II

O come let us sing unto the Lord;Let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation,Let us come before his presence with thanksgiving;And make a joyful noise unto him with psalms.

O come let us sing unto the Lord;

Let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation,

Let us come before his presence with thanksgiving;

And make a joyful noise unto him with psalms.

If we should want a plain English name for this method of composition we might call itthought-rhyme. It is easy to find varied illustrations of its beauty and of its power to emphasize large and simple ideas.

Take for instance that very perfect psalm with which the book begins—a poem so complete, so compact, so delicately wrought that it seems like a sonnet. The subject isThe Two Paths.

The first part describes the way of the good man. It has three divisions.

The first verse gives a description of his conduct by negatives—telling us what he does not do. There is a triple thought-rhyme here.

Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly,Nor standeth in the way of sinners,Nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful.

Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly,

Nor standeth in the way of sinners,

Nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful.

The second verse describes his character positively, with a double thought-rhyme.

But his delight is in the law of the Lord;And in his law doth he meditate day and night.

But his delight is in the law of the Lord;

And in his law doth he meditate day and night.

The third verse tells us the result of this character and conduct, in a fourfold thought-rhyme.

He shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water:That bringeth forth his fruit in his season:His leaf also shall not wither:And whatsoever he doeth shall prosper.

He shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water:

That bringeth forth his fruit in his season:

His leaf also shall not wither:

And whatsoever he doeth shall prosper.

The second part of the psalm describes the way of the evil man. In the fourth verse there is a double thought-rhyme.

The ungodly are not so:But are like the chaff which the wind driveth away.

The ungodly are not so:

But are like the chaff which the wind driveth away.

In the fifth verse the consequences of this worthless, fruitless, unrooted life are shown, again with a double cadence of thought, the first referring to the judgment of God, the second to the judgment of men.

Therefore the ungodly shall not stand in the judgment:Nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous.

Therefore the ungodly shall not stand in the judgment:

Nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous.

The third part of the psalm is a terse, powerful couplet, giving the reason for the different ending of the two paths.

For the Lord knoweth the way of the righteous:But the way of the ungodly shall perish.

For the Lord knoweth the way of the righteous:

But the way of the ungodly shall perish.

The thought-rhyme here is one of contrast.

A poem of very different character from this brief, serious, impersonal sonnet is found in the Forty-sixth Psalm, which might be called a NationalAnthem. Here again the poem is divided into three parts.

The first part (verses first to third) expresses a sense of joyful confidence in the Eternal, amid the tempests and confusions of earth. The thought-rhymes are in couplets; and the second phrase, in each case, emphasizes and enlarges the idea of the first phrase.

God is our refuge and strength:A very present help in trouble.

God is our refuge and strength:

A very present help in trouble.

The second part (verses fourth to seventh) describes the peace and security of the city of God, surrounded by furious enemies, but rejoicing in the Eternal Presence. The parallel phrases here follow the same rule as in the first part. The concluding phrase is the stronger, the more emphatic. The seventh verse gives the refrain or chorus of the anthem.

The Lord of hosts is with us:The God of Jacob is our refuge.

The Lord of hosts is with us:

The God of Jacob is our refuge.

The last part (verses eighth to tenth) describes in a very vivid and concrete way the deliverance of the people that have trusted in the Eternal. It begins with a couplet, like those which have gonebefore. Then follow two stanzas of triple thought-rhymes, in which the thought is stated and intensified with each repetition.

He maketh wars to cease unto the end of the earth:He breaketh the bow, and cutteth the spear in sunder:He burneth the chariot in the fire.Be still, and know that I am God:I will be exalted among the heathen:I will be exalted in the earth.

He maketh wars to cease unto the end of the earth:He breaketh the bow, and cutteth the spear in sunder:He burneth the chariot in the fire.

He maketh wars to cease unto the end of the earth:

He breaketh the bow, and cutteth the spear in sunder:

He burneth the chariot in the fire.

Be still, and know that I am God:I will be exalted among the heathen:I will be exalted in the earth.

Be still, and know that I am God:

I will be exalted among the heathen:

I will be exalted in the earth.

The anthem ends with a repetition of the refrain.

A careful study of the Psalms, even in English, will enable the thoughtful reader to derive new pleasure from them, by tracing the many modes and manners in which this poetic form of thought-rhyme is used to bind the composition together, and to give balance and harmony to the poem.

