habitants, if they had fled to hide themselves in
holes and caverns, one could have understood it. If it had been struck
by a thunderbolt out of heaven or outlawed by the whole human race, all
that would seem quite natural. What has really happened is this: that
two respectable towns in Suffolk are still disputing for the honour of
having been the original Eatanswill; as if two innocent hamlets each
claimed to be Gomorrah. I make no comment; the thing is beyond speech.

But this strange sentimental and relic-hunting worship of Dickens has
many more innocent manifestations. One of them is that which takes
advantage of the fact that Dickens happened to be a journalist by trade.
It occupies itself therefore with hunting through papers and magazines
for unsigned articles which may possibly be proved to be his. Only a
little time ago one of these enthusiasts ran up to me, rubbing his
hands, and told me that he was sure he had found two and a half short
paragraphs in _All the Year Round_ which were certainly written by
Dickens, whom he called (I regret to say) the Master. Something of this
archaeological weakness must cling to all mere reprints of his minor
work. He was a great novelist; but he was also, among other things, a
good journalist and a good man. It is often necessary for a good
journalist to write bad literature. It is sometimes the first duty of a
good man to write it. Pot-boilers to my feeling are sacred things; but
they may well be secret as well as sacred, like the holy pot which it is
their purpose to boil. In the collection called _Reprinted Pieces_ there
are some, I think, which demand or deserve this apology. There are many
which fall below the level of his recognised books of fragments, such as
_The Sketches by Boz_, and _The Uncommercial Traveller_. Two or three
elements in the compilation, however, make it quite essential to any
solid appreciation of the author.

Of these the first in importance is that which comes last in order. I
mean the three remarkable pamphlets upon the English Sunday, called
_Sunday under Three Heads_. Here, at least, we find the eternal Dickens,
though not the eternal Dickens of fiction. His other political and
sociological suggestions in this volume are so far unimportant that they
are incidental, and even personal. Any man might have formed Dickens's
opinion about flogging for garrotters, and altered it afterwards. Any
one might have come to Dickens's conclusion about model pr