ABSTRACT
Dickens is, therefore, among imaginative writers, the supreme incorporation of the English tradition between the period of Napoleon's rise and fall and the period of British imperialism. Shakespeare was the incarnation of a heroic England; Dickens was the symbol of the middle classes. England was feasting upon the blood-stained booty: the burgher, the merchant, the broker, reigned supreme, and lolled at ease upon the throne as if it were a couch. England was digesting her repast. In those days, if an art was to please, it had to be digestible. His art was nourished upon the disingenuous moral code of a well-fed England which desired nothing so much as to be comfortable. Contentedness, the distillate of the vapid emotional make-up of his epoch, was Dickens's fundamental characteristic. His artistic aspirations were burdened by a deep feeling of contentment. For Dickens was, indeed, content. Content with the world, with England, with his contemporaries—and they with him.