Another element of poetic form can be discerned in the Psalms, not directly, in the English version, but by its effects. I mean the curious artifice of alphabetic arrangement. It was a favourite practice among Hebrew poets to begin their verses with the successive letters of the alphabet, or sometimesto vary the device by making every verse in a strophe begin with one letter, and every verse in the next strophe with the following letter, and so on to the end. The Twenty-fifth and the Thirty-seventh Psalms were written by the first of these rules; the One Hundred and Nineteenth Psalm follows the second plan.

Of course the alphabetic artifice disappears entirely in the English translation. But its effects remain. The Psalms written in this manner usually have but a single theme, which is repeated over and over again, in different words and with new illustrations. They are kaleidoscopic. The material does not change, but it is turned this way and that way, and shows itself in new shapes and arrangements. These alphabetic psalms are characterized by poverty of action and richness of expression.

Milton has already reminded us that the Psalms belong to the second of the three orders into which the Greeks, with clear discernment, divided allpoetry: the epic, the lyric, and the dramatic. The Psalms are rightly called lyrics because they are chiefly concerned with the immediate and imaginative expression of real feeling. It is the personal and emotional note that predominates. They are inward, confessional, intense; outpourings of the quickened spirit; self-revelations of the heart. It is for this reason that we should never separate them in our thought from the actual human life out of which they sprung. We must feel the warm pulse of humanity in them in order to comprehend their meaning and immortal worth. So far as we can connect them with the actual experience of men, this will help us to appreciate their reality and power. The effort to do this will make plain to us some other things which it is important to remember.

We shall see at once that the book does not come from a single writer, but from many authors and ages. It represents the heart of man in communion with God through a thousand years of history, from Moses to Nehemiah, perhaps even to the time of the Maccabean revival. It is, therefore, somethingvery much larger and better than an individual book.

It is the golden treasury of lyrics gathered from the life of the Hebrew people, the hymn-book of the Jews. And this gives to it a singular and precious quality of brotherhood. The fault, or at least the danger, of modern lyrical poetry is that it is too solitary and separate in its tone. It tends towards exclusiveness, over-refinement, morbid sentiment. Many Christian hymns suffer from this defect. But the Psalms breathe a spirit of human fellowship even when they are most intensely personal. The poet rejoices or mourns in solitude, it may be, but he is not alone in spirit. He is one of the people. He is conscious always of the ties that bind him to his brother men. Compare the intense selfishness of the modern hymn:

I can but perish if I go;I am resolved to try;For if I stay away, I knowI shall forever die;

I can but perish if I go;

I am resolved to try;

For if I stay away, I know

I shall forever die;

with the generous penitence of the Fifty-first Psalm:

Then will I teach transgressors thy way;And sinners shall be converted unto thee.

Then will I teach transgressors thy way;

And sinners shall be converted unto thee.

It is important to observe that there are several different kinds of lyrics among the Psalms. Some of them are simple and natural outpourings of a single feeling, likeA Shepherd’s Song about His Shepherd, the incomparable Twenty-third Psalm.

This little poem is a perfect melody. It would be impossible to express a pure, unmixed emotion—the feeling of joy in the Divine Goodness—more simply, with a more penetrating lyrical charm. The “valley of the death-shadow,” the “enemies” in whose presence the table is spread, are but dimly suggested in the background. The atmosphere of the psalm is clear and bright. The singing shepherd walks in light. The whole world is the House of the Lord, and life is altogether gladness.

How different is the tone, the quality, of the One Hundred and Nineteenth Psalm! This is not a melody, but a harmony; not a song, but an ode. The ode has been defined as “a strain of exalted and enthusiastic lyrical verse, directed to a fixed purpose and dealing progressively with one dignified theme.”[7]This definition precisely fits the One Hundred and Nineteenth Psalm.

Its theme isThe Eternal Word. Every verse in the poem, except one, contains some name or description of the law, commandments, testimonies, precepts, statutes, or judgments of Jehovah. Its enthusiasm for the Divine Righteousness never fails from beginning to end. Its fixed purpose is to kindle in other hearts the flame of devotion to the one Holy Law. It closes with a touch of magnificent pathos—a confession of personal failure and an assertion of spiritual loyalty:

I have gone astray like a lost sheep:Seek thy servant:For I do not forget thy commandments.

I have gone astray like a lost sheep:

Seek thy servant:

For I do not forget thy commandments.

The Fifteenth Psalm I should call a short didactic lyric. Its title isThe Good Citizen. It begins with a question:

Lord, who shall abide in thy tabernacle?Who shall dwell in thy holy hill?

Lord, who shall abide in thy tabernacle?

Who shall dwell in thy holy hill?

