lete in an essential
as well as a literal sense without his _Child's History of England_. It
may not be important as a contribution to history, but it is important
as a contribution to biography; as a contribution to the character and
the career of the man who wrote it, a typical man of his time. That he
had made no personal historical researches, that he had no special
historical learning, that he had not had, in truth, even anything that
could be called a good education, all this only accentuates not the
merit but at least the importance of the book. For here we may read in
plain popular language, written by a man whose genius for popular
exposition has never been surpassed among men, a brief account of the
origin and meaning of England as it seemed to the average Englishman of
that age. When subtler views of our history, some more false and some
more true than his, have become popular, or at least well known, when in
the near future Carlylean or Catholic or Marxian views of history have
spread themselves among the reading public, this book will always remain
as a bright and brisk summary of the cock-sure, healthy-minded,
essentially manly and essentially ungentlemanly view of history which
characterised the Radicals of that particular Radical era. The history
tells us nothing about the periods that it talks about; but it tells us
a great deal about the period that it does not talk about; the period in
which it was written. It is in no sense a history of England from the
Roman invasion; but it is certainly one of the documents which will
contribute to a history of England in the nineteenth century.

Of the actual nature of its philosophical and technical limitations it
is, I suppose, unnecessary to speak. They all resolve themselves into
one fault common in the modern world, and certainly characteristic of
historians much more learned and pretentious than Dickens. That fault
consists simply in ignoring or underrating the variety of strange evils
and unique dangers in the world. The Radicals of the nineteenth century
were engaged, and most righteously engaged, in dealing with one
particular problem of human civilisation; they were shifting and
apportioning more equally a load of custom that had really become
unmeaning, often accidental, and nearly always unfair. Thus, for
instance, a fierce and fighting penal code, which had been perfectly
natural when the robbers were as strong as the Government, had become in
more or