f envious
dames and damsels cannot be found among the persons of the satirist
Thackeray. Kate Nickleby's beauty brings upon her at first sight the
enmity of her workshop companions; in the innocent pages of "Pickwick"
the aunt is jealous of the niece, and the niece retorts by wounding the
vanity of the aunt as keenly as she may; and so forth through early books
and late. He takes for granted that the women, old and young, who are
not his heroines, wage this war within the sex, being disappointed by
defect of nature and fortune. Dickens is master of wit, humour, and
derision; and it must be confessed that his derision is abundant, and is
cast upon an artificially exposed and helpless people; that is, he, a
man, derides the women who miss what a man declared to be their "whole
existence."

The advice which M. Rodin received in his youth from Constant--"Learn to
see the other side; never look at forms only in extent; learn to see them
always in relief"--is the contrary of the counsel proper for a reader of
Dickens. That counsel should be, "Do not insist upon seeing the immortal
figures of comedy 'in the round.' You are to be satisfied with their
face value, the face of two dimensions. It is not necessary that you
should seize Mr. Pecksniff from beyond, and grasp the whole man and his
destinies." The hypocrite is a figure dreadful and tragic, a shape of
horror; and Mr. Pecksniff is a hypocrite, and a bright image of heart-
easing comedy. For comic fiction cannot exist without some such paradox.
Without it, where would our laugh be in response to the generous genius
which gives us Mr. Pecksniff's parenthesis to the mention of sirens
("Pagan, I regret to say"); and the scene in which Mr. Pecksniff, after a
stormy domestic scene within, goes as it were accidentally to the door to
admit the rich kinsman he wishes to propitiate? "Then Mr. Pecksniff,
gently warbling a rustic stave, put on his garden hat, seized a spade,
and opened the street door, as if he thought he had, from his vineyard,
heard a modest rap, but was not quite certain." The visitor had
thundered at the door while outcries of family strife had been rising in
the house. "'It is an ancient pursuit, gardening. Primitive, my dear
sir; for, if I am not mistaken, Adam was the first of the calling. My
Eve, I grieve to say, is no more, sir; but' (and here he pointed to his
spade, and shook his head, as if he were not cheerful without an effort)
'but I do a l