This question is answered by the description of a man whose character corresponds to the law of God. First there is a positive sketch in three broad lines:

He that walketh uprightly,And worketh righteousness,And speaketh truth in his heart.

He that walketh uprightly,

And worketh righteousness,

And speaketh truth in his heart.

Then comes a negative characterization in a finely touched triplet:

He that backbiteth not with his tongue,Nor doeth evil to his neighbor,Nor taketh up a reproach against his neighbor.

He that backbiteth not with his tongue,

Nor doeth evil to his neighbor,

Nor taketh up a reproach against his neighbor.

This is followed by a couplet containing a strong contrast:

In whose eyes a vile person is contemned:But he honoureth them that fear the Lord.

In whose eyes a vile person is contemned:

But he honoureth them that fear the Lord.

Then the description goes back to the negative style again and three more touches are added to the picture:

He that sweareth to his own hurt and changeth not,He that putteth not out his money to usury,Nor taketh reward against the innocent.

He that sweareth to his own hurt and changeth not,

He that putteth not out his money to usury,

Nor taketh reward against the innocent.

The poem closes with a single vigourous line, summing up the character of the good citizen and answering the question of the first verse with a new emphasis of security and permanence:

He that doeth these things shall never be moved.

The Seventy-eighth, One Hundred and Fifth, and One Hundred and Sixth Psalms are lyricalballads. They tell the story of Israel in Egypt, and in the Wilderness, and in Canaan, with swift, stirring phrases, and with splendid flashes of imagery. Take this passage from the Seventy-eighth Psalm as an example:

He clave the rocks in the wilderness,And gave them drink out of the great depths.He brought streams also out of the rock,And caused waters to run down like rivers.And they sinned yet more against him,Provoking the Most High in the wilderness.They tempted God in their hearts,Asking meat for their lust.Yea, they spake against God:They said,Can God furnish a table in the wilderness?Behold, he smote the rock that the waters gushed out,And the streams overflowed;Can he give bread also?Can he provide flesh for his people?Therefore the Lord heard and was wroth:So a fire was kindled against Jacob,And anger also came up against Israel:Because they believed not in God,And trusted not in his salvation:Though he had commanded the clouds from above,And opened the doors of heaven,And had rained down manna upon them to eat,And had given them of the corn of heaven,Man did eat angel’s food:He sent them meat to the full.He caused an east wind to blow in the heaven,And by his power he brought in the south wind.He rained flesh also upon them as dust,And feathered fowls like as the sand of the sea.And he let it fall in the midst of their camp,Round about their habitations;So they did eat and were filled,For he gave them their own desire.They were not estranged from their lust:But while the meat was yet in their mouths,The wrath of God came upon them, and slew the fattest of them,And smote down the chosen men of Israel.

He clave the rocks in the wilderness,And gave them drink out of the great depths.

He clave the rocks in the wilderness,

And gave them drink out of the great depths.

He brought streams also out of the rock,And caused waters to run down like rivers.

He brought streams also out of the rock,

And caused waters to run down like rivers.

And they sinned yet more against him,Provoking the Most High in the wilderness.

And they sinned yet more against him,

Provoking the Most High in the wilderness.

They tempted God in their hearts,Asking meat for their lust.

They tempted God in their hearts,

Asking meat for their lust.

Yea, they spake against God:They said,Can God furnish a table in the wilderness?

Yea, they spake against God:

They said,Can God furnish a table in the wilderness?

Behold, he smote the rock that the waters gushed out,And the streams overflowed;

Behold, he smote the rock that the waters gushed out,

And the streams overflowed;

Can he give bread also?Can he provide flesh for his people?

Can he give bread also?

Can he provide flesh for his people?

Therefore the Lord heard and was wroth:So a fire was kindled against Jacob,And anger also came up against Israel:Because they believed not in God,And trusted not in his salvation:

Therefore the Lord heard and was wroth:

So a fire was kindled against Jacob,

And anger also came up against Israel:

Because they believed not in God,

And trusted not in his salvation:

Though he had commanded the clouds from above,And opened the doors of heaven,And had rained down manna upon them to eat,And had given them of the corn of heaven,Man did eat angel’s food:

Though he had commanded the clouds from above,

And opened the doors of heaven,

And had rained down manna upon them to eat,

And had given them of the corn of heaven,

Man did eat angel’s food:

He sent them meat to the full.He caused an east wind to blow in the heaven,And by his power he brought in the south wind.He rained flesh also upon them as dust,And feathered fowls like as the sand of the sea.

He sent them meat to the full.

