours and makes it universal with ours, conterminous, and so real?
It is no dodge or trick of artistry that can work so incredible a feat—that can open our hearts to such beings as Dick Swiveller and Mrs. Gamp (whom in private life you or I would avoid like the plague)—to enjoy their company, to hang on every word they utter. It must be some very simple catholic gift, thus to unite the unreal with the real, thus to make brothers and sisters of all men and women, high or low.
It is: nor shall I delay you by elaborate pretence to search for it. For I know; and you know, or will recognise it as soon as I utter the word. It is Charity; the inestimable gift of Charity that Dickens flings over all things as his magic mantle: so that, whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away; and whether there be little critics tormented about Dickens’ style, in the folds of that mantle they shall be folded and hushed:
That it may please Thee to preserve all that travel by land or by water, all women labouring of child, sick persons, and young children; and to shew Thy pity upon all prisoners and captives.
That it may please Thee to defend, and provide for, the fatherless children, and widows, and all that are desolate and oppressed.
That is the last secret of Dickens: and that is what George Santayana means when he writes:
If Christendom should lose everything that is now in the melting-pot, human life would still remain amiable and quite adequately human. I draw this comforting assurance from the pages of Dickens.