talk about because we are foolish enough
to think them ordinary.

* * * * *

It is from the account of the early life of Dickens that Chesterton
gently leads us to the birth of the immortal Mr. Pickwick, that supreme
Englishman who is a byword amongst even those who scarcely know Dickens.
The birth pangs of the advent of Pickwick was a sharp quarrel 'that did
no good to Dickens, and was one of those which occurred far too
frequently in his life.'

Without any hesitation for Chesterton, 'Pickwick Papers' is Dickens'
finest achievement, which is a pleasant enough problem if we happen to
remember that he also wrote 'David Copperfield.' Possibly it is really
unfair to compare them. 'Pickwick Papers' is not in the strict sense a
novel; 'David Copperfield' is a novel even if it is an autobiography. At
any rate Pickwick was a fairy, and as fairies are pretty elastic he
probably was in that category of beings, but he was even more a royal
fairy, none other than the 'fairy prince.'

In Pickwick, Dickens made a great discovery, which was that he could
write ordinary stuff like the 'Sketches by Boz,' and also could produce
Mr. Pickwick and write 'David Copperfield,' which was to say that
Dickens discovered he had a good chance of being the Shakespeare of
literature.

'It is in "Pickwick Papers" that Dickens became a mythologist rather
than a novelist; he dealt with men who were gods.' That is, no doubt,
that they became household gods; in other words, as familiar as the
characters of Shakespeare.

There is one tremendous outstanding characteristic of Dickens which
Chesterton brings out with considerable force. It is that above all
things Dickens created characters. It is almost as if the setting of his
books were on a stage where the environment changes but the essentials
of the characters remain unchanged.

The story is almost subordinated to the drawing of the principal
character; it is almost a modern idea of the psychoanalytical kind of
novel that our young novelists love to draw. But still there is the
great difference that the characters of Dickens pursue there own way
regardless of the trend of events round them.

Naturally the modern novel is inferior to some of Dickens' works, but
they do not deserve the hard things Chesterton says about them. Thus he
remarks in passing that the modern novel is 'devoted to the bewilderment
of a weak young clerk who cannot decide which woman