more than Cleopatra's can custom stale their infinite variety.

I do not say that Dickens' pathos is always of the too facile sort,
which plays round children's death-beds. Other pathos he has, more
fine and not less genuine. It may be morbid and contemptible to
feel "a great inclination to cry" over David Copperfield's boyish
infatuation for Steerforth; but I feel it. Steerforth was a
"tiger,"--as Major Pendennis would have said, a tiger with his curly
hair and his ambrosial whiskers. But when a little boy loses his
heart to a big boy he does not think of this. Traddles thought of
it. "Shame, J. Steerforth!" cried Traddles, when Steerforth bullied
the usher. Traddles had not lost his heart, nor set up the big boy
as a god in the shrine thereof. But boys do these things; most of
us have had our Steerforths--tall, strong, handsome, brave, good-
humoured. Far off across the years I see the face of such an one,
and remember that emotion which is described in "David Copperfield,"
chap. xix., towards the end of the chapter. I don't know any other
novelist who has touched this young and absolutely disinterested
belief of a little boy in a big one--touched it so kindly and
seriously, that is there is a hint of it in "Dr. Birch's School
Days."

But Dickens is always excellent in his boys, of whom he has drawn
dozens of types--all capital. There is Tommy Traddles, for example.
And how can people say that Dickens could not draw a gentleman? The
boy who shouted, "Shame, J. Steerforth!" was a gentleman, if one may
pretend to have an opinion about a theme so difficult. The Dodger
and Charley Bates are delightful boys--especially Bates. Pip, in
the good old days, when he was the prowling boy, and fought Herbert
Pocket, was not less attractive, and Herbert himself, with his