Social England : a record of the progress of the people in religion, laws, learning, arts, industry, commerce, science, literature and manners, from the earliest times to the present day . of depth in theDickensian humour Avhich has led many in their disappointmentto dismiss it with too hasty disparagement as is justice in the sentence, but not complete justice; forthough caricature is almost invariably its basis, and in Pickwick forms its whole stuff and substance, there is nuichmore in its best examples than mere exaggeration of the comicaspects of character at the expense o
Social England : a record of the progress of the people in religion, laws, learning, arts, industry, commerce, science, literature and manners, from the earliest times to the present day . of depth in theDickensian humour Avhich has led many in their disappointmentto dismiss it with too hasty disparagement as is justice in the sentence, but not complete justice; forthough caricature is almost invariably its basis, and in Pickwick forms its whole stuff and substance, there is nuichmore in its best examples than mere exaggeration of the comicaspects of character at the expense of proportion and it remains the fact that many, and those the most famous,of his humorous portraits are not so much portraits of men asthey are idealised studies of incarnate humours in the sense LITERATURE. 225 18461 in which Ben Jonson uses the word. They have not the whole-ness, the complete humanity of Falstatt or of My Uncle Tobj;they are simply human vices, or human foibles personified tothe exclusion of e\ ery other human attribute. There must havebeen more in Pecksniff than hj-pocrisy, pomposity, meanness;more in Mrs. Gamp than garruhty, greed, dishonesty; more,. CIUKLES DICKEXS IX 1S55, BY ABY SCIIEFFER.(Xalionnl Portrnit Ga!kr>l.) perhaps, even in Squeers than brutality, ignorance, and im-pudent conceit; yet this is all of these characters that we areever permitted to see. Realist as Dickens supposed him; elf tobe, and in his descriptive method actually was, he is, dramaticall}speaking, an idealist pure and simple. He drew not individuals,but types ; he dealt, not with concrete realities, but with abstractqualities ; and strange as it may seem, the characters of thisprose humorist must be viewed as we view the purel} idealcreations of the poet, if we would do justice either to him or tothem. For it is only by thus studying these characters that wecan fairly measure that inexhaustible wealth of comic imagination,that unflagging zest and dexterity of humo
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