The Incompatibles by Matthew Arnold

There is a book familiar to us all, and the more familiar now, probably, because Mr. Gladstone solaced himself with it after his illness, and so set all good Liberals (of whom I wish to be considered one) upon reading it over again. I mean David Copperfield. Much as I have published, I do not think it has every happened to me before to comment in print upon any publication of Charles Dickens. What a pleasure to have the opportunity of praising a work so sound, a work so rich in merits, as David Copperfield! Man lese nicht die mit-strebende, mit-wirkende, says Goethe: do not read your fellow-strivers, your fellow-workers. Of the contemporary rubbish which is shot so plentifully all round us, we can, indeed, hardly read too little.

View longer excerpt from “The Incompatibles” in Nineteenth Century, June 1881, by Matthew Arnold.