He caused an east wind to blow in the heaven,

And by his power he brought in the south wind.

He rained flesh also upon them as dust,

And feathered fowls like as the sand of the sea.

And he let it fall in the midst of their camp,Round about their habitations;So they did eat and were filled,For he gave them their own desire.

And he let it fall in the midst of their camp,

Round about their habitations;

So they did eat and were filled,

For he gave them their own desire.

They were not estranged from their lust:But while the meat was yet in their mouths,The wrath of God came upon them, and slew the fattest of them,And smote down the chosen men of Israel.

They were not estranged from their lust:

But while the meat was yet in their mouths,

The wrath of God came upon them, and slew the fattest of them,

And smote down the chosen men of Israel.

The Forty-fifth Psalm is a Marriage Ode: the Hebrew title calls it a Love Song. It bears all the marks of having been composed for some royal wedding-feast in Jerusalem.

There are many nature lyrics among the Psalms. The Twenty-ninth is notable for its rugged realism. It is a Song of Thunder.

The voice of the Lord breaketh the cedars:Yea, the Lord breaketh the cedars of Lebanon:He maketh them also to skip like a calf:Lebanon and Sirion like a young unicorn.

The voice of the Lord breaketh the cedars:

Yea, the Lord breaketh the cedars of Lebanon:

He maketh them also to skip like a calf:

Lebanon and Sirion like a young unicorn.

The One Hundred and Fourth, on the contrary, is full of calm sublimity and meditative grandeur.

O, Lord, my God, thou art very great:Thou art clothed with honour and majesty:Who coverest thyself with light as with a garment;Who stretchest out the heavens like a curtain.

O, Lord, my God, thou art very great:Thou art clothed with honour and majesty:

O, Lord, my God, thou art very great:

Thou art clothed with honour and majesty:

Who coverest thyself with light as with a garment;Who stretchest out the heavens like a curtain.

Who coverest thyself with light as with a garment;

Who stretchest out the heavens like a curtain.

The Nineteenth is famous for its splendid comparison between “the starry heavens and the moral law.”

I think that we may find also some dramatic lyrics among the Psalms—poems composed to express the feelings of an historic person, like David or Solomon, in certain well-known and striking experiences of his life. That a later writer should thus embody and express the truth dramatically through the personality of some great hero of the past, involves no falsehood. It is a mode of utterance which has been common to the literature ofall lands and of all ages. Such a method of composition would certainly be no hindrance to the spirit of inspiration. The Thirty-first Psalm, for instance, is ascribed by the title to David. But there is strong reason, in the phraseology and in the spirit of the poem, to believe that it was written by the Prophet Jeremiah.

It is not to be supposed that our reverence for the Psalms in their moral and religious aspects will make us put them all on the same level poetically. There is a difference among the books of the New Testament in regard to the purity and dignity of the Greek in which they are written. There is a difference among St. Paul’s Epistles in regard to the clearness and force of their style. There is a difference even among the chapters of the same epistle in regard to the beauty of thought and language. In the First Epistle to the Corinthians, the thirteenth chapter is poetic, and the fourteenth is prosaic. Why should there not be a difference in poetic quality among the Psalms?

There is a difference. The honest reader will recognize it. It will be no harm to him if he should have his favourites among the poems which have been gathered from many centuries into this great collection.

There are some, like the Twenty-seventh, the Forty-second, the Forty-sixth, the Fifty-first, the Sixty-third, the Ninety-first, the Ninety-sixth, the One Hundred and Third, the One Hundred and Seventh, the One Hundred and Thirty-ninth, which rank with the noblest poetic literature of the world. Others move on a lower level, and show the traces of effort and constraint. There are also manifest alterations and interpolations, which are not always improvements. Dr. Perowne, who is one of the wisest and most conservative of modern commentators, says, “Many of the Psalms have not come down to us in their original form,”[8]and refers to the alterations which the Seventieth makes in the Fortieth, and the Fifty-third in the Fourteenth. The last two verses of the Fifty-first were evidently added by a later hand. The whole book, in its presentform, shows the marks of its compilation and use as the Hymn-Book of the Jewish people. Not only in the titles, but also in the text, we can discern the work of the compiler, critic, and adapter, sometimes wise, but occasionally otherwise.

The most essential thing in the appreciation of the poetry in the Psalms is the recognition of the three great spiritual qualities which distinguish them.

