Litchfield enquirer., 1870-06-16
Yittk6tla &nqmiret.
Litchfield, Thursday, June 16,1S7O
Charles Dickens.

merely an lrreparable loss to literature, Il brings personal grief to millions ol households. That is the truest friendship which can treat our faults and. foibles in the frankest manner, and yet in spirit SC loving as to increasesemutual regard. On just such terms was Charles Dickens with some ten millions of us. No writer has made sach presentation, not only oi thepetty selishnesses which make the daily life of most men 90 prosaic, but of the lit fle vanities. pomposities, and other indi vidnal weaknesses which make every per- son more or less ridiculous, and about which every person is most wonderfully sensitive. We see that he is laughing at us, but his laugh is endurable because it is kinder than that of any other person who understands us so we'll. No one has stud ieds carefully, and delineated so accu- rately, those curious distortions. dwarfngs and exaggerations which human nature is constantly undergoing from unavoidable circumstances. especially under the shad- ow of that awful forest of humanity the great city. No one has so thoroughly exposed the selfshness with which the re- fined and wealthy of every such oommuni- ty systematically heap all the extreme pov- erty and gross crime of millions upon the backs of a wretched class whose brutality exceeds the brutality of any natural barba- rism. as,
 The great fault of the novelists of our day has been that they are great anatomiz- CTS rather than great constructors of man. Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes can dissect anything human, and has written masterly works to that end, but he can construct nothing. Even Thackery often fails egre- giously in that respect. In the same work he gives us Becky Sharp and such unsolid flied human pulp as Amelia Osborne. But Dickens characterizations are invariably live men, women or children. Caricatures as they sometimes seem on first acquaint. ance, they are apt to be verified in nature What we hastily set down as fancy sketch es are oftener studies from real life. One common peculiarity they have, for the most part-some sort of human heart, as warm as circumstances will anyway admit of Herein lay Dickens great superiority over other so-called satirists. He saw through humanity and yet did not hate it. Thack- cry was not of so kind nature. He loved manhood, but he lashed everything short of that with severity that has made most men fear him. Dickens, loving not only manhood but man, has introduced us to all sorts of queer, unpresentable persons, yet he has somehow induced us to regard those persons with all the tenderness of in- innate friendship. It is safe to say that such keen insight, so kind heart, and such wonderful power over our language, were never before united in one person. With an inferior insight and vastly inferior power of expression, Walter Scott's com prehensiye sympathy with humanity ena- bled him to paint certain immortal Dandie Dinmonts, Rob Roys, and the like; but he wandered off into the historical panorama business, and left us imaginary Plantage- nets, Tudors, Stuarts and Cromwells. vast ly inferior to the real Scotchmen it was in him to have portrayed.
 As moral teacher Mir. Dickens had no equal, lay or clerical, in our generation. No instructor has done so much as he to accomplish the grand aim of christian so- ciety-the softening of the heart of man towards man. Though he never sermon ized, he was always teaching. The most loveable men, women and children that exist in fiction. are to be found in his works; and they are SO loveable because they 30 closely resemble humanity, ,and can be found in every household, high or low, if only the searcher have the heart to find them with. And here we cannot help ex- pressing our indignation that, by species of religious chemistry greatly favored in cer- tain circles, tbe soul of this kindest and most charitable of men should be rather publicly subjected to treatment with the usual theological acids, to determine wheth- CT it is of a metal fit for the kingdom of heaven. Deacon Bell of the Plymouth church shakes his head, while the grave is yet open, in all the dailies; and even Mir. Beecher exclaims, "Would that before his death he could have put that question be. yond peradventure. and hopes for the best in such way as to make thousands believe there is no hope. To all this, MT. Dickens once replied in his New Uncommercial Samples. written just after the illness which followed his return from his last American trip:
 "I found from the information of a beneficed clergyman, of whom never heard and whom l never saw. that had not, as I had rather SUD- contemplation and inquiry; that I had not
 studieds as T rather supposed l had. to
 inculcate some Christian lessons ill books; that
 had never tried, as I rather supposed had. to
 turn child or two tenderly toward the knowledge
 and love of our Saviour; that I had never had as
 l rather supposed had, departed friends ol
 stood beside open graves; but that had lived
 life of Uninterrupted prosperity and that
 needed this check overmuch,' and that the wa,
 to turn 1t to account to read these sermons
 and these poems, inclosed, and written and issued
 by my correspondent beg it may be under
 stood that relate facts of my own uncommercia