The first chapter of 'Charles Dickens, The last of the great men', discusses Dickens' greatness. First, Chesterton points out why there are no 'great men' in our time: we have become to critical. Instead of becoming great ourselves, we constantly look for greatness. We lack that sense of democratic optimism that every man can become an extraordinary man.
Optimism is one of the eye-catching characteristics of Dickens: though his world, just after the French Revolution, may have been hard and cruel, there was still hope. In the late nineteenth century, this sense of hope and optimism was lost. The following discussion of how an optimist can change the world, while a pessimist cannot, mirrors a similar train of thought in one of the essays in 'All things considered'.
The appreciation of Dickens had suffered over time, partly because we moderns do not feel the hopefulness that permeates his books (in 'Dombey and son', Florence's constancy in loving her father is a good example of this optimism).
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