at Dombey is saying to Edith. Worldliness
is the most solemn thing in the world; it is far more solemn than
other-worldliness. Mrs. Nickleby can afford to ramble as a child does in
a field, or as a child does to laugh at nothing, for she is like a
child, innocent. It is only the good who can afford to be frivolous.

Broadly speaking, what is said here of Mrs. Skewton applies to the great
part of _Dombey and Son_, even to the comic part of it. It shows an
advance in art and unity; it does not show an advance in genius and
creation. In some cases, in fact, I cannot help feeling that it shows a
falling off. It may be a personal idiosyncrasy, but there is only one
comic character really prominent in Dickens, upon whom Dickens has
really lavished the wealth of his invention, and who does not amuse me
at all, and that character is Captain Cuttle. But three great exceptions
must be made to any such disparagement of _Dombey and Son_. They are all
three of that royal order in Dickens's creation which can no more be
described or criticised than strong wine. The first is Major Bagstock,
the second is Cousin Feenix, the third is Toots. In Bagstock Dickens has
blasted for ever that type which pretends to be sincere by the simple
operation of being explosively obvious. He tells about a quarter of the
truth, and then poses as truthful because a quarter of the truth is much
simpler than the whole of it. He is the kind of man who goes about with
posers for Bishops or for Socialists, with plain questions to which he
wants a plain answer. His questions are plain only in the same sense
that he himself is plain--in the sense of being uncommonly ugly. He is
the man who always bursts with satisfaction because he can call a spade
a spade, as if there were any kind of logical or philosophical use in
merely saying the same word twice over. He is the man who wants things
down in black and white, as if black and white were the only two
colours; as if blue and green and red and gold were not facts of the
universe. He is too selfish to tell the truth and too impatient even to
hear it. He cannot endure the truth, because it is subtle. This man is
almost always like Bagstock--a sycophant and a toad-eater. A man is not
any the less a toad-eater because he eats his toads with a huge appetite
and gobbles them up, as Bagstock did his breakfast, with the eyes
starting out of his purple face. He flatters brutally. He cringes with a
swagger. And men of the wo