No account of early Victorian literature can omit the name of Charles Dickens from the famous writers of the time.  How could we avoid notice of one whose first immortal tale coincides with the accession of our Queen, and who for thirty-three successive years continued to pour out a long stream of books that still delight the English-speaking world?  When we begin to talk about the permanent place in English literature of eminent writers, one of the first definite problems is presented by Charles Dickens.  And it is one of the most obscure of such problems; because, more than almost any writer of our age, Charles Dickens has his own accustomed nook at every fireside:  he is a familiar friend, a welcome guest; we remember the glance of his eye; we have held his hand, as it were, in our own.  The children brighten up as his step is heard; the chairs are drawn round the hearth, and a fresh glow is given to the room.  We do not criticise one whom we love, nor do we suffer others to do so.  And there is perhaps a wider sympathy with Charles Dickens as a person than with any other writer of our time.  For this reason there has been hardly any serious criticism or estimate of Dickens as a great artist, apart from some peevish and sectional disparagement of his genius, which has been too much tinged with academic pedantry and the bias of aristocratic temper or political antagonism.

I am free to confess that I am in no mood to pretend making up my mind for any impartial estimate of Charles Dickens as an abiding power in English literature.  The “personal equation” is in my own case somewhat too strong to leave me with a perfectly “dry light” in the matter.  I will make a clean breast of it at once by saying, that I can remember reading some of the most famous of these books in their green covers, month by month, as they came out in parts, when I was myself a child or “in my ’teens.”  That period included the first ten of the main works from Pickwick down to David Copperfield.  With Bleak House, which I read as a student of philosophy at Oxford beginning to be familiar with Aristotelian canons, I felt my enjoyment mellowed by a somewhat more measured judgment.  From that time onward Charles Dickens threw himself into a great variety of undertakings and many diverse kinds of publication.  His Hard Times, Little Dorrit, Our Mutual Friend, Great Expectations, Tale of Two Cities, were never to me anything like the wonder and delight that I found in Oliver Twist, Nickleby, and Copperfield.  And as to the short tales and the later pieces down to Edwin Drood, I never find myself turning back to them; the very memory of the story is fading away; and I fail to recall the characters and names.  A mature judgment will decide that the series after David Copperfield, written when the author was thirty-eight, was not equal to the series of the thirteen years preceding.  Charles Dickens will always be remembered