DICKENS CENTENARY.

Evening Post, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 71, 23 March 1912, Page 19

DICKENS CENTENARY.

m The centenary of tho birth of Charles Dickens was celebrated on the 7th of last month. Although the great writer has been gone to his rest for more than forty years, his influence is as great as ever, as wa* unmistakably shown by the tributes paid to his memory by citizens of all nations, says a London paper. In, Rochester Cathedral a wreath i of laurel leave* wao placed wound the memorial brass. It was sent by Mr. and Mrs. F. L. Latham, • the present owners of Gad^s Hill-place, Rochester, where Dickens died in June, 1870. A commemorative service in tho afternoon was attended by the Mayor and corporation, and at night there was a great carnival. Many floral tributes were placed on tho novelist's grave in Wealminster Abbey, including a wreath from his only surviving son, Mr. Henry Dickens., and- offerings 1 from many Dickens societies, while special festivities marked tho occasion in many places at Home and abroad. ' Most of the English papers contain references .to. the centenary as a literary landmark. , ',' The centenary of Dickens is more chan the triumph of Dickens; it is the triumph of the simple person over the superior person, " said Mr. James Douglas in the Morning Leader. "It is the victory of the common man over the cultured critic. It is the survival and revival of human nature. It is. the death of decadence. The flaming popularity of Dickens has always offended ahe fastidious arrogance of the !i ]ltt ?j y , g , eut '' If Dl ck€ns had been the idol of a precious clique or the god of a sickly coterie, the Jiltlt, men with their little measures would have burnt incense before hU shrine. ■ But they could not stomach the uarling of a democracy, the hero of a multitude that no man can number. They felt in their small souls that thei'e was something vulgar in a man of genius who was big enough to make the whole world laugh. Iheir pride was hurt because they could not restrict his vogue and make it a narrow cult." Tributes to the memory of Charles Dickens 'are not confined to tho Englishspeaking peoples. Dickens, after Scott, is the most popular foreign author in French; and that well-known literary weekly, Les Annales, had a more comprehensive appreciation of Dickens than has, perhaps, appeared in any English journal. The contributors included M Anatole France, who wrote on the mad [ people in Charles Dickens's storiee, and M. Jules Claretie, also .an eminent Academician, who pointed out that Dickens i« the "novelist of honest people." "Never," said M. Claretie, "did Dickens forget to whom he addressed himself, and his self-appointed mission was to disseminate sympatfiy for the poor. ,in addflwssing him»elf always to the class which in other days was known in France as "les honnetes gens." M. Gaston Deechamps, one of the leading literary critics m France, who is on a lecturing tour in England, deals with Dickens as ( writer and reformer, and «ays ' that "friendship and affection aro the words which arise naturally to oneX lips when speaking of the gnat novelist. M. Paul Ginietry, another well-known critic, ' treats of Dickons the Man and • his personal characteristics. M. Adolf Brisson doals with Dickens the humorist There is an admirable account of Dickens'* love story, and' other interesting articles, on phases of the groat novelist's career, with numerous illustrations.