NOTHING is important except the fate of the soul; and literature
is only redeemed from an utter triviality, surpassing that of naughts
and crosses, by the fact that it describes not the world around us
or the things on the retina of the eye or the enormous irrelevancy
of encyclopædias, but some condition to which the human spirit
can come. All good writers express the state of their souls, even
(as occurs in some cases of very good writers) if it is a state of
damnation. The first thing that has to be realized about Dickens
is this ultimate spiritual condition of the man, which lay behind all
his creations. This Dickens state of mind is difficult to pick out
in words as are all elementary states of mind; they cannot be
described, not because they are too subtle for words, but because
they are too simple for words. Perhaps the nearest approach to a
statement of it would be this: that Dickens expresses an eager
anticipation of everything that will happen in the motley affairs of
men; he looks at the quiet crowd waiting for it to be picturesque
and to play the fool; he expects everything; he is torn with a
happy hunger. Thackeray is always looking back to yesterday;
Dickens is always looking forward to to-morrow. Both are pro-
foundly humorous, for there is a humour of the morning and a
humour of the evening; but the first guesses at what it will get, at
all the grotesqueness and variety which a day may bring forth; the
second looks back on what the day has been and sees even its
solemnities as slightly ironical. Nothing can be too extravagant for
the laughter that looks forward; and nothing can be too dignified
for the laughter that looks back.

It is an idle but obvious thing, which many must have noticed,
that we often find in the title of one of an author's books what
might very well stand for a general description of all of them.
Thus all Spenser's works might be called "A Hymn to Heavenly
Beauty;" or all Mr. Bernard Shaw's bound books might be called
"You Never Can Tell." In the same way the whole substance
and spirit of Thackeray might be gathered under the general title
"Vanity Fair." In the same way too the whole substance and
spirit of Dickens might be gathered under the general title "Great
Expectations."

In a recent criticism on this position I saw it remarked that all
this is reading into Dickens something that he did not mean; and

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