Introduction
with its successor modern Protestantism, to me was the abomination of desolation. It was not only that I regarded it as a theological blasphemy and an intellectual folly; it offended that part of the man which does not reason, but only feels. Mr. G. K. Chesterton has put the matter admirably in his notes on Dickens' violent dislike of Dissenters. He says that Dickens was in this exactly like his character Kit, in "The Old Curiosity Shop." Dickens knew no more of the intellectual, historical, or theological rights and wrongs of Dissent than did ignorant Kit; both took up Dissent as a man takes up a noisome fungus, smells it, makes an inarticulate noise of disgust, and throws it away. It offends; it is no sweet and natural growth of the good earth; it is foul in all its circumstances. And I was thoroughly with Kit and Dickens in this matter.
There were a few other hatreds: the serious novels of George Eliot and Mrs. Humphry Ward; all wearisome, stodgy, careful, lifelike, untransfigured books, the books that are so long and lifelike that
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