e
people, and a prodigal wealth of detail; but unity of drift or purpose
is apparent always, and the tone is uniformly right. By the course of
the events we learn the value of self-denial and patience, quiet
endurance of unavoidable ills, strenuous effort against ills remediable;
and everything in the fortunes of the actors warns us, to strengthen our
generous emotions and to guard the purities of home. It is easy thus to
account for the supreme popularity of _Copperfield_, without the
addition that it can hardly have had a reader, man or lad, who did not
discover that he was something of a Copperfield himself. Childhood and
youth live again for all of us in its marvellous boy-experiences. Mr.
Micawber's presence must not prevent my saying that it does not take the
lead of the other novels in humorous creation; but in the use of humour
to bring out prominently the ludicrous in any object or incident without
excluding or weakening its most enchanting sentiment, it stands
decidedly first. It is the perfection of English mirth. We are apt to
resent the exhibition of too much goodness, but it is here so qualified
by oddity as to become not merely palatable but attractive; and even
pathos is heightened by what in other hands would only make it comical.
That there are also faults in the book is certain, but none that are
incompatible with the most masterly qualities; and a book becomes
everlasting by the fact, not that faults are not in it, but that genius
nevertheless is there.

Of its method, and its author's generally, in the delineation of
character, something will have to be said on a later page. The author's
own favourite people in it, I think, were the Peggotty group; and
perhaps he was not far wrong. It has been their fate, as with all the
leading figures of his invention, to pass their names into the
language, and become types; and he has nowhere given happier embodiment
to that purity of homely goodness, which, by the kindly and
all-reconciling influences of humour, may exalt into comeliness and even
grandeur the clumsiest forms of humanity. What has been indicated in the
style of the book as its greatest charm is here felt most strongly. The
ludicrous so helps the pathos, and the humour so uplifts and refines the
sentiment, that mere rude affection and simple manliness in these
Yarmouth boatmen, passed through the fires of unmerited suffering and
heroic endurance, take forms half-chivalrous half-sublime. It is one