ne is the happy
courtship of Swiveller and the Marchioness; the other is the tragic
courtship of Toots and Florence Dombey. When Dick Swiveller wakes up in
bed and sees the Marchioness playing cribbage he thinks that he and she
are a prince and princess in a fairy tale. He thinks right.

I speak thus seriously of such characters with a deliberate purpose; for
the frivolous characters of Dickens are taken much too frivolously. It
has been quite insufficiently pointed out that all the serious moral
ideas that Dickens did contrive to express he expressed altogether
through this fantastic medium, in such figures as Swiveller and the
little servant. The warmest upholder of Dickens would not go to the
solemn or sentimental passages for anything fresh or suggestive in faith
or philosophy. No one would pretend that the death of little Dombey
(with its "What are the wild waves saying?") told us anything new or
real about death. A good Christian dying, one would imagine, not only
would not know what the wild waves were saying, but would not care. No
one would pretend that the repentance of old Paul Dombey throws any
light on the psychology or philosophy of repentance. No doubt old
Dombey, white-haired and amiable, was a great improvement on old Dombey
brown-haired and unpleasant. But in his case the softening of the heart
seems to bear too close a resemblance to softening of the brain. Whether
these serious passages are as bad as the critical people or as good as
the sentimental people find them, at least they do not convey anything
in the way of an illuminating glimpse or a bold suggestion about men's
moral nature. The serious figures do not tell one anything about the
human soul. The comic figures do. Take anything almost at random out of
these admirable speeches of Dick Swiveller. Notice, for instance, how
exquisitely Dickens has caught a certain very deep and delicate quality
at the bottom of this idle kind of man. I mean that odd impersonal sort
of intellectual justice, by which the frivolous fellow sees things as
they are and even himself as he is; and is above irritation. Mr.
Swiveller, you remember, asks the Marchioness whether the Brass family
ever talk about him; she nods her head with vivacity. "'Complimentary?'
inquired Mr. Swiveller. The motion of the little servant's head
altered.... 'But she says,' continued the little servant, 'that you
ain't to be trusted.' 'Well, do you know, Marchioness,' said Mr.
Swiveller tho