The first of these is the deep and genuine love of nature. The psalmists delight in the vision of the world, and their joy quickens their senses to read both the larger hieroglyphs of glory written in the stars and the delicate tracings of transient beauty on leaf and flower; to hear both the mighty roaring of the sea and the soft sweet laughter of the rustling corn-fields. But in all these they see the handwriting and hear the voice of God. It is His presence that makes the world sublime and beautiful. The direct, piercing, elevating sense of this presence simplifies, enlarges, and enables their style, andmakes it different from other nature-poetry. They never lose themselves, as Theocritus and Wordsworth and Shelley and Tennyson sometimes do, in the contemplation and description of natural beauty. They see it, but they always see beyond it. Compare, for example, a modern versified translation with the psalm itself:

The spacious firmament on high,With all the blue ethereal skyAnd spangled heavens, a shining frame,Their Great Original proclaim.[9]

The spacious firmament on high,

With all the blue ethereal sky

And spangled heavens, a shining frame,

Their Great Original proclaim.[9]

Addison’s descriptive epithets betray a conscious effort to make a splendid picture. But the psalmist felt no need of this; a larger impulse lifted him at once into “the grand style:”

The heavens declare the glory of God;And the firmament showeth his handiwork.

The heavens declare the glory of God;

And the firmament showeth his handiwork.

The second quality of the poetry in the Psalms is their passionate sense of the beauty of holiness. Keats was undoubtedly right in his suggestion that the poet must always see truth in the form of beauty. Otherwise he may be a philosopher, or a critic, or amoralist, but he is not a true poet. But we must go on from this standpoint to the Platonic doctrine that the highest form of beauty is spiritual and ethical. The poet must also see beauty in the light of truth. It is the harmony of the soul with the eternal music of the Good. And the highest poets are those who, like the psalmists, are most ardently enamoured of righteousness. This fills their songs with sweetness and fire incomparable and immortal:

The fear of the Lord is clean, enduring for ever:The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.More to be desired are they than gold, yea, than much fine gold:Sweeter also than honey and the honeycomb.

The fear of the Lord is clean, enduring for ever:

The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.

More to be desired are they than gold, yea, than much fine gold:

Sweeter also than honey and the honeycomb.

The third quality of the poetry of the Psalms is their intense joy in God. No lover ever poured out the longings of his heart toward his mistress more eagerly than the Psalmist voices his desire and thirst for God. No conqueror ever sang of victory more exultantly than the Psalmist rejoices in the Lord, who is his light and his salvation, the strength of his life and his portion forever.

After all, the true mission of poetry is to increasejoy. It must, indeed, be sensitive to sorrow and acquainted with grief. But it has wings given to it in order that it may bear us up into the air of gladness.

There is no perfect joy without love. Therefore love-poetry is the best. But the highest of all love-poetry is that which celebrates, with the Psalms,

that Love which is and wasMy Father and my Brother and my God.

that Love which is and was

My Father and my Brother and my God.

There are four kinds of novels.

First, those that are easy to read and hard to remember: the well-told tales of no consequence, the cream-puffs of perishable fiction.

Second, those that are hard to read and hard to remember: the purpose-novels which are tedious sermons in disguise, and the love-tales in which there is no one with whom it is possible to fall in love.

Third, those that are hard to read and easy to remember: the books with a crust of perverse style or faulty construction through which the reader must break in order to get at the rich and vital meaning.

Fourth, those that are easy to read and easy to remember: the novels in which stories worth telling are well-told, and characters worth observing are vividly painted, and life is interpreted to the imaginationin enduring forms of literary art. These are the best-sellers which do not go out of print—everybody’s books.

In this fourth class healthy-minded people and unprejudiced critics put the novels of Charles Dickens. For millions of readers they have fulfilled what Dr. Johnson called the purpose of good books, to teach us to enjoy life or help us to endure it. They have awakened laughter and tears. They have enlarged and enriched existence by revealing the hidden veins of humour and pathos beneath the surface of the every-day world, and by giving “the freedom of the city” to those poor prisoners who had thought of it only as the dwelling-place of so many hundred thousand inhabitants and no real persons.

What a city it was that Dickens opened to us! London, of course, in outward form and semblance,—the London of the early Victorian epoch, with its reeking Seven Dials close to its perfumed Piccadilly, with its grimy river-front and its musty Inns of Court and its mildly rural suburbs, with its rollicking taverns and its deadly solemn residential squares and its gloomy debtors’ prisons and its gaily insanitarymarkets, with all its consecrated conventions and unsuspected hilarities,—vast, portentous, formal, merry, childish, inexplicable, a wilderness of human homes and haunts, ever thrilling with sincerest passion, mirth, and pain,—London it was, as the eye saw it in those days, and as the curious traveller may still retrace some of its vanishing landmarks and fading features.

