is really a book with a moral--that life in the
limelight is not always synonymous with getting the best out of it.
Really, the hero behaves in a sneakish manner. Probably Dickens doesn't
like him, and the writer is still on the stern side.

In 1864, so Chesterton tells us, Dickens was in a merrier mood, and
published 'Our Mutual Friend,' a book that has, as our critic says, 'a
thoroughly human hero and a thoroughly human villain.' This work is 'a
satire dealing with the whims and pleasures of the leisured class.' But
this is by no means a monopoly of the so-called idle rich: the
hardworking middle and poorer classes have whims and pleasures in a like
manner, but have not so much opportunity in indulging in them.

As I have indicated, the story is not the principal part of the Dickens'
literature; it is the drawing of characters to which he pays so much
attention. It will not be out of place at this time to see what our
critic has to say with regard to this tendency of Dickens. It is an
essential of Dickens, and is therefore of vast import to any critique on
him.

The essence of Dickens, for Chesterton, is that he makes kings out of
common men: those folks who are the ordinary people of this strange,
fascinating world, those who have no special claim to a place in the
stars, those who, when they die, do not have two lines in any but a
local paper, those who are common but are never commonplace.

There is a vast difference between the common and the commonplace, as
Chesterton points out. Death is common to all, yet it is never
commonplace; it is in its very essence a grand and noble thing, because
it is a proof of our common humanity; it gives the lie that the Pope is
of more importance than the dustman; it makes the busy editor equal to
the newsboy shouting the papers under his office windows.

The common man is he who does not receive any special distinction:
universities do not compete to do him honour, his name is but mentioned
in a small circle. These are those of whom Dickens wrote. 'It is,' says
Chesterton, 'in private life that we find the great characters. They are
too great to get into the public world.' They are people who are
natural--natural in a sense that the holders of high office never can
be. Dickens could only write of natural people, so he wrote of common
men: 'You will find him adrift as an impecunious commercial traveller
like Micawber; you will find him but one of a batch of silly clerks like