e held to mean something artificial or
theatrical, then in the core and reality of his character Dickens was
the very reverse of a sentimentalist. He seriously and definitely loved
goodness. To see sincerity and charity satisfied him like a meal. What
some critics call his love of sweet stuff is really his love of plain
beef and bread. Sometimes one is tempted to wish that in the long
Dickens dinner the sweet courses could be left out; but this does not
make the whole banquet other than a banquet singularly solid and simple.
The critics complain of the sweet things, but not because they are so
strong as to like simple things. They complain of the sweet things
because they are so sophisticated as to like sour things; their tongues
are tainted with the bitterness of absinthe. Yet because of the very
simplicity of Dickens's moral tastes it is impossible to speak
adequately of them; and Joe Gargery must stand as he stands in the book,
a thing too obvious to be understood. But this may be said of him in one
of his minor aspects, that he stands for a certain long-suffering in the
English poor, a certain weary patience and politeness which almost
breaks the heart. One cannot help wondering whether that great mass of
silent virtue will ever achieve anything on this earth.

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND

_Our Mutual Friend_ marks a happy return to the earlier manner of
Dickens at the end of Dickens's life. One might call it a sort of Indian
summer of his farce. Those who most truly love Dickens love the earlier
Dickens; and any return to his farce must be welcomed, like a young man
come back from the dead. In this book indeed he does not merely return
to his farce; he returns in a manner to his vulgarity. It is the old
democratic and even uneducated Dickens who is writing here. The very
title is illiterate. Any priggish pupil teacher could tell Dickens that
there is no such phrase in English as "our mutual friend." Any one could
tell Dickens that "our mutual friend" means "our reciprocal friend," and
that "our reciprocal friend" means nothing. If he had only had all the
solemn advantages of academic learning (the absence of which in him was
lamented by the _Quarterly Review_), he would have known better. He
would have known that the correct phrase for a man known to two people
is "our common friend." But if one calls one's friend a common friend,
even that phrase is open to misunderstanding.

I dwell with a gloomy pleasure on this