XI
I am glad, Gentlemen, on the verge of concluding these talks about Dickens, to quote this from Gissing—a genuine genius, himself an author of what Dr. Johnson would have described as “inspissated gloom.” There is, I daresay, some heaven of recognition in which all true artists meet; and at any rate it pleases one to think that the author of The New Grub Street should, in this sublunary sphere, have been comforted on his way (it would even seem, entranced) by such children of joy as Sam Weller and Mr. Toots. And I, at any rate, who admired Gissing in life, like to think of him who found this world so hard, now, by virtue of his love for Dickens, reconciled to look down on it from that other sphere, with tolerant laughter—upon this queer individual England, at least. For Providence has made and kept this nation a comfortable nation, even to this day: and if you take its raciest literature from Chaucer down, you may assure yourselves that much of its glorious merit rests on the “triple pillar” of common-sense, religious morality and hearty laughter. I for my part hold that we shall help a great deal to restore our commonwealth by seeking back to that last “Godlike function” and re-learning it. To promote that laughter, with good sense and good morality, was ever Dickens’ way, as to kill wherever he could what he once called “this custom of putting the natural demand for amusement out of sight, as some untidy housekeepers put dust, and pretending that it was swept away.” And I think of Dickens as a great Englishman not least in this, that he was a man of his hands, with a great laugh scattering humbug to make place for mirth and goodwill; “a clean hearth and [to adapt Mrs. Battle] the spirit of the game.”