New-York tribune., 1910-12-25
Sees Charles Dickens as "7he .
Novchsf DeJofed His Cenfus in ,Specia
Sense TO Description Of Happiness,
Says g. k. CbeSferfon.

Walter Scott sang In praise Of Christ
mas, but II was a feudal Christmas
And Dickens was not only Indifferent TO
the dignity OF the old country gentleman
OF to tho genial archaeology OF Scott: he
was even harshly and insolently hostile
to them. If Dickens had lived In the
neighborhood of Sir Roger de CoverIy he
would undoubtedly, like Tom Touchy,
have been always having the law Of
him II Dickens had stumbled in among
the old armor and quaint folios Of
Scott's study he would certainly have
read his brother novelist a lesson in no
measured terms about tho futility Of
thus fumblirg In the dust bins Of old
oppression and error. So far from
Dickens being one Of those who like a
thing because it IS old, he was one of
those cruder kind Of reformers in theory
at least who actually dislike a thing be
cause 1t is old. He was not merely the
more righteous kind of radical who
tries to uproot abuses: he was partly
also that more suicidal kind Of radical
who tries to uproot himself. In theory,
at any rate, he had no adequate concep-
ticn Of the Importance Of human tradl
ton: in his time It had been twisted and
falsihed into the form Of an opposition
to democracy.
I'm truth. of course tradition is the
most democratic Of all things, for ira
dition is merely a democracy Of the dead
as we'll as the living. But Dickens and
his special group or generation had no
grasp Of this permanent position; they
had been called to a special war for
the righting of special wrongs. In so
far as such an institution as Christmas
was old, Dickens would even have tended
to despise it He could never have put
the matter to himself in the correct way
that while there are some things whose
antiquity does prove that they are
diving there are some other things
whose antiquity only proves that they
cannot die. If some radical contemporary
and friend of Dickens had happened to
say TO him that in defending the mince
pies and the murnmeries Of Christmas he
was defending a piece Of barbaric and
brutal ritualisn1, doomed to disappear in
the light Of reason along with the Boy
Bishop and the Lord Of Misrule, I am
not sure that Dickens Though he was
one of the readiest and most rapid mas
.ers of reply in history would have
found Il very easy upon his own prin-
ciples to answer
1T was by a great ancestral instinct
that he defended Christmas: by that
sacred sub-consciousness which Is called
tradition, which some have called a dead
thing, but which is really g. thing far
more living than the intellect. There IS
a dark knship and brotherhood OF all
mankind which Is much too deep 10 be
called heredity or to be In any way ex-
planned in scientific formule: blood is
thicker than water, and is especially
very much thicker than water on the
brain But this unconscious and even
automatic quality in Dickens's defence
of the Christmas feast, this fact that his
defence might almost be called animal
rather than mental, though In proper
language 1t should be called merely vir-
iIe, all this brings us back to the fact
that we must begin with the atmosphere
Of the subject itself. We must not ask
Dickens what Christmas is, for with all
his heat and eloquence he does not know.
Rather we must ask Christmas what
Dickens is-ask how this strange Child