ss my tendency to believe that his longevity is (to say the
least of it) extremely problematical:" and that it was to another, who
had been insisting somewhat obtrusively on dissenting and nonconformist
superiorities, he addressed words which deserve to be no less
celebrated; "The Supreme Being must be an entirely different individual
from what I have every reason to believe him to be, if He would care in
the least for the society of your relations." There was a laugh in the
enjoyment of all this, no doubt, but with it much personal fondness; and
the feeling of the creator of Micawber as he thus humoured and
remembered the foibles of his original, found its counterpart in that
of his readers for the creation itself, as its part was played out in
the story. Nobody likes Micawber less for his follies; and Dickens liked
his father more, the more he recalled his whimsical qualities. "The
longer I live, the better man I think him," he exclaimed afterwards. The
fact and the fancy had united whatever was most grateful to him in both.

It is a tribute to the generally healthful and manly tone of the story
of _Copperfield_ that such should be the outcome of the eccentricities
of this leading personage in it; and the superiority in this respect of
Micawber over Skimpole is one of many indications of the inferiority of
_Bleak House_ to its predecessor. With leading resemblances that make it
difficult to say which character best represents the principle or no
principle of impecuniosity, there cannot be any doubt which has the
advantage in moral and intellectual development. It is genuine humour
against personal satire. Between the worldly circumstances of the two,
there is nothing to choose; but as to everything else it is the
difference between shabbiness and greatness. Skimpole's sunny talk might
be expected to please as much as Micawber's gorgeous speech, the design
of both being to take the edge off poverty. But in the one we have no
relief from attendant meanness or distress, and we drop down from the
airiest fancies into sordidness and pain; whereas in the other nothing
pitiful or merely selfish ever touches us. At its lowest depth of what
is worst, we never doubt that something better must turn up; and of a
man who sells his bedstead that he may entertain his friend, we
altogether refuse to think nothing but badly. This is throughout the
free and cheery style of _Copperfield_. The masterpieces of Dickens's
humour are not in i