tempt to write a young and chivalrous novel. In this sense the comic
characters and the comic scenes are secondary; and indeed the comic
characters and the comic scenes, admirable as they are, could never be
considered as in themselves superior to such characters and such scenes
in many of the other books. But in themselves how unforgettable they
are. Mr. Crummles and the whole of his theatrical business is an
admirable case of that first and most splendid quality in Dickens--I
mean the art of making something which in life we call pompous and dull,
becoming in literature pompous and delightful. I have remarked before
that nearly every one of the amusing characters of Dickens is in reality
a great fool. But I might go further. Almost every one of his amusing
characters is in reality a great bore. The very people that we fly to in
Dickens are the very people that we fly from in life. And there is more
in Crummles than the mere entertainment of his solemnity and his tedium.
The enormous seriousness with which he takes his art is always an exact
touch in regard to the unsuccessful artist. If an artist is successful,
everything then depends upon a dilemma of his moral character. If he is
a mean artist success will make him a society man. If he is a
magnanimous artist, success will make him an ordinary man. But only as
long as he is unsuccessful will he be an unfathomable and serious
artist, like Mr. Crummles. Dickens was always particularly good at
expressing thus the treasures that belong to those who do not succeed in
this world. There are vast prospects and splendid songs in the point of
view of the typically unsuccessful man; if all the used-up actors and
spoilt journalists and broken clerks could give a chorus, it would be a
wonderful chorus in praise of the world. But these unsuccessful men
commonly cannot even speak. Dickens is the voice of them, and a very
ringing voice; because he was perhaps the only one of these unsuccessful
men that was ever successful.

OLIVER TWIST

In considering Dickens, as we almost always must consider him, as a man
of rich originality, we may possibly miss the forces from which he drew
even his original energy. It is not well for man to be alone. We, in the
modern world, are ready enough to admit that when it is applied to some
problem of monasticism or of an ecstatic life. But we will not admit
that our modern artistic claim to absolute originality is really a claim
to absolute