But it was more than London, after Dickens touched it. It was an enchanted city, where the streets seemed to murmur of joy or fear, where the dark faces of the dens of crime scowled or leered at you, and the decrepit houses doddered in senility, and the new mansions stared you down with stolid pride. Everything spoke or made a sign to you. From red-curtained windows jollity beckoned. From prison-doors lean hands stretched toward you. Under bridges and among slimy piers the river gurgled, and chuckled, and muttered unholy secrets. Across trim front-yards little cottages smiled and almost nodded their good-will. There were no dead spots, no deaf and dumb regions. All was alive and significant. Even the real estatebecame personal. One felt that it needed but a word, a wave of the wand, to bring the buildings leaping, roistering, creeping, tottering, stalking from their places.

It was an enchanted city, and the folk who filled it and almost, but never quite, crowded it to suffocation, were so intensely and supernaturally human, so blackly bad, so brightly good, so touchingly pathetic, so supremely funny, that they also were creatures of enchantment and seemed to come from fairy-land.

For what is fairy-land, after all? It is not an invisible region, an impossible place. It is only the realm of the hitherto unobserved, the not yet realized, where the things we have seen but never noticed, and the persons we have met but never known, are suddenly “translated,” like Bottom the Weaver, and sent forth upon strange adventures.

That is what happens to the Dickens people. Good or bad they surpass themselves when they get into his books. That rotund Brownie, Mr. Pickwick, with his amazing troupe; that gentle compound of Hop-o’-my-Thumb and a Babe in theWood, Oliver Twist, surrounded by wicked uncles, and hungry ogres, and good fairies in bottle-green coats; that tender and lovely Red Riding-Hood, Little Nell; that impetuous Hans-in-Luck, Nicholas Nickleby; that intimate Cinderella, Little Dorrit; that simple-minded Aladdin, Pip; all these, and a thousand more like them, go rambling through Dickensopolis and behaving naturally in a most extraordinary manner.

Things that have seldom or never happened, occur inevitably. The preposterous becomes the necessary, the wildly improbable is the one thing that must come to pass. Mr. Dombey is converted, Mr. Krook is removed by spontaneous combustion, Mr. Micawber performs amazing feats as an amateur detective, Sam Weller gets married, the immortally absurd epitaphs of Young John Chivery and Mrs. Sapsea are engraved upon monuments more lasting than brass.

The fact is, Dickens himself was bewitched by the spell of his own imagination. His people carried him away, did what they liked with him. He wrote of Little Nell: “You can’t imagine how exhaustedI am to-day with yesterday’s labours. I went to bed last night utterly dispirited and done up. All night I have been pursued by the child; and this morning I am unrefreshed and miserable. I don’t know what to do with myself.... I think the close of the story will be great.” Again he says: “As to the way in which these characters have opened out [inMartin Chuzzlewit], that is to me one of the most surprising processes of the mind in this sort of invention. Given what one knows, what one does not know springs up; and I amas absolutely certain of its being true, as I am of the law of gravitation—if such a thing is possible, more so.”

Precisely such a thing (as Dickens very well understood) is not only possible, but unavoidable. For what certainty have we of the law of gravitation? Only by hearsay, by the submissive reception of a process of reasoning conducted for us by Sir Isaac Newton and other vaguely conceived men of science. The fall of an apple is an intense reality (especially if it falls upon your head); but the law which regulates its speed is for you an intellectualabstraction as remote as the idea of a “combination in restraint of trade,” or the definition of “art for art’s sake.” Whereas the irrepressible vivacity of Sam Weller, and the unctuous hypocrisy of Pecksniff, and the moist humility of Uriah Heep, and the sublime conviviality of Dick Swiveller, and the triumphant make-believe of the Marchioness are facts of experience. They have touched you, and you cannot doubt them. The question whether they are actual or imaginary is purely academic.

Another fairy-land feature of Dickens’s world is the way in which minor personages of the drama suddenly take the centre of the stage and hold the attention of the audience. It is always so in fairy-land.

InThe Tempest, what are Prospero and Miranda, compared with Caliban and Ariel? InA Midsummer Night’s Dream, who thinks as much of Oberon and Titania, as of Puck, and Bottom the Weaver? Even in an historical drama like Henry IV, we feel that Falstaff is the most historic character.

