ly melodramatic; and before very long his habit of
attributing special catch-words, gestures, and the like to his
characters, exaggerated, degenerated, and stereotyped itself in a
fashion which it is difficult to think satisfactory to anybody. He was,
moreover, a "novelist of purpose" in the highest degree; he had very
strong, but very crude--not to say absurd--political ideas; and he was
apt to let the great powers of pathos, of humour, of vivid description,
which he possessed to "get out of hand" and to land him in the maudlin,
the extravagant, and the bombastic.

But--to put ourselves in connection with the main thread of our story
once more--he not only himself provided a great amount of the novel
pleasure for his readers, but he infused into the novel generally
something of a new spirit. It has been more than once pointed out that
there is almost more danger with the novel of "getting into ruts" than
with any kind of literature. Nobody could charge the Dickens novel with
doing this, except as regards mannerisms of style, and though it might
inspire many, it was very unlikely to create a rut for any one else. He
liked to call himself "the inimitable," and so, in a way, he was.
Imitations of him were, of course, tried: but they were all bad and
obvious failures. Against the possible tameness of the domestic novel;
against the too commonly actual want of actuality of the historic
romance; he set this new fantastic activity of his, which was at once
real and unreal, but where the reality had a magical touch of the
unfamiliar and the very unreality was stimulating. He might have a
hundred faults--he was in fact never faultless, except in _Pickwick_,
which is so absolutely unique that there is nothing to compare with it
and show up faults (if it has any) by the comparison. But you can read
him again and again with unceasing delight, and with delight of a kind
given by no other novelist.[21]

[21] It has not been thought necessary to insert criticism of
Dickens's individual novels. They are almost all well known to
almost everybody: and special discussion of them would be
superfluous, while their general characteristics and positions
in novel-history are singularly uniform and can be described
together.

The position of Thackeray in the history of the novel is as different
from that of Dickens as the fortunes of the two were in their own
progress and development. In fact, though a sort of pseudo