to say,
humour is an effort of the imagination presenting human nature with
some element of distortion or disproportion which instantly kindles
mirth. It must be imaginative; it must touch the bed-rock of human
nature; it must arouse merriment and not anger or scorn. In this fine
and most rare gift Charles Dickens abounded to overflowing; and this
humour poured in perfect cataracts of "grotesque imagery" over every
phase of life of the poor and the lower middle classes of his time, in
London and a few of its suburbs and neighbouring parts.

This in itself is a great title to honour; it is his main work, his
noblest title. His sphere was wide, but not at all general; it was
strictly limited to the range of his own indefatigable observations.
He hardly ever drew a character or painted a scene, even of the most
subordinate kind, which he had not studied from the life with minute
care, and whenever he did for a moment wander out of his limits, he
made an egregious failure. But this task of his, to cast the sunshine
of pathos and of genial mirth over the humblest, dullest, and most
uninviting of our fellow-creatures, was a great social mission to which
his whole genius was devoted. No waif and stray was so repulsive, no
drudge was so mean, no criminal was so atrocious, but what Charles
Dickens could feel for him some ray of sympathy, or extract some
pathetic mirth out of his abject state. And Dickens does not look on
the mean and the vile as do Balzac and Zola, that is, from without,
like the detective or the surgeon. He sees things more or less from
their point of view: he feels with the Marchioness: he himself as a
child was once a Smike: he cannot help liking the fun of the Artful
Dodger: he has been a good friend to Barkis: he likes Traddles: he
loves Joe: poor Nancy ends her vile life in heroism: and even his brute
of a dog worships Bill Sikes.

Here lies the secret of his power over such countless millions of
readers. He not only paints a vast range of ordinary humanity and
suffering or wearied humanity, but he speaks for it and lives in it
himself, and throws a halo of imagination over it, and brings home to
the great mass of average readers a new sense of sympathy and gaiety.
This humane kinship with the vulgar and the common, this magic which
strikes poetry out of the dust of the streets, and discovers traces of
beauty and joy in the most monotonous of lives, is, in the true and
best sense of the term, Ch