made his sympathies less catholic than
they might have been, nor can there be any doubt of the accuracy of this
estimate of Shelley's; if a doubt existed it would be removed by Byron's
alternative for a poet, "solitude, or high life." Another man of genius,
whose loss we have recently deplored, was narrowed by his antipathy to
the aristocratic spirit, though it is necessary to add, in justice, that
it did not prevent him from valuing the friendship of noblemen whom he
esteemed. The works of Charles Dickens would have been more accurate as
pictures of English life, certainly more comprehensively accurate, if he
could have felt for the aristocracy that hearty and loving sympathy
which he felt for the middle classes and the people. But the narrowness
of Dickens is more excusable than that of Byron, because a kindly heart
more easily enters into the feelings of those whom it can often pity
than of those who appear to be lifted above pity (though this is nothing
but an appearance) and also because it is the habit of aristocracies to
repel such sympathy by their manners, which the poor do not.

I have often thought that a sign of aristocratic narrowness in many
English authors, including some of the most popular authors of the day,
is the way they speak of shopkeepers. This may be due to simple
ignorance; but if so, it is ignorance that might be easily avoided.
Happily for our convenience there are a great many shopkeepers in
England, so that there is no lack of the materials for study; but our
novelists appear to consider this important class of Englishmen as
unworthy of any patient and serious portraiture. You may remember Mr.
Anthony Trollope's "Struggles of Brown, Jones, and Robinson," which
appeared in the _Cornhill Magazine_, under Thackeray's editorship. That
was an extreme instance of the way the class is treated in our
literature; and then in poetry we have some disdainful verses of Mr.
Tennyson's. It may be presumed that there is material for grave and
respectful treatment of this extensive class, but our poets and
novelists do not seem to have discovered, or sought to discover, the
secret of that treatment. The intensity of the prejudices of caste
prevents them from seeing any possibility of true gentlemanhood in a
draper or a grocer, and blinds them to the aesthetic beauty or grandeur
which may be as perfectly compatible with what is disdainfully called
"counter-jumping" as it is admitted to be with the jumping of