﻿28 



Indiana University Studies 



and copying them directly, he has availed himself of their method 

 and spirit? However much the Early Victorians overdid and 

 exaggerated certain tendencies in their novels, surely they had 

 the right principles. They put the emphasis upon characteriza- 

 tion; they believed in the full value of humor; and they aimed at 

 a realization of life in its fulness. True it is that they overdid 

 most of what they tried to do, but the abuse of their principles 

 does not invalidate them. It is the soundness of these principles, 

 in spite of the way that they exaggerated them, that keeps their 

 works alive today. And, no doubt, because he realized that the 

 Early Victorians came closest to the true expression of life, De 

 Morgan has followed their principles. He himself has confessed, 

 "Dickens was my idol in childhood, boyhood, youthhood, man- 

 hood, and so on, to a decade of senility — even until now." 141 

 It must be borne in mind, however, that in following in the steps 

 of Dickens and the other Earty Victorians, he imitated the spirit 

 and not the letter of their great novels, for he is always more than 

 Victorian. And yet there is no greater praise than to call him 

 Victorian. 



i«De Morgan wrote these words on the margin of a copy of The Yale Courant 

 (June, 1909), sent to him by Henry Dennis Hammond, which contains the latter's 

 prize essay, The Novels of William De Morgan. 



