of such characters as Toots that Dickens really sees
the whole of his tales. For even if one calls him a half-wit, it still
makes a difference that he keeps the right half of his wits. When we
think of the unclean and craven spirit in which Toots might be treated
in a psychological novel of to-day; how he might walk with a mooncalf
face, and a brain of bestial darkness, the soul rises in real homage to
Dickens for showing how much simple gratitude and happiness can remain
in the lopped roots of the most simplified intelligence. If scientists
must treat a man as a dog, it need not be always as a mad dog. They
might grant him, like Toots, a little of the dog's loyalty and the dog's
reward.

[Illustration: Charles Dickens, 1849
From a daguerreotype by Mayall.]

DAVID COPPERFIELD

In this book Dickens is really trying to write a new kind of book, and
the enterprise is almost as chivalrous as a cavalry charge. He is making
a romantic attempt to be realistic. That is almost the definition of
_David Copperfield_. In his last book, _Dombey and Son_, we see a
certain maturity and even a certain mild exhaustion in his earlier
farcical method. He never failed to have fine things in any of his
books, and Toots is a very fine thing. Still, I could never find Captain
Cuttle and Mr. Sol Gills very funny, and the whole Wooden Midshipman
seems to me very wooden. In _David Copperfield_ he suddenly unseals a
new torrent of truth, the truth out of his own life. The impulse of the
thing is autobiography; he is trying to tell all the absurd things that
have happened to himself, and not the least absurd thing is himself. Yet
though it is Dickens's ablest and clearest book, there is in it a
falling away of a somewhat singular kind.

Generally speaking there was astonishingly little of fatigue in
Dickens's books. He sometimes wrote bad work; he sometimes wrote even
unimportant work; but he wrote hardly a line which is not full of his
own fierce vitality and fancy. If he is dull it is hardly ever because
he cannot think of anything; it is because, by some silly excitement or
momentary lapse of judgment, he has thought of something that was not
worth thinking of. If his joke is feeble, it is as an impromptu joke at
an uproarious dinner-table may be feeble; it is no indication of any
lack of vitality. The joke is feeble, but it is not a sign of
feebleness. Broadly speaking, this is true of Dickens. If his writing is
not amusing us