Tuesday, July 13, 2010

G.K. Chesterton, 1906 on Charles Dickens

The common mind means the mind of all the artists and heroes, or else it would not be common. Plato had the common mind; Dante had the common mind, Commonners means the quality common to the Saint and the sinner, to the philosopher and the fool; and it was this that Charles Dickens grasped and developed.
In everybody there is a certain thing that loves babies, that fears death, that likes sunlight: that thing enjoys Dickens.  Everybody in this case does not mean uneducated crowds; everybody means everybody.

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