on has fallen into
something so much worse than maudlin that his friends have to put him to
bed, they have not had time to descend the staircase when he is seen to
be "fluttering" on the top landing, desiring to collect their sentiments
on the nature of human life. "Let us be moral. Let us contemplate
existence." He turns his old pupil out of doors in the attitude of
blessing him, and when he has discharged that social duty retires to
shed his personal tribute of a few tears in the back garden. No
conceivable position, action, or utterance finds him without the vice in
which his being is entirely steeped and saturated. Of such consummate
consistency is its practice with him, that in his own house with his
daughters he continues it to keep his hand in; and from the mere habit
of keeping up appearances, even to himself, falls into the trap of
Jonas. Thackeray used to say that there was nothing finer in rascaldom
than this ruin of Pecksniff by his son-in-law at the very moment when
the oily hypocrite believes himself to be achieving his masterpiece of
dissembling over the more vulgar avowed ruffian. "'Jonas!' cried Mr.
Pecksniff much affected, 'I am not a diplomatical character; my heart is
in my hand. By far the greater part of the inconsiderable savings I have
accumulated in the course of--I hope--a not dishonourable or useless
career, is already given, devised, or bequeathed (correct me, my dear
Jonas, if I am technically wrong), with expressions of confidence which
I will not repeat; and in securities which it is unnecessary to mention;
to a person whom I cannot, whom I will not, whom I need not, name.' Here
he gave the hand of his son-in-law a fervent squeeze, as if he would
have added, 'God bless you: be very careful of it when you get it!'"

Certainly Dickens thus far had done nothing of which, as in this novel,
the details were filled in with such minute and incomparable skill;
where the wealth of comic circumstance was lavished in such overflowing
abundance on single types of character; or where generally, as
throughout the story, the intensity of his observation of individual
humours and vices had taken so many varieties of imaginative form.
Everything in _Chuzzlewit_ indeed had grown under treatment, as will be
commonly the case in the handling of a man of genius, who never knows
where any given conception may lead him, out of the wealth of resource
in development and incident which it has itself created. "As to