Ottumwa semi-weekly courier. [volume] (Ottumwa, Iowa) 1899-1903, 1900-07-24
REPUBL1oAN NAT1on,ALTlcKET.
THE LONGEVITY OF IsIcKENs.

when | have an hour to spare and
want to enjoy myself" said a success
full business man the other day, Il
! read Dickens" 1t is more than ten
year since William Dean HoyVells, with
characteristic but unconscious egot-
ism, spoke patronizingly of the creator
of 'ePickwick" and Captain Cutie"
and little Paul Dombey,' as of one
ignorant of the correct method of fic-
ton; but while Americans are far
from insensible to the talents of How
ellis, they have not become. blind to
!. the genius OF Dickens. The New York
evening Post Remarks:
The recent anniversary OF Dick
ems death started up the inquiry
whether he is as much read now as,
say ten years ago. The circulating Ii
braries were questioned, and replied
that Dickens was "as popular AIS ever"
that library statistics showed his
works to be 'in as much demand as
ever" etc. The publishers, m moreover,
pointed to the new editions OF Dick
ems, in part or in whole, which are
all the while being issued, and, which
\ sell largely.
1t was on the 9th of June, 1870 that
Dickens breathed his last. Thirty
years--a generation of human life
) have elapsed. 1t signifies much for
J the longevity of the works Which he
produced that after this passage of
time they are in as much demand as
ever" There have been those who
could see in Dickens nothing but the
problem novelist. The social abuses
which he attacked have passed away.
There have been those who could see
in him nothing but the buriesquer of
manners. The manners of Dickens
novels are as obsolete as the work
house system exposed in "Oliver
Twist" and the atrocities of the debt
ors prison put to shame in David
Copperfeld" and the abuses of the
Yorkshire boarding schools merciless-
ly laid bare in Nicholas Nickelby."
There nave been those who could see
or who said they could see in his
humor nothing but buffoo merry, and in
z his pathos nothing but ,Dverwrought
sentimentality But even. these cen.
serious critics could not always read
him without laughing at his fun and
feeling lump in their tlhroats when
under the spell Of his tragedy. 1t is
a fact no doubt that he lacked the
refinement of art, but it is also a fact
that he saw and felt, and tn at he could
so describe as to make his readers see
and feel. As portrayer of human
character, it is doubtful if he has been
excelled in versatility and power by
any English writer but Shakespeare
Shakespeare, like Dickens, fares i'll
with those critics who judge of a
work of literature not by its merits
but by its defects
Dickens was by nature a humorist
and the world loves humor. He was
by nature sympathetic and cheerful
The world loves sympathy and cheer,
He was a genius, but he was also an
interchangeable worker, devoting himself
with tireless energy first to the collec-
ton of materials and then to their en-
bodiment in his books. Moreover he
was intensely original. He read little
and his style was his own. He went
out into the world to collect the facts
which with mighty labor he wrought
into fiction. He was no pessimist, but
a wholesome, hearty man who loved
his fellow men. No one can read
Dickens without being better for it.
His writings were moral and social
4 force in the generation IN which they
appeared, and it is a hopeful sign that
in an age when decadents voluminous.
ly write and publish the writings OF
Dickens continue to be widely read