Page:Works of Charles Dickens, ed. Lang - Volume 29.djvu/17

Rh the House of Commons, the neglect of children (and, indeed, the universal neglect of everybody); he denounces street ruffians, and tells how, as a dutiful citizen, he brought a blasphemous young woman to justice. The essays set forth the actual Dickens as clearly as Montaigne appears in his own pages. The author's observation, kindness, humour; his pleasure in the good deeds of others (as in the first paper); his indignation against public indifference and Pangloss; his reminiscences of the childhood which dwelt so vividly in his brain; his delight in the kind of nature which most attracted—him human nature—are all conspicuous in The Uncommercial Traveller. It is an epitome of Dickens; none of his greater qualities, scarcely one of his blemishes, is absent. He is still the man who began by "Sketches by Boz," the lover of the open air, the un-bookish naturalist of human life, the student of tramps, cheap-jacks, sailors on shore, and plyers of odd trades in shy neighbourhoods. His art, as a writer, has greatly improved; the mechanical humour of 1830-35 has been worked off; but he remains what he was, what he showed himself to be, before Mr. Pickwick first beamed upon mankind, before his creator's name was the most widely known in modern English literature. There is development in Dickens, but there is no essential modification. ANDREW LANG.