Dickens’s first lady and first gentleman are often less memorable than his active supernumeraries.A hobgoblin like Quilp, a good old nurse like Peggotty, a bad old nurse like Sairey Gamp, a volatile elf like Miss Mowcher, a shrewd elf and a blunder-headed elf like Susan Nipper and Mr. Toots, a good-natured disreputable sprite like Charley Bates, a malicious gnome like Noah Claypole, a wicked ogre like Wackford Squeers, a pair of fairy-godmothers like the Cheeryble Brothers, a dandy ouphe like Mr. Mantalini, and a mischievous, wooden-legged kobold like Silas Wegg, take stronger hold upon us than the Harry Maylies and Rose Flemings, the John Harmons and Bella Wilfers, for whose ultimate matrimonial felicity the business of the plot is conducted. Even the more notable heroes often pale a little by comparison with their attendants. Who remembers Martin Chuzzlewit as clearly as his servant Mark Tapley? Is Pip, with his Great Expectations, half as delightful as his clumsy dry-nurse Joe Gargery? Has even the great Pickwick a charm to compare with the unique, immortal Sam Weller?

Do not imagine that Dickens was unconscious of this disarrangement of rôles, or that it was an evidenceof failure on his part. He knew perfectly well what he was doing. Great authors always do. They cannot help it, and they do not care. Homer makes Agamemnon and Priam the kings of his tale, and Paris the first walking gentleman and Helen the leading lady. But Achilles and Ajax and Hector are the bully boys, and Ulysses is the wise jester, and Thersites the tragic clown. As for Helen,—

The face that launched a thousand ships,And burnt the topless towers of Ilium—

The face that launched a thousand ships,

And burnt the topless towers of Ilium—

her reputed pulchritude means less to us than the splendid womanhood of Andromache, or the wit and worth of the adorable matron Penelope.

Now this unconventionality of art, which disregards ranks and titles, even those of its own making, and finds the beautiful and the absurd, the grotesque and the picturesque, the noble and the base, not according to the programme but according to the fact, is precisely the essence of good enchantment.

Good enchantment goes about discovering the ass in the lion’s skin and the wolf in sheep’s clothing, the princess in the goose-girl and the wise man underthe fool’s cap, the pretender in the purple robe and the rightful heir in rags, the devil in the belfry and the Redeemer among the publicans and sinners. It is the spirit of revelation, the spirit of divine sympathy and laughter, the spirit of admiration, hope, and love—or better still, it is simply the spirit of life.

When I call this the essence of good enchantment I do not mean that it is unreal. I mean only that it isunrealistic, which is just the opposite of unreal. It is not in bondage to the beggarly elements of form and ceremony. It is not captive to names and appearances, though it revels in their delightful absurdity. It knows that an idol is nothing, and finds all the more laughter in its pompous pretence of being something. It can afford to be merry because it is in earnest; it is happy because it has not forgotten how to weep; it is content because it is still unsatisfied; it is humble in the sense of unfathomed faults and exalted in the consciousness of inexhaustible power; it calls nothing common or unclean; it values life for its mystery, its surprisingness, and its divine reversals of human prejudice,—just likeBeauty and the Beast and the story of the Ugly Duckling.

This, I say, is the essence of good enchantment; and it is also the essence of true religion. “For God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise, and the weak things of the world to confound the mighty, and base things of the world and things which are despised, yea, andthings which are not, to bring to naught things which are.”

This is also the essence of real democracy, which is not a theory of government but a state of mind.

No one has ever expressed it better than Charles Dickens did in a speech which he made at Hartford, Connecticut, seventy years ago. “I have faith,” said he, “and I wish to diffuse faith in the existence—yes, of beautiful things, even in those conditions of society which are so degenerate, so degraded and forlorn, that at first sight it would seem as though it could only be described by a strange and terrible reversal of the words of Scripture—God said let there be light, and there was none. I take it that we are born, and that we holdour sympathies, hopes, and energies in trust for the Many and not the Few. That we cannot hold in too strong a light of disgust and contempt, before our own view and that of others, all meanness, falsehood, cruelty, and oppression of every grade and kind. Above all, that nothing is high because it is in a high place; and that nothing is low because it is in a low place. This is the lesson taught us in the great book of Nature. This is the lesson which may be read alike in the bright track of the stars, and in the dusty course of the poorest thing that drags its tiny length upon the ground.”

This was the creed of Dickens; and like every man’s creed, conscious or unconscious, confessed or concealed, it made him what he was.

