y and ends it in a more superficial way. He is
afraid of the things he has made; of that terrible figure Micawber; of
that yet more terrible figure Dora. He cannot make up his mind to see
his hero perpetually entangled in the splendid tortures and sacred
surprises that come from living with really individual and unmanageable
people. He cannot endure the idea that his fairy prince will not have
henceforward a perfectly peaceful time. But the wise old fairy tales
(which are the wisest things in the world, at any rate the wisest things
of worldly origin), the wise old fairy tales never were so silly as to
say that the prince and the princess lived peacefully ever afterwards.
The fairy tales said that the prince and princess lived happily ever
afterwards: and so they did. They lived happily, although it is very
likely that from time to time they threw the furniture at each other.
Most marriages, I think, are happy marriages; but there is no such thing
as a contented marriage. The whole pleasure of marriage is that it is a
perpetual crisis. David Copperfield and Dora quarrelled over the cold
mutton; and if they had gone on quarrelling to the end of their lives,
they would have gone on loving each other to the end of their lives; it
would have been a human marriage. But David Copperfield and Agnes would
agree about the cold mutton. And that cold mutton would be very cold.

I have here endeavoured to suggest some of the main merits of Dickens
within the framework of one of his faults. I have said that _David
Copperfield_ represents a rather sad transition from his strongest
method to his weakest. Nobody would ever complain of Charles Dickens
going on writing his own kind of novels, his old kind of novels. If
there be anywhere a man who loves good books, that man wishes that there
were four _Oliver Twists_ and at least forty-four _Pickwicks_. If there
be any one who loves laughter and creation, he would be glad to read a
hundred of _Nicholas Nickleby_ and two hundred of _The Old Curiosity
Shop_. But while any one would have welcomed one of Dickens's own
ordered and conventional novels, it was not in this spirit that they
welcomed _David Copperfield_.

_David Copperfield_ begins as if it were going to be a new kind of
Dickens novel; then it gradually turns into an old kind of Dickens
novel. It is here that many readers of this splendid book have been
subtly and secretly irritated. Nicholas Nickleby is all very well; we
accept h