any
real characters. And the author might perfectly well be right about what
is ridiculous, and wrong about what is real. He might be as right in
smiling at the Pograms and the Bricks as in smiling at the Pickwicks and
the Boffins. And he might still be as wrong in seeing Mr. Pogram as a
hypocrite as the great Buzfuz was wrong in seeing Mr. Pickwick as a
monster of revolting heartlessness and systematic villainy. He might
still be as wrong in thinking Jefferson Brick a charlatan and a cheat as
was that great disciple of Lavater, Mrs. Wilfer, in tracing every
wrinkle of evil cunning in the face of Mrs. Boffin. For Mr. Pickwick's
spectacles and gaiters and Mrs. Boffin's bonnets and boudoir are after
all superficial jokes; and might be equally well seen whatever we saw
beneath them. A man may smile and smile and be a villain; but a man may
also make us smile and not be a villain. He may make us smile and not
even be a fool. He may make us roar with laughter and be an exceedingly
wise man.

Now that is the paradox of America which Dickens never discovered.
Elijah Pogram was far more fantastic than his satirist thought; and the
most grotesque feature of Brick and Chollop was hidden from him. The
really strange thing was that Pogram probably did say, 'Rough he may be.
So air our bars. Wild he may be. So air our buffalers,' and yet was a
perfectly intelligent and public-spirited citizen while he said it. The
extraordinary thing is that Jefferson Brick may really have said, 'The
libation of freedom must sometimes be quaffed in blood,' and yet
Jefferson Brick may have served freedom, resisting unto blood. There
really has been a florid school of rhetoric in the United States which
has made it quite possible for serious and sensible men to say such
things. It is amusing simply as a difference of idiom or costume is
always amusing; just as English idiom and English costume are amusing to
Americans. But about this kind of difference there can be no kind of
doubt. So sturdy not to say stuffy a materialist as Ingersoll could say
of so shoddy not to say shady a financial politician as Blaine, 'Like an
armed warrior, like a plumed knight, James G. Blaine strode down the
hall of Congress, and flung his spear full and true at the shield of
every enemy of his country and every traducer of his fair name.'
Compared with that, the passage about bears and buffaloes, which Mr.
Pogram delivered in defence of the defaulting post-master, is reall