The Sun.
London, England, 1870-06-11 00:00:00

LONDON, SATURDAY, JUNE 11, 1870.

CHARLES DICKENS was loved and honoured by a

whole nation for four-and-thirty years, that is,
during the lifetime of an entire generation. He
flourished as the most popular author of the age,
throughout the whole of that long interval, between
his twenty-fourth and his fifty-eighth year—and
up to the moment of his lamented death on the
9th of June, 1870, he never received the slightest
badge or symbol of honour from the country his

genius had adorned, he never once had thrust upon
him the alternative of his acceptance or of his refusal
of some mark, no matterhow inadequate, of the grati-
tude of the State for his many beneficent and re-
splendent achievements or of their appreciation by

he national Government. Had CORNEILLE lived

in my time, said NAPOLEON the Great, I would have
made him a Prince. Men of great original genius,
the true artist, the true poet, the cre-
ator, the illustrator of an epoch, the master of a
new school, the beginner of a new era in literature
—such, one would think, are, naturally and inevi-

ably, those, precisely those, whom kings delight to

honour. Hence WALTER Soon received a baronetcy—
even from GEORGE IV. Hence VICTOR HUGO was
created a Viscount—even by Louis PHILLIPE.
Happily, in cur own time, we have had resplendent
illustrations of the recognition of the claims of
genius to honour from the Crown, in the name of
the nation, during the reign of her present MAJESTY

at once, as a rule, the most constitutional, and the
most graciously sympathetic of English Sovereigns.
A great astronomer has been made a baronet.

A great esssayist has been raised to the peer-
age. An author of the most comprehensive
genius, himself, at once, poet, novelist, orator,
dramatist, a ripe scholar and a skilled states-
man, one of the very first and foremost among the
chief glories of the Victorian age, has received from
the reigning monarch in succession the baronet's
badge and the baron's coronet. But, while these
most suitable awards have been made, not uugrudg-
ingly, to the right hand and to the left, by our most
gracious sovereign, there has been all this while
before the United Kingdom, before the British
Empire, before the English-speaking people in both
hemispheres—as the most signal example that could
be adduced, we are left to presume, of the one ex-
ception proving the rule—a man of the rarest genius,
of the most radiant originality, of the widest and

he most enduring popularity ; one who was already

famous, though himself, still at the time in his premier
jeunesse, when the fair young Queen came to her
throne; who has preserved his influence undiminished
and sustained his reputation, increasingly, through-
out the whole of her MAJESTY'S reign, numbering up
already three and thirty years; and who has neverthe-
less been allowed by the Nation and by the SOVEREIGN

o pass from the midst of us unhonoured, save by

the keen personal affections and the abounding admi-
ration of all ranks and classes of his fellow-country-
men and his immediate contemporaries. CHARLES
DICKENS he lived. CHARLES DICKENS he died. A
nobler title he could not have possessed. But it
would better have befitted the glory of her
MAJESTY'S reign and the gratitude of the people
she has been guiding by her beneficent rule and he
delighting by his benignant genius, if, once in
all these years, there had at least been placed
within reach of his refusal some bauble
of honour, no matter how intrinsically valueless, that
might, in the mere incident of the proffering of it,
have been typical of the royal sympathy and of the
popular admiration. " A Peerage or Westminster
Abbey " was the battle-cry of NELSON on going
into action. England, in her treatment of the most
popular and the most beloved author of our
generation, has no longer at her command
the choice of any such alternative. No
title of honour that might have been offered to
him would ever, we belitve, during his lifetime have
been accepted by our great novelist. Titles of honour

—now, that " after life's fitful fever he sleeps
well," his good work done, the battle of life
fought out by him well to the last and
bravely—sound in i,he mere mention of them
now worse than an idle mockery. But at
least England, in the presence of those loved and
honoured remains, might give some fitting token of
homage to the memory of CHARLES DICKENS, if not
through the pageantry of a national oepnituro iu