distinctly because no one knows what it is. For a plain word (as for
instance the word fool) always covers an infinite mystery.

_A Tale of Two Cities_ is one of the more tragic tints of the later life
of Dickens. It might be said that he grew sadder as he grew older; but
this would be false, for two reasons. First, a man never or hardly ever
does grow sad as he grows old; on the contrary, the most melancholy
young lovers can be found forty years afterwards chuckling over their
port wine. And second, Dickens never did grow old, even in a physical
sense. What weariness did appear in him appeared in the prime of life;
it was due not to age but to overwork, and his exaggerative way of doing
everything. To call Dickens a victim of elderly disenchantment would be
as absurd as to say the same of Keats. Such fatigue as there was, was
due not to the slowing down of his blood, but rather to its unremitting
rapidity. He was not wearied by his age; rather he was wearied by his
youth. And though _A Tale of Two Cities_ is full of sadness, it is full
also of enthusiasm; that pathos is a young pathos rather than an old
one. Yet there is one circumstance which does render important the fact
that _A Tale of Two Cities_ is one of the later works of Dickens. This
fact is the fact of his dependence upon another of the great writers of
the Victorian era. And it is in connection with this that we can best
see the truth of which I have been speaking; the truth that his actual
ignorance of France went with amazing intuitive perception of the truth
about it. It is here that he has most clearly the plain mark of the man
of genius; that he can understand what he does not understand.

Dickens was inspired to the study of the French Revolution and to the
writing of a romance about it by the example and influence of Carlyle.
Thomas Carlyle undoubtedly rediscovered for Englishmen the revolution
that was at the back of all their policies and reforms. It is an
entertaining side joke that the French Revolution should have been
discovered for Britons by the only British writer who did not really
believe in it. Nevertheless, the most authoritative and the most recent
critics on that great renaissance agree in considering Carlyle's work
one of the most searching and detailed power. Carlyle had read a great
deal about the French Revolution. Dickens had read nothing at all,
except Carlyle. Carlyle was a man who collected his ideas by the careful
collation of