rs. Gamp and Mr. Pecksniff
and Betsy Trotwood and Bill Sikes and Dick Swiveller and Bob
Sawyer and Sam Weller and Mark Tapley and Old Scrooge. The
mere mention of these names, which, to some, would suggest the
music of the spheres, to others would suggest forced merriment,
horrible Early Victorian sentiment, and that sort of hackneyed
"unction" of sly moral elders, which is youth's especial Hell. Much
wiser were it, as it seems to me, to indicate what in Dickens--in his
style, his method, his vision, his art--actually appeals to one
particular mind. I think it is to be found in his childlike Imagination.
Now, the modern cult for children has reached such fantastic limits
that one has to be very careful when one uses that word. But
Dickens is childlike, not as Oscar Wilde--that Uranian Baby--or as
Paul Verlaine--that little "pet lamb" of God--felt themselves to be
childlike, or as the artificial-minded Robert Louis Stevenson fooled
his followers into thinking him. He is really and truly childlike. His
imagination and vision are literally the imagination and vision of
children. We have not all played at Pirates and Buccaneers. We have
not all dreamed of Treasure-Islands and Marooned sailors. We have
not all "believed in Fairies." These rather tiresome and over-rung-upon
aspects of children's fancies are, after all, very often nothing
more than middle-aged people's damned affectations. The children's
cult at the present day plays strange tricks.

But Dickens, from beginning to end, has the real touch, the authentic
reaction. How should actual and living children, persecuted by
"New Educational Methods," glutted with toys, depraved by
"understanding sympathy," and worn out by performances of "Peter
Pan," believe--really and truly--in fairies any more? But, in spite of
sentimental Child-worshippers, let us not hesitate to whisper: "It
doesn't matter in the least if they don't!" The "enlightened" and
cultivated mothers, who grow unhappy when they find their darlings
cold to Titania and Oberon and to the more "poetic" modern fairies,
with the funny names, may rest in peace. If the house they inhabit
and the street they inhabit be not sanitarized and art-decorated
beyond all human interest, they may let their little ones alone. They
will dream their dreams. They will invent their games. They will
talk to their shadows. They will blow kisses to the Moon. And all
will go well with "the Child in the House," even if he has not so