Perhaps I
may be permitted here to say, that this gifted woman was among my
dearest and most intimate friends. As I am speaking here of novelists,
I will not attempt to speak of George Eliot's merit as a poet.
There can be no doubt that the most popular novelist of my
time--probably the most popular English novelist of any time--has
been Charles Dickens. He has now been dead nearly six years, and the
sale of his books goes on as it did during his life. The certainty
with which his novels are found in every house--the familiarity of
his name in all English-speaking countries--the popularity of such
characters as Mrs. Gamp, Micawber, and Pecksniff, and many others
whose names have entered into the English language and become
well-known words--the grief of the country at his death, and the
honours paid to him at his funeral,--all testify to his popularity.
Since the last book he wrote himself, I doubt whether any book
has been so popular as his biography by John Forster. There is
no withstanding such testimony as this. Such evidence of popular
appreciation should go for very much, almost for everything,
in criticism on the work of a novelist. The primary object of a
novelist is to please; and this man's novels have been found more
pleasant than those of any other writer. It might of course be
objected to this, that though the books have pleased they have been
injurious, that their tendency has been immoral and their teaching
vicious; but it is almost needless to say that no such charge has
ever been made against Dickens.
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