But it is not for such things that
he is valued. In all his writings, from his most reasoned and sustained
novel to his maddest private note, it is always this obstreperous
instinct for farce which stands out as his in the highest sense. His
wisdom is at the best talent, his foolishness is genius. Just that
exuberant levity which we associate with a moment we associate in his
case with immortality. It is said of certain old masonry that the mortar
was so hard that it has survived the stones. So if Dickens could revisit
the thing he built, he would be surprised to see all the work he thought
solid and responsible wasted almost utterly away, but the shortest
frivolities and the most momentary jokes remaining like colossal rocks
for ever.

[Illustration: Charles Dickens, 1844
From a miniature by Margaret Gillies.]

MARTIN CHUZZLEWIT

There is a certain quality or element which broods over the whole of
_Martin Chuzzlewit_ to which it is difficult for either friends or foes
to put a name. I think the reader who enjoys Dickens's other books has
an impression that it is a kind of melancholy. There are grotesque
figures of the most gorgeous kind; there are scenes that are farcical
even by the standard of the farcical license of Dickens; there is humour
both of the heaviest and of the lightest kind; there are two great comic
personalities who run like a rich vein through the whole story,
Pecksniff and Mrs. Gamp; there is one blinding patch of brilliancy, the
satire on American cant; there is Todgers's boarding-house; there is
Bailey; there is Mr. Mould, the incomparable undertaker. But yet in
spite of everything, in spite even of the undertaker, the book is sad.
No one I think ever went to it in that mixed mood of a tired tenderness
and a readiness to believe and laugh in which most of Dickens's novels
are most enjoyed. We go for a particular novel to Dickens as we go for a
particular inn. We go to the sign of the Pickwick Papers. We go to the
sign of the Rudge and Raven. We go to the sign of the Old Curiosities.
We go to the sign of the Two Cities. We go to each or all of them
according to what kind of hospitality and what kind of happiness we
require. But it is always some kind of hospitality and some kind of
happiness that we require. And as in the case of inns we also remember
that while there was shelter in all and food in all and some kind of
fire and some kind of wine in all, yet one has left upon us an
in