[Respecting the Dickens scandal]
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☞Respecting the Dickens1 scandal,2 the author of Copperfield’ should have been a little more out spoken than he has been. The public will not be satisfied with any half-way statement. Mr. Dickens is the best known Englishman alive. He is most read of all those who write in the native language of seventy millions of people. His works have been translated into every civilized tongue. His career has been a series of successes, such as no other man of the same age and original position in life ever achieved. At six-and-twenty he had won a place that might have satisfied even a greater man in the autumn of his days. He has been, and is, a power among men, and has colored opinion to almost an incredible extent. Such a man should have borne much before allowing his domestic infelicities to become the theme of the scandal-mongers of the world. Supposing the fault to be mainly with the wife—and the exact reverse may be the truth—he would have done well to have suffered the ills he knew, and have acted according to the spirit of his own writings. As he has himself said, “Oh woman, God-beloved in old Jerusalem! The best among us need deal lightly with thy faults, if only for the punishment thy nature will endure in bearing heavy evidence against us, on the Day of Judgment.”