haps to state this truth as being, after all,
the most important one. This first work had, as I have said, the faults
of first work and the special faults that arose from its author's
accidental history; he was deprived of education, and therefore it was
in some ways uneducated; he was confronted with the folly and failure of
his natural superiors and guardians, and therefore it was in some ways
pert and insolent. Nevertheless the main fact about the work is worth
stating here for any reader who should follow the chronological order
and read the _Sketches by Boz_ before embarking on the stormy and
splendid sea of _Pickwick_. For the sea of _Pickwick_, though splendid,
does make some people seasick. The great point to be emphasised at such
an initiation is this: that people, especially refined people, are not
to judge of Dickens by what they would call the coarseness or
commonplaceness of his subject. It is quite true that his jokes are
often on the same _subjects_ as the jokes in a halfpenny comic paper.
Only they happen to be good jokes. He does make jokes about drunkenness,
jokes about mothers-in-law, jokes about henpecked husbands, jokes (which
is much more really unpardonable) about spinsters, jokes about physical
cowardice, jokes about fatness, jokes about sitting down on one's hat.
He does make fun of all these things; and the reason is not very far to
seek. He makes fun of all these things because all these things, or
nearly all of them, are really very funny. But a large number of those
who might otherwise read and enjoy Dickens are undoubtedly "put off" (as
the phrase goes) by the fact that he seems to be echoing a poor kind of
claptrap in his choice of incidents and images. Partly, of course, he
suffers from the very fact of his success; his play with these topics
was so good that every one else has played with them increasingly since;
he may indeed have copied the old jokes, but he certainly renewed them.
For instance, "Ally Sloper" was certainly copied from Wilkins Micawber.
To this day you may see (in the front page of that fine periodical) the
bald head and the high shirt collar that betray the high original from
which "Ally Sloper" is derived. But exactly because "Sloper" was stolen
from Micawber, for that very reason the new generation feels as if
Micawber were stolen from "Sloper." Many modern readers feel as if
Dickens were copying the comic papers, whereas in truth the comic papers
are still copying Dic