kens.

Dickens showed himself to be an original man by always accepting old and
established topics. There is no clearer sign of the absence of
originality among modern poets than their disposition to find new
themes. Really original poets write poems about the spring. They are
always fresh, just as the spring is always fresh. Men wholly without
originality write poems about torture, or new religions, of some
perversion of obscenity, hoping that the mere sting of the subject may
speak for them. But we do not sufficiently realise that what is true of
the classic ode is also true of the classic joke. A true poet writes
about the spring being beautiful because (after a thousand springs) the
spring really is beautiful. In the same way the true humourist writes
about a man sitting down on his hat, because the act of sitting down on
one's hat (however often and however admirably performed) really is
extremely funny. We must not dismiss a new poet because his poem is
called _To a Skylark_; nor must we dismiss a humourist because his new
farce is called _My Mother-in-law_. He may really have splendid and
inspiring things to say upon an eternal problem. The whole question is
whether he has.

Now this is exactly where Dickens, and the possible mistake about
Dickens, both come in. Numbers of sensitive ladies, numbers of simple
aesthetes, have had a vague shrinking from that element in Dickens which
begins vaguely in _The Tuggses at Ramsgate_ and culminates in
_Pickwick_. They have a vague shrinking from the mere subject matter;
from the mere fact that so much of the fun is about drinking or
fighting, or falling down, or eloping with old ladies. It is to these
that the first appeal must be made upon the threshold of Dickens
criticism. Let them really read the thing and really see whether the
humour is the gross and half-witted jeering which they imagine it to be.
It is exactly here that the whole genius of Dickens is concerned. His
subjects are indeed stock subjects; like the skylark of Shelley, or the
autumn of Keats. But all the more because they are stock subjects the
reader realises what a magician is at work. The notion of a clumsy
fellow who falls off his horse is indeed a stock and stale subject. But
Mr. Winkle is not a stock and stale subject. Nor is his horse a stock
and stale subject; it is as immortal as the horses of Achilles. The
notion of a fat old gentleman proud of his legs might easily be vulgar.
But Mr. Pickwick