"I cannot read Dickens!" How many people make this confession, with
a front of brass, and do not seem to know how poor a figure they
cut! George Eliot says that a difference of taste in jokes is a
great cause of domestic discomfort. A difference of taste in books,
when it is decided and vigorous, breaks many a possible friendship,
and nips many a young liking in the bud. I would not willingly seem
intolerant. A man may not like Sophocles, may speak disrespectfully
of Virgil, and even sneer at Herodotus, and yet may be endured. But
he or she (it is usually she) who contemns Scott, and "cannot read
Dickens," is a person with whom I would fain have no further
converse. If she be a lady, and if one meets her at dinner, she
must of course be borne with, and "suffered gladly." But she has
dug a gulf that nothing can bridge; she may be fair, clever and
popular, but she is Anathema. I feel towards her (or him if he
wears a beard) as Bucklaw did towards the person who should make
inquiries about that bridal night of Lammermoor.

But this admission does not mean that one is sealed of the tribe of
Charles--that one is a Dickensite pure and simple, convinced and
devout--any more than Mr. Matthew Arnold was a Wordsworthian.
Dickens has many such worshippers, especially (and this is an
argument in favour of the faith) among those who knew him in his
life. He must have had a wonderful charm; for his friends in life
are his literary partisans, his uncompromising partisans, even to
this day. They will have no half-hearted admiration, and scout him
who tries to speak of Dickens as of an artist not flawless, no less
than they scorn him who cannot read Dickens at all. At one time
this honourable enthusiasm (as among the Wordsworthians) took the
shape of "endless imitation." That is over; only here and there is