As for Mr. Marzials’ critical estimate of Dickens as a writer, he tells us quite frankly that he believes that Dickens at his best was ’one of the greatest masters of pathos who ever lived,’ a remark that seems to us an excellent example of what novelists call ’the fine courage of despair.’  Of course, no biographer of Dickens could say anything else, just at present.  A popular series is bound to express popular views, and cheap criticisms may be excused in cheap books.  Besides, it is always open to every one to accept G. H. Lewes’s unfortunate maxim that any author who makes one cry possesses the gift of pathos and, indeed, there is something very flattering in being told that one’s own emotions are the ultimate test of literature.  When Mr. Marzials discusses Dickens’s power of drawing human nature we are upon somewhat safer ground, and we cannot but admire the cleverness with which he passes over his hero’s innumerable failures.  For, in some respects, Dickens might be likened to those old sculptors of our Gothic cathedrals who could give form to the most fantastic fancy, and crowd with grotesque monsters a curious world of dreams, but saw little of the grace and dignity of the men and women among whom they lived, and whose art, lacking sanity, was therefore incomplete.  Yet they at least knew the limitations of their art, while Dickens never knew the limitations of his.  When he tries to be serious he succeeds only in being dull, when he aims at truth he reaches merely platitude.  Shakespeare could place Ferdinand and Miranda by the side of Caliban, and Life recognises them all as her own, but Dickens’s Mirandas are the young ladies out of a fashion-book, and his Ferdinands the walking gentlemen of an unsuccessful company of third-rate players.  So little sanity, indeed, had Dickens’s art that he was never able even to satirise:  he could only caricature; and so little does Mr. Marzials realise where Dickens’s true strength and weakness lie, that he actually complains that Cruikshank’s illustrations are too much exaggerated and that he could never draw either a lady or a gentleman.

The latter was hardly a disqualification for illustrating Dickens as few such characters occur in his books, unless we are to regard Lord Frederick Verisopht and Sir Mulberry Hawk as valuable studies of high life; and, for our own part, we have always considered that the greatest injustice ever done to Dickens has been done by those who have tried to illustrate him seriously.

In conclusion, Mr. Marzials expresses his belief that a century hence Dickens will be read as much as we now read Scott, and says rather prettily that as long as he is read ’there will be one gentle and humanising influence the more at work among men,’ which is always a useful tag to append to the life of any popular author.  Remembering that of all forms of error prophecy is the most gratuitous, we will not take upon ourselves to decide the question of Dickens’s immortality.  If our descendants do not read him they will miss a great source of amusement, and if they do, we hope they will not model their style upon his.  Of this, however, there is but little danger, for no age ever borrows the slang of its predecessor.  As for ‘the gentle and humanising influence,’ this is taking Dickens just a little too seriously.