er hearing this suggestion, and to get out of his head the
conviction that Lammle is the wrong kind of Jew. The explanation lies, I
think, in this, that Dickens was so wonderfully sensitive to that change
that has come over our society, that he noticed the type of the oriental
and cosmopolitan financier without even knowing that it was oriental or
cosmopolitan. He had, in fact, fallen a victim to a very simple fallacy
affecting this problem. Somebody said, with great wit and truth, that
treason cannot prosper, because when it prospers it cannot be called
treason. The same argument soothed all possible Anti-Semitism in men
like Dickens. Jews cannot be sneaks and snobs, because when they are
sneaks and snobs they do not admit that they are Jews.

I have taken this case of the growth of the cosmopolitan financier,
because it is not so stale in discussion as its parallel, the growth of
Socialism. But as regards Dickens, the same criticism applies to both.
Dickens knew that Socialism was coming, though he did not know its name.
Similarly, Dickens knew that the South African millionaire was coming,
though he did not know the millionaire's name. Nobody does. His was not
a type of mind to disentangle either the abstract truths touching the
Socialist, nor the highly personal truth about the millionaire. He was a
man of impressions; he has never been equalled in the art of conveying
what a man looks like at first sight--and he simply felt the two things
as atmospheric facts. He felt that the mercantile power was oppressive,
past all bearing by Christian men; and he felt that this power was no
longer wholly in the hands even of heavy English merchants like Podsnap.
It was largely in the hands of a feverish and unfamiliar type, like
Lammle and Veneering. The fact that he felt these things is almost more
impressive because he did not understand them.

Now for this reason Dickens must definitely be considered in the light
of the changes which his soul foresaw. Thackeray has become classical;
but Dickens has done more: he has remained modern. The grand
retrospective spirit of Thackeray is by its nature attached to places
and times; he belongs to Queen Victoria as much as Addison belongs to
Queen Anne, and it is not only Queen Anne who is dead. But Dickens, in a
dark prophetic kind of way, belongs to the developments. He belongs to
the times since his death when Hard Times grew harder, and when
Veneering became not only a Member of Par