mine. The humour of the humorous characters rings false--for
example, the fun of the resurrection-man with the wife who "flops."
But Sidney Carton has drawn many tears down cheeks not accustomed to
what Mr. B. in "Pamela" calls "pearly fugitives."

It sometimes strikes one that certain weaknesses in our great
novelists, in Thackeray as well as Dickens, were caused by their
method of publication. The green and yellow leaves flourished on
the trees for two whole years. Who (except Alexandre the Great)
could write so much, and yet all good? Do we not all feel that
"David Copperfield" should have been compressed? As to "Pendennis,"
Mr. Thackeray's bad health when he wrote it might well cause a
certain languor in the later pages. Moreover, he frankly did not
care for the story, and bluffly says, in the preface, that he
respited Colonel Altamont almost at the foot of the gallows.
Dickens took himself more in earnest, and, having so many pages to
fill, conscientiously made Uriah Heap wind and wriggle through them
all.

To try to see blots in the sun, and to pick holes in Dickens, seems
ungrateful, and is indeed an ungrateful task; to no mortal man have
more people owed mirth, pleasure, forgetfulness of care, knowledge
of life in strange places. There never was such another as Charles
Dickens, nor shall we see his like sooner than the like of
Shakespeare. And he owed all to native genius and hard work; he
owed almost nothing to literature, and that little we regret. He
was influenced by Carlyle, he adopted his method of nicknames, and
of hammering with wearisome iteration on some peculiarity--for
example, on Carker's teeth, and the patriarch's white hair. By the
way, how incredible is all the Carker episode in "Dombey"! Surely