INTRODUCTION

I

BY EDWIN PERCY WHIPPLE

DICKENS established a weekly periodical, called "Household Words," on the 30th of March, 1850. On the 1st of April, 1854, he began in it the publication of the tale of "Hard Times," which was continued in weekly instalments until its completion, in the number for the 12th of August. The circulation of "Household Words" was doubled by the appearance in its pages of this story. When published in a separate form, it was appropriately dedicated to Thomas Carlyle, who was Dickens's master in all matters relating to the dismal science" of political economy.

During the composition of "Hard Times" the author was evidently in an embittered state of mind, in respect to social and political questions. He must have felt that he was, in some degree, warring against the demonstrated laws of the production and distribution of wealth; yet he also felt that he was putting into prominence some laws of the human heart which he supposed political economists had studiously overlooked or ignored. He wrote to Charles Knight that he had no design to damage the really useful truths of political economy, but that his story was directed against "those who see figures and averages, and nothing else; who would take the average of cold in the Crimea during twelve months as a reason for clothing a soldier in nankeen on a night when he would be frozen to death in fur; and who would comfort the laborer in travelling twelve miles a day to and from his work, by telling him that the average distance of one inhabited place from another, on the whole area of England, is only four miles."

This is, of course, a caricatured statement of what statisticians propose to prove by their "figures and averages." Dickens would have been the first to laugh at such an economist and statistician as Michael Thomas Sadler, who mixed up figures of arithmetic and figures of rhetoric, tables of population and gushing sentiments, in one odd jumble of doubtful calculations and bombastic declamations; yet Sadler is only an extreme case of an investigator, who turns aside from his special work to introduce considerations which, however important in themselves, have nothing to do with the business he has in hand. Dickens's mind was so deficient in the power of generalization, so inapt to recognize the operation of inexorable law, that whatever offended his instinctive benevolent sentiments he was inclined to assail as untrue. Now there is no law the operation of which so frequently shocks our benevolent sentiments as the law of gravitation; yet no philanthropist, however accustomed he may be to subordinate scientific truth to amiable impulses, ever presumes to doubt the certain operation of that law. The great field for the contest between the head and the heart is the domain of political economy. The demonstrated laws of this science are often particularly offensive to many good men and good women, who wish well for their fellowcreatures, and who are pained by the obstacles which economic maxims present to their diffusive benevolence. The time will come when it will be as intellectually discreditable for an educated person to engage in a crusade against the established laws of political economy as in a crusade against the established laws of the physical universe; but the fact that men like Carlyle, Ruskin, and Dickens can write economic nonsense, without losing intellectual caste, shows that the science of political economy, before its beneficent truths come to be generally admitted, must go through a long struggle with benevolent sophisms and benevolent passions.

In naming this book Dickens found much difficulty. He sent the following titles to John Forster, as expressive of his general idea: 1. "According to Cocker." 2. "Prove It." 3. "Stubborn Things." 4. "Mr. Gradgrind's Facts."

5. "The Grindstone. 6. "Hard Times." 7. "Two and Two are Four." 8. "Something Tangible." 9. "Our HardHeaded Friend." 10. "Rust and Dust." 11. "Simple Arithmetic." 12. "A Matter of Calculation." 13. "A Mere Question of Figures." 14. "The Gradgrind Philosophy." The author was in favor of one of three of these, 6, 13, and 14; Forster was in favor of either 2, 6, or 11. As both agreed on No. 6, that title was chosen. Yet certainly No. 14, "The Gradgrind Philosophy," was the best of all, for it best indicated the purpose of the story. "Hard Times" is an extremely vague title, and might apply to almost any story that Dickens or any other novelist has written.

It is curious to note the different opinions of two widely differing men, regarding the story itself. Ruskin says that "the essential value and truth of Dickens's writings have been unwisely lost sight of by many thoughtful persons, merely because he presents his truth with some color of caricature. Unwisely, because Dickens's caricature though often gross is never mistaken. Allowing for the manner of his telling them, the things he tells us are always true. I wish that he could think it right to limit his brilliant exaggeration to works written only for public amusement; and when he takes up a subject of high national importance, such as that he handled in 'Hard Times,' that he would use severer and more accurate analysis. The usefulness of that work (to my mind, in several respects, the greatest he has written) is with many persons seriously diminished, because Mr. Bounderby is a dramatic monster, instead of a characteristic example of a worldly master; and Stephen Blackpool a dramatic perfection instead of a characteristic example of an honest workman. But let us not lose the use of Dickens's wit and insight because he chooses to speak in a circle of stage fire. He is entirely right in his main drift and purpose in every book he has written; and all of them, but especially Hard Times,' should be studied with great care by persons interested in social questions. They will find much that is partial, and, because partial, apparently unjust; but if they examine all the evidence on the other side,

which Dickens seems to overlook, it will appear, after all the trouble, that his view was the finally right one, grossly and sharply told." This is the opinion of an eloquent thinker and writer, who is most at variance with the principles which scientific economists consider to be scientifically established. On the opposite extreme, we have the opinion of Macaulay, who records in his private diary, under the date of August 12, 1854, this disparaging criticism: "I read Dickens's 'Hard Times.' One excessively touching, heart-breaking passage, and the rest sullen socialism. The evils he attacks he caricatures grossly and with little humor."

In judging the work neither Ruskin nor Macaulay seems to have made any distinction between Dickens as a creator of character, and Dickens as a humorous satirist of what he considered flagrant abuses. As a creator of character he is always tolerant and many-sided; as a satirist he is always intolerant and one-sided; and the only difference between his satire and that of other satirists consists in the fact that he has a wonderful power in individualizing abuses in persons. Juvenal, Dryden, and Pope, though keen satirists of character, are comparatively ineffective in the art of concealing their didactic purpose under an apparently dramatic form. So strong is Dickens's individualizing faculty, and so weak his faculty of generalization, that, as a satirist, he simply personifies his personal opinions. These opinions are formed by quick-witted impressions intensified by philanthropic emotions; they spring neither from any deep insight of reason nor from any careful processes of reasoning; and they are therefore contemptuously discarded as fallacies by all thinkers on social problems who are devoted to the investigation of social phenomena and the establishment of economic laws; but they are so vividly impersonated, and the classes satirized are so felicitously hit in some of their external characteristics and weak points, that many readers fail to discover the essential difference between such realities of character as Tony Weller and Mrs. Gamp and such semblances of character as Mr. Gradgrind and Mr. Bounderby. Whatever Dickens understands he humorously