Catalogue of an Exhibition of the Works of Charles Dickens; With an Introduction by Royal Cortissoz

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1913. Excerpt: ... imagination bending over the merry youngsters, offering them with just the right mixture of fun and gravity the advice of the old hand, and sometimes beseeching the privilege of contributing to your columns. In how many ways, amongst both young and old, do we see him diffusing stimulus and cheer 1 And in that role we find him when we come back to the books. In one of his essays De Quincey has drawn a memorable distinction between the literature of knowledge and the literature of power, and pursuing the analysis he says: Now, if it be asked what is meant by communicating power, I, in my turn, would ask by what name a man would designate the case in which I should be made to feel vividly, and with a vital consciousness, emotions which ordinary life rarely or never supplies occasions for exciting, and which had previously lain unwakened, and hardly within the dawn of consciousness--as myriads of modes of feeling are at this moment in every human mind for want of a poet to organize them? I say, when these inert and sleeping forms are organized, when these possibilities are actualized, is this conscious and living possession of mine power, or what is it? The writings of Charles Dickens belong to this literature of power. It was his function to plunge deep into ordinary life, and there to feel vividly, and with a vital consciousness, the emotions which many of us without his aid would never know. He stirs and enkindles his reader, enlarges that reader's horizon, and through his fertilizing, enriching power makes him a better and a happier man. Many thoughts come trooping home as we muse amid the diverse souvenirs of his genius which fill this exhibition, but I venture to affirm that the one that comes first and stays longest is a thought of NOTE The ex...