We have not space, unfortunately, to deal at length with
the Dickens Centenary, but we must at least record our sense of what the nation owes to Dickens. When everything has been pleaded against Dickens on the score of his vulgarity, his false sentiment, his lack of literary tact and discretion, and his appalling inability to understand how large a part reticence must play in art, there remains a magnificent achieve- ment, When he invoked the comics muse Dickens had nob only an unrivalled power of comic characterization but he possessed a comic eloquence which is absolutely original, and what could be higher praise than that P Mrs. Gamp's address to the " Ankworks package," Mr. Micawber's best orations, Mr. Pecksniff's speech at the family gathering, are inspired in the very highest sense and will last as long as the language. Time will obliterate that note of commonness which is now for so many a potent non-conductor of sympathy, and it will not in the least impair the essential appeal of his work. Dickens gave us something which no one had given us in the past, and which no one is likely to give us in the future.
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