"THE VERY DICKENS."

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1259, 14 October 1911, Page 9

"THE VERY DICKENS."

Mr. Dixon Scott, one of the brilliant writers in tho "Manchester Guardian." has written this enjoyable review of Mr. Chesterton's .second bcok on Dickons:— Mr. Chesterton's latest book about Dick.ens is perhaps not quite so good as his first, for it is mainly a march-past of prefaces done for various "Everyman" volumes—is constantly being checked with a jerk in order to pick up and set dewn its passengers,—and so lacks that irrcs-, ponsiblo surge, one ding-dong charge, from dedication to index, which made a trip aboard, tho, oarlior one so bracing. All the same, it is "a book to, borrow if not to buy, and'one "to'-lend'hhd lend irropressibly. It is. one of., the,very few pieces'of print that do manage' to g?t across that river of watery ink which separates the Dickens of the. debating clubs and the mbacigrhpbs from the Dickens who is every-sound man's joy. Vth.en he is "not just a plain fellow talking' creakily, uncomfortably, in stiff phrases borrowed from culture, your typical writer about Dickens seems always im-! pelled' to assume a raffish Philistine air, j to be sporting and downright and bluff, as who should say "Art? Poetrv? Style? Po->h! Life, my boy, Life is'the'ticket"— evidently making the mistake of supposing that to speak of the popular favourite acceptably you must'speak in a popular way. Nothing, of course, would have more, maddened Dickens, as jealous as an acior.for the dignities—and nothinvas a fact, less accords with the real democratic mood. Everyman's feeling for Dickens is really something rather specially recondite and dim—as fantastic and rare, every bit, as more complicated creatures passion for Rossetti; it is with a dark exultation that he thinks of him, feeling that strange beat of the wings of romance. And it is exactly .these rich amotions, mute for the most part, that Mr. Chesterton, all unashamed, here provides with their full verbal equivalent. His manner is familiar by now. Never exactly anaemic, his prose—a rowdy young brother of Raskin's, one sometimes thinks ; -bates nothing of its ardour here. L, is in this ample strain, for instance, that it begins to appreciate "Nicholas NickJeby :— ' "Romance is perhaps the highest point of human expression, except indeed religion, to which it is closely-allied. Homan« -resembles religions especially in this, that it is not only a simplification but a shortening of existence. RelHon shortens, everything. Religion shortens even eternity. Where science,- submitting to the false standard of time, sees evo.ution, which is slow, religion sees creation, which is sudden. For religicn the flowers shoot up suddenlv like rockets. .[• or religion tho mountains are lifted up suddenly,'like waves. Those who quoto that fine passage which savs that m Uods sight a thousand years "are as yesterday that is passed as a watch in the night, do not realise tho full force of tho meaning. To God .a thousand years are not only a watch, but an exciting watch: For God time goes in a gallop, as it does to a man reading a "ood tale. co "All this, in a humble manner, is true ot Romance. Romance is a shortening and sharpening of- tho.human difficulty In every pure romance there aro three" liviii" and .moving characters. For the sake of argument they may be called St. Gedr»o aud the Dragon and the Princes- " And the like "Bang, Crash, "Sapri<tj Pomb!" as Mr. John Davidson *£& •hopes hot and strong, a stage crammed with colour-and then, suddenlv, mS« into the pageant darts the little, Palo" neci'oinantic figure of the cockney uiairii clan himself. h l,^°th,' th ' S , is "?, mI just as it should be; this, indeed, is the verv Dickens Ju spito ot his topers and tiu'kevs. there was always something of the strayed elf about Bpz; ho always remained one of those, like Hawthorne or Poe who are never quite at home in the world; anil tho true way to treat him is as a kind of wild poet working-out his vision in a medium of arms and legs and faces and vivid'characteristics, it. was this line mixture that he wrought into his patterns and festoons -pouring into it .direct the dreaming energy which other, artists, other novelists especially, reserve for their rhetoric, their metaphors and nourishes; and thus making it, lor all its incidental realism, chiefly precious bjcauso of its kinship with the glorious eccentricities of life,'its storms, and feasts, and sunsets. It 'is a conception, clearly, that might carry one far—but alas! on the brink of if-, oil the very verge of his "Pomb!" Mr. Chesterton has one of his old seizures. He must preach, must havo„a drivo nt something —a South African financier for choice; and in order to do it tries to turn back his poet into a sort of shrewd social detective Hashing a bull's-eye in Ihc face of the future. "Dickens was so wonderfully sensitive .to the change that lias come over our society that he noticed the type- of the Oriental and cosmopolitan financier without even knowing that' it was Oriental or cosmopolitan. ... 11? remains great and true and even essentially reliable if we suppose him to have known not only all that went on before his lifetime, but also all-that was to come after." This is surely to descend dismally near to tho position taken up by the good people who praise. Dickens as a practical realist and social reformer, destroyer of Dothebny's Hall. Dickens did not'foresee the future. He provided it. (Tomb!) Tf his pictures aro not like life it is exactly because they are too full of it; and their

energy spills over and takes form as living men. They did not kill our Mrs. (jumps, they created them, disbursing n rich strain of Oampishness, Wcllerisni— Riving courage to Hint shy corner of our souls which would make us more liko -Mr. Pickwick if it dared. Best of all contemporary tributes to their greatness, better even than this book of Mr. Chesterton's, is the dear old gentleman who at the present moment is scudding solemnly to and fro about England, visiting 1100 innkeepers and entreating them to adopt the sign of The Dickens Head. lie is an overflow of the novels, one of their leaves come alive. How much more thrilling than the mere, fulfilment of a prophecy!