mence, his extremity, are generally signs not of weakness but of
power; and yet once he reaches a breaking-point that power should never
know. This is where his Judith holds herself to be so smirched and
degraded by the proffer of a reverent love (she being devoted to one
only, a dead man who had her heart) that thenceforth no bar is left to
her entire self-sacrifice to the loathed enemy Holofernes. To this, too,
the prim rebuke is the just one, a word for the mouth of governesses: "My
dear, you exaggerate."

It may be briefly said that exaggeration takes for granted some degree of
imbecility in the reader, whereas caricature takes for granted a high
degree of intelligence. Dickens appeals to our intelligence in all his
caricature, whether heavenly, as in Joe Gargery, or impish, as in Mrs.
Micawber. The word "caricature" that is used a thousand times to
reproach him is the word that does him singular honour.

If I may define my own devotion to Dickens, it may be stated as chiefly,
though not wholly, admiration of his humour, his dramatic tragedy, and
his watchfulness over inanimate things and landscape. Passages of his
books that are ranged otherwise than under those characters often leave
me out of the range of their appeal or else definitely offend me. And
this is not for the customary reason--that Dickens could not draw a
gentleman, that Dickens could not draw a lady. It matters little whether
he could or not. But as a fact he did draw a gentleman, and drew him
excellently well, in Cousin Feenix, as Mr. Chesterton has decided. The
question of the lady we may waive; if it is difficult to prove a
negative, it is difficult also to present one; and to the making, or
producing, or liberating, or detaching, or exalting, of the character of
a lady there enter many negatives; and Dickens was an obvious and a
positive man. Esther Summerson is a lady, but she is so much besides
that her ladyhood does not detach itself from her sainthood and her
angelhood, so as to be conspicuous--if, indeed, conspicuousness may be
properly predicated of the quality of a lady. It is a conventional
saying that sainthood and angelhood include the quality of a lady, but
that saying is not true; a lady has a great number of negatives all her
own, and also some things positive that are not at all included in
goodness. However this may be--and it is not important--Dickens, the
genial Dickens, makes savage sport of women. Such a company o