en Dickens brought forth Sam Weller or Pickwick
he was creating something that had once been inside himself and
therefore when once created could only go further and further away. It
may seem a strange thing to say of such laughable characters and of so
lively an author, yet I say it quite seriously; I think it possible that
there arose between Dickens and his characters that strange and almost
supernatural shyness that arises often between parents and children;
because they are too close to each other to be open with each other. Too
much hot and high emotion had gone to the creation of one of his great
figures for it to be possible for him without embarrassment ever to
speak with it again. This is the thing which some fools call fickleness;
but which is not the death of feeling, but rather its dreadful
perpetuation; this shyness is the final seal of strong sentiment; this
coldness is an eternal constancy.

This one case where Dickens broke through his rule was not such a
success as to tempt him in any case to try the thing again.

There is weakness in the strict sense of the word in this particular
reappearance of Samuel Pickwick and Samuel Weller. In the original
_Pickwick Papers_ Dickens had with quite remarkable delicacy and
vividness contrived to suggest a certain fundamental sturdiness and
spirit in that corpulent and complacent old gentleman. Mr. Pickwick was
a mild man, a respectable man, a placid man; but he was very decidedly a
man. He could denounce his enemies and fight for his nightcap. He was
fat; but he had a backbone. In _Master Humphrey's Clock_ the backbone
seems somehow to be broken; his good nature seems limp instead of alert.
He gushes out of his good heart; instead of taking a good heart for
granted as a part of any decent gentleman's furniture as did the older
and stronger Pickwick. The truth is, I think, that Mr. Pickwick in
complete repose loses some part of the whole point of his existence. The
quality which makes the _Pickwick Papers_ one of the greatest of human
fairy tales is a quality which all the great fairy tales possess, and
which marks them out from most modern writing. A modern novelist
generally endeavours to make his story interesting, by making his hero
odd. The most typical modern books are those in which the central figure
is himself or herself an exception, a cripple, a courtesan, a lunatic, a
swindler, or a person of the most perverse temperament. Such stories,
for instance, a