re. And it is
singularly suggestive that in English literature the two things have
died together. The very people who would blame Dickens for his
sentimental hospitality are the very people who would also blame him for
his narrow political conviction. The very people who would mock him for
his narrow radicalism are those who would mock him for his broad
fireside. Real conviction and real charity are much nearer than people
suppose. Dickens was capable of loving all men; but he refused to love
all opinions. The modern humanitarian can love all opinions, but he
cannot love all men; he seems, sometimes, in the ecstasy of his
humanitarianism, even to hate them all. He can love all opinions,
including the opinion that men are unlovable.

In feeling Dickens as a lover we must never forget him as a fighter, and
a fighter for a creed; but indeed there is no other kind of fighter. The
geniality which he spread over all his creations was geniality spread
from one centre, from one flaming peak. He was willing to excuse Mr.
Micawber for being extravagant; but Dickens and Dickens's doctrine were
strictly to decide how far he was to be excused. He was willing to like
Mr. Twemlow in spite of his snobbishness, but Dickens and Dickens's
doctrine were alone to be judges of how far he was snobbish. There was
never a more didactic writer: hence there was never one more amusing. He
had no mean modern notion of keeping the moral doubtful. He would have
regarded this as a mere piece of slovenliness, like leaving the last
page illegible.

Everywhere in Dickens's work these angles of his absolute opinion stood
up out of the confusion of his general kindness, just as sharp and
splintered peaks stand up out of the soft confusion of the forests.
Dickens is always generous, he is generally kind-hearted, he is often
sentimental, he is sometimes intolerably maudlin; but you never know
when you will not come upon one of the convictions of Dickens; and when
you do come upon it you do know it. It is as hard and as high as any
precipice or peak of the mountains. The highest and hardest of these
peaks is _Hard Times_.

It is here more than anywhere else that the sternness of Dickens emerges
as separate from his softness; it is here, most obviously, so to speak,
that his bones stick out. There are indeed many other books of his which
are written better and written in a sadder tone. _Great Expectations_ is
melancholy in a sense; but it is doubtful of eve