theory and practice of the art of self-defence--could Nelson have
been more brave, or Shelley (as in Mr. Matthew Arnold's opinion)
more "ineffectual"? Even the boys at Dotheboys Hall are each of
them quite distinct. Dickens's boys are almost as dear to me as
Thackeray's--as little Rawdon himself. There is one exception. I
cannot interest myself in Little Dombey. Little David Copperfield
is a jewel of a boy with a turn for books. Doubtless he is created
out of Dickens's memories of himself as a child. That is true
pathos again, and not overwrought, when David is sent to Creakle's,
and his poor troubled mother dare hardly say farewell to him.

And this brings us back to that debatable thing--the pathos of
Dickens--from which one has been withdrawn by the attractions of his
boys. Little Dombey is a prize example of his pathos. Little Nell
is another. Jeffrey, of the Edinburgh Review, who criticised
"Marmion" and the "Lady of the Lake" so vindictively, shed tears
over Little Nell. It is a matter of taste, or, as Science might
say, of the lachrymal glands as developed in each individual. But
the lachrymal glands of this amateur are not developed in that
direction. Little Dombey and Little Nell leave me with a pair of
dry eyes. I do not "melt visibly" over Little Dombey, like the
weak-eyed young man who took out his books and trunk to the coach.
The poor little chap was feeble and feverish, and had dreams of
trying to stop a river with his childish hands, or to choke it with
sand. It may be very good pathology, but I cannot see that it is at
all right pathos. One does not like copy to be made out of the
sufferings of children or of animals. One's heart hardens: the
object is too manifest, the trick is too easy. Conceive a child of
Dombey's age remarking, with his latest breath, "Tell them that the
picture on the stairs at school is not Divine enough!" That is not