one have made him the victim in this
place. When I was a boy I could not understand why the Dickensians
worried so wearily about Dickens, about where he went to school and
where he ate his dinners, about how he wore his trousers and when he cut
his hair. I used to wonder why they did not write something that I could
read about a man like Micawber. But I have come to the conclusion that
this almost hysterical worship of the man, combined with a comparatively
feeble criticism on his works, is just and natural. Dickens was a man
like ourselves; we can see where he went wrong, and study him without
being stunned or getting the sunstroke. But Micawber is not a man;
Micawber is the superman. We can only walk round and round him wondering
what we shall say. All the critics of Dickens, when all is said and
done, have only walked round and round Micawber wondering what they
should say. I am myself at this moment walking round and round Micawber
wondering what I shall say. And I have not found out yet.

CHRISTMAS STORIES

The power of Dickens is shown even in the scraps of Dickens, just as the
virtue of a saint is said to be shown in fragments of his property or
rags from his robe. It is with such fragments that we are chiefly
concerned in the _Christmas Stories_. Many of them are fragments in the
literal sense; Dickens began them and then allowed some one else to
carry them on; they are almost rejected notes. In all the other cases we
have been considering the books that he wrote; here we have rather to
consider the books that he might have written. And here we find the
final evidence and the unconscious stamp of greatness, as we might find
it in some broken bust or some rejected moulding in the studio of
Michael Angelo.

These sketches or parts of sketches all belong to that period in his
later life when he had undertaken the duties of an editor, the very
heavy duties of a very popular editor. He was not by any means naturally
fitted for that position. He was the best man in the world for founding
papers; but many people wished that he could have been buried under the
foundations, like the first builder in some pagan and prehistoric pile.
He called the _Daily News_ into existence, but when once it existed, it
objected to him strongly. It is not easy, and perhaps it is not
important, to state truly the cause of this incapacity. It was not in
the least what is called the ordinary fault or weakness of the artist.
It wa