re _Sir Richard Calmady_, _Dodo_, _Quisante_, _La Bete
Humaine_, even the _Egoist_. But in a fairy tale the boy sees all the
wonders of fairyland because he is an ordinary boy. In the same way Mr.
Samuel Pickwick sees an extraordinary England because he is an ordinary
old gentleman. He does not see things through the rosy spectacles of the
modern optimist or the green-smoked spectacles of the pessimist; he sees
it through the crystal glasses of his own innocence. One must see the
world clearly even in order to see its wildest poetry. One must see it
sanely even in order to see that it is insane.

Mr. Pickwick, then, relieved against a background of heavy kindliness
and quiet club life does not seem to be quite the same heroic figure as
Mr. Pickwick relieved against a background of the fighting police
constables at Ipswich or the roaring mobs of Eatanswill. Of the
degeneration of the Wellers, though it has been commonly assumed by
critics, I am not so sure. Some of the things said in the humorous
assembly round Mr. Weller's Watch are really human and laughable and
altogether in the old manner. Especially, I think, the vague and awful
allusiveness of old Mr. Weller when he reminds his little grandson of
his delinquencies under the trope or figure of their being those of
another little boy, is really in the style both of the irony and the
domesticity of the poorer classes. Sam also says one or two things
really worthy of himself. We feel almost as if Sam were a living man,
and could not appear for an instant without being amusing.

The other elements in the make-up of _Master Humphrey's Clock_ come
under the same paradox which I have applied to the whole work. Though
not very important in literature they are somehow quite important in
criticism. They show us better than anything else the whole unconscious
trend of Dickens, the stuff of which his very dreams were made. If he
had made up tales to amuse himself when half-awake (as I have no doubt
he did) they would be just such tales as these. They would have been
ghostly legends of the nooks and holes of London, echoes of old love and
laughter from the taverns or the Inns of Court. In a sense also one may
say that these tales are the great might-have-beens of Dickens. They are
chiefly designs which he fills up here slightly and unsatisfactorily,
but which he might have filled up with his own brightest and most
incredible colours. Nothing, for instance, could have been nearer