ABSTRACT
Mr. william watson believes in Dickens but not in the future of the novel; he has credited the former and discredited the latter quite explicitly in that new collection of his “ The Muse in Exile.” Dickens is presented as a fighter, and the nature of his belligerency is formulated in the couplet : “ He did not fight to rend the world apart, He fought to make it one in mind and heart.” I suppose the same thing might be said—by himself, at least—of any propagandist whose temperament was too mild to face the alternative of the sword. We see the magnificent excuse of the Church “ militant,” that description which was once so perfectly justified, but has no application to the incredibly padded gloves of the modern ring. The truth is that Mr. Watson’s statement is absurd, a mere sentimental trifling with ideas. If I fight my enemy I have one of two objects in view ; either I desire to silence any further expression of his for ever, or I desire to convince him that I am the better man and that he had better not contradict me in future. I am not fool enough to suppose, however, that my thrashing of him will make him one with me in mind and heart. I know perfectly well that his object was the same as mine, and that if I had been beaten, I might have knuckled under, but I should not have adopted his accursed heresy in the secret places of my mind.
