been easily corrupted into a system of
superstitions. If ever there was a message full of what modern people
call true Christianity, the direct appeal to the common heart, a faith
that was simple, a hope that was infinite, and a charity that was
omnivorous, if ever there came among men what they call the Christianity
of Christ, it was in the message of Dickens. Christianity has been in
the world nearly two thousand years, and it has not yet quite lost, its
enemies being judges, its first fire and charity; but friends and
enemies would agree that it was from the very first more detailed and
doctrinal than the spirit of Dickens. The spirit of Dickens has been in
the world about sixty years; and already it is a superstition. Already
it is loaded with relics. Already it is stiff with antiquity.

Everything that can be said about the perversion of Christianity can be
said about the perversion of Dickens. It is said that Christ's words
are repeated by the very High Priests and Scribes whom He meant to
denounce. It is just as true that the jokes in _Pickwick_ are quoted
with delight by the very bigwigs of bench and bar whom Dickens wished to
make absurd and impossible. It is said that texts from Scripture are
constantly taken in vain by Judas and Herod, by Caiaphas and Annas. It
is just as true that texts from Dickens are rapturously quoted on all
our platforms by Podsnap and Honeythunder, by Pardiggle and Veneering,
by Tigg when he is forming a company, or Pott when he is founding a
newspaper. People joke about Bumble in defence of Bumbledom; people
allude playfully to Mrs. Jellyby while agitating for Borrioboola Gha.
The very things which Dickens tried to destroy are preserved as relics
of him. The very houses he wished to pull down are propped up as
monuments of Dickens. We wish to preserve everything of him, except his
perilous public spirit.

This antiquarian attitude towards Dickens has many manifestations, some
of them somewhat ridiculous. I give one startling instance out of a
hundred of the irony remarked upon above. In his first important book,
Dickens lashed the loathsome corruption of our oligarchical politics,
their blaring servility and dirty diplomacy of bribes, under the name of
an imaginary town called Eatanswill. If Eatanswill, wherever it was, had
been burned to the ground by its indignant neighbours the day after the
exposure, it would have been not inappropriate. If it had been entirely
deserted by its in