ABSTRACT
Charles Dickens was the only writer of the century whose outlook on life fully coincided with the spiritual needs of his day. His novels are an expression of Victorian taste, his work is the embodiment of English tradition. The Englishman is far more English than the German is German. The fact of being English does not merely colour the whole mentality; it penetrates into the very blood, regulating its flow, pulsing athwart the most intimate and secret recesses of the individual, permeating that which is the most primitively personal of all, namely the artistic impulse. The British tradition is the most firmly rooted in the whole range of national traditions; it is likewise the most victorious, and for this very reason the most perilous where art is concerned. Dickens, however, was perfectly satisfied within the four walls of the English tradition.
