ABSTRACT
… Christmas was Christmas…many, many centuries before Charles Dickens began to celebrate him in Carols and Chimes. But, as it is, a Christmas book from him is as regular as a Christmas goose; and the one is not more certain of being devoured than the other is of being read, extensively and with strong relish. The public admire Mr Dickens’s humorous and pathetic pictures of life, however extravagantly drawn; and, though it be evident that now—exhausted and emptied—he is but reproducing, with some slight modifications, old sketches, he is still as popular as ever. ‘For, wha’ll be king but Charlie?’…
