A History of English Literature

the first two, 'A Christmas Carol' and 'The Chimes,' rank highest.
His exuberant physical energy gave to his life more external variety than
is common with authors. At the age of thirty he made a visit to the United
States and travelled as far as to the then extreme western town of St.
Louis, everywhere received and entertained with the most extravagant
enthusiasm. Even before his return to England, however, he excited a
reaction, by his abundantly justified but untactful condemnation of
American piracy of English books; and this reaction was confirmed by his
subsequent caricature of American life in 'American Notes' and 'Martin
Chuzzlewit.' For a number of years during the middle part of his career
Dickens devoted a vast amount of energy to managing and taking the chief
part in a company of amateur actors, who performed at times in various
cities. Later on he substituted for this several prolonged series of
semi-dramatic public readings from his works, an effort which drew heavily
on his vitality and shortened his life, but which intoxicated him with its
enormous success. One of these series was delivered in America, where, of
course, the former ill-feeling had long before worn away.
Dickens lived during the greater part of his life in London, but in his
later years near Rochester, at Gadshill, the scene of Falstaff's exploit.
He made long sojourns also on the Continent. Much social and outdoor life
was necessary to him; he had a theory that he ought to spend as much time
out of doors as in the house. He married early and had a large family of
children, but pathetically enough for one whose emotions centered so
largely about the home, his own marriage was not well-judged; and after
more than twenty years he and his wife (the Dora Spenlow of 'David
Copperfield') separated, though with mutual respect. He died in 1870 and
was buried in Westminster Abbey in the rather ostentatiously unpretentious
way which, with his deep-seated dislike for aristocratic conventions, he
had carefully prescribed in his will.
Dickens' popularity, in his own day and since, is due chiefly: (1) to his
intense human sympathy; (2) to his unsurpassed emotional and dramatic
power; and (3) to his aggressive humanitarian zeal for the reform of all
evils and abuses, whether they weigh upon the oppressed classes or upon
helpless individuals. Himself sprung from the lower middle class, and
thoroughly acquainted with the life of the poor and apparently of sufferers
in all ranks, he is one of the most moving spokesmen whom they have ever
had. The pathos and tragedy of their experiences--aged and honest toilers
subjected to pitiless task-masters or to the yoke of social injustice;
lonely women uncomplainingly sacrificing their lives for unworthy men;
sad-faced children, the victims of circumstances, of cold-blooded parents,
or of the worst criminals--these things play a large part in almost all of
Dickens' books. In almost all, moreover, there is present, more or less in
the foreground, a definite humanitarian aim, an attack on some
time-consecrated evil--the poor-house system, the cruelties practised in
private schools, or the miscarriage of justice in the Court of Chancery. In
dramatic vividness his great scenes are masterly, for example the storm in
'David Copperfield,' the pursuit and discovery of Lady Dedlock in 'Bleak
House,' and the interview between Mrs. Dombey and James Carker in 'Dombey
and Son.'
Dickens' magnificent emotional power is not balanced, however, by a
corresponding intellectual quality; in his work, as in his temperament and
bearing, emotion is always in danger of running to excess. One of his great
elements of strength is his sense of humor, which has created an almost
unlimited number of delightful scenes and characters; but it very generally
becomes riotous and so ends in sheer farce and caricature, as the names of