ongruous
elements of human life and human contrivance. When it floods and
overflows, the critics run away; when it subsides the critics come back
and begin to analyze it, and say, "It wasn't much of a shower."

Charles Dickens is to be judged, like any other genius, by what he
created, what he brought into the world. We are not called on to say
whether he was as great as Homer, as Shakespeare, as Cervantes, as
Fielding, as Manzoni, as Thackeray. He was always quite himself, and
followed no model, though thousands of writers have attempted to follow
him and acquire the title of being Dickens-y. For over half a century he
had the ear of the English-reading public the world over. It laughed
with him, it cried with him, it hungered after him. Whatever he wrote,
it must read; whenever he read, it crowded to hear his masterly
interpretations; when he acted, it was delighted with his histrionic
cleverness. In all these manifestations there was the attraction of a
most winning personality.

He invented a new kind of irresistible humor, he told stories that went
to the heart of humanity, he amused, he warmed, he cheered the world. We
almost think that modern Christmas was his invention, such an apostle
was he of kindliness and brotherly love, of sympathy with the poor and
the struggling, of charity which is not condescension. He made pictures
of low life, and perhaps unreal shadows of high life, and vivid scenes
that lighted up great periods of history. For producing effects and
holding the reader he was a wizard with his pen. And so the world hung
on him, read him and re-read him, recited him, declaimed him, put him
into reading-books, diffused him in common speech and in all literature.
In all English literature his characters are familiar, stand for types,
and need no explanation. And now, having filled itself up with him,
been saturated with him, made him in some ways as common as the air,
does the world tire of him, turn on him, say that it cannot read him any
more, that he is commonplace? If so, the world has made him commonplace.
But the publishers' and booksellers' accounts show no diminution in his
popularity with the new generation.

At a dinner where Dickens was discussed, a gentleman won distinction by
this sole contribution to the conversation:--"There is no evidence in
Dickens's works that he ever read a book." It is true that Dickens drew
most of his material from his own observation of life, and from his
ferti