It has been said that he had no deep philosophy, no calmly reasoned and clearly stated theory of the universe. Perhaps that is true. Yet I believe he hardly missed it. He was too much interested in living to be anxious about a complete theory of life. Perhaps it would have helped him when trouble came, when domestic infelicity broke up his home, if he could have climbed into some philosopher’sivory tower. Perhaps not. I have observed that even the most learned and philosophic mortals, under these afflictions, sometimes fail to appreciate the consolations of philosophy to any noticeable extent. From their ivory towers they cry aloud, being in pain, even as other men.

But it was certainly not true (even though his biographer wrote it, and it has been quoted a thousand times), that just because Dickens cried aloud, “there was for him no ‘city of the mind’ against outward ills, for inner consolation and shelter.” He was not cast out and left comfortless. Faith, hope, and charity—these three abode with him. His human sympathy, his indomitable imagination, his immense and varied interest in the strange adventures of men and women, his unfaltering intuition of the truer light of God that burns

In this vexed beating stuffed and stopped-up brain,Heart, or whatever else——

In this vexed beating stuffed and stopped-up brain,

Heart, or whatever else——

these were the celestial powers and bright serviceable angels that built and guarded for him a true “city of refuge,” secure, inviolate, ever open to the fugitive in the day of his calamity. Thither hecould flee to find safety. There he could ungird his heart and indulge

Love and the thoughts that breathe for humankind;

there he could laugh and sing and weep with the children, the dream-children, which God had given him; there he could enter into his work-shop and shut the door and lose himself in joyous labour which should make the world richer by the gift of good books. And so he did, even until the end came and the pen fell from his fingers, he sitting safe in his city of refuge, learning and unfoldingThe Mystery of Edwin Drood.

O enchanted city, great asylum in the mind of man, where ideals are embodied, and visions take form and substance to parley with us! Imagination rears thy towers and Fancy populates thy streets; yet art thou a city that hath foundations, a dwelling eternal though unseen. Ever building, changing, never falling, thy walls are open-gated day and night. The fountain of youth is in thy gardens, the treasure of the humble in thy storehouses. Hope is thy doorkeeper, and Faith thy warden, and Love thy Lord. In thee the wanderer may take shelterand find himself by forgetting himself. In thee rest and refreshment are waiting for the weary, and new courage for the despondent, and new strength for the faint. From thy magic casements we have looked upon unknown horizons, and we return from thy gates to our task, our toil, our pilgrimage, with better and braver hearts, knowing more surely that the things which are seen were not made of things which do appear, and that the imperishable jewels of the universe are in the souls of men. O city of good enchantment, for my brethren and companions’ sakes I will now say: Peace be within thee!

Of the outward appearance, or, asSartor Resartuswould have called it, the Time-Vesture and Flesh-Garment of that flaming light-particle which was cast hither from Heaven in the person of Charles Dickens, and of his ways and manners while he hasted jubilantly and stormfully across the astonished Earth, something must be said here.

Charles Dickens was born at Portsea, in 1812, an offspring of what the accurate English call the“lower middle class.” Inheriting something from a father who was decidedly Micawberish, and a mother who resembled Mrs. Nickleby, Charles was not likely to be a humdrum child. But the remarkable thing about him was the intense, aspiring, and gaily sensible spirit with which he entered into the business of developing whatever gifts he had received from his vague and amiable parents.

The fat streak of comfort in his childish years, when his proud father used to stand the tiny lad on a table to sing comic songs for an applauding audience of relatives, could not spoil him. The lean streak of misery, when the improvident family sprawled in poverty, with its head in a debtors’ prison, while the bright, delicate, hungry boy roamed the streets, or drudged in a dirty blacking-factory, could not starve him. The two dry years of school at Wellington House Academy could not fossilize him. The years from fifteen to nineteen, when he was earning his bread as office-boy, lawyers’ clerk, shorthand reporter, could not commercialize him. Through it all he burned his way painfully and joyously.

He was not to be detailed as a perpetual comic songster in upholstered parlors; nor as a prosperous frock-coated citizen with fatty degeneration of the mind; nor as a newspaper politician, a power beneath the footstool. None of these alluring prospects delayed him. He passed them by, observing everything as he went, now hurrying, now sauntering, for all the world like a boy who has been sent somewhere. Where it was, he found out in his twenty-fifth year, when the extraordinary results of his self-education bloomed in thePickwick PapersandOliver Twist.

Never was a good thing coming out of Nazareth more promptly welcomed. The simple-minded critics of that day had not yet discovered the damning nature of popularity, and they hailed the new genius in spite of the fact that hundreds of thousands of people were reading his books. His success was exhilarating, overwhelming, and at times intoxicating.

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