ike Micawber's
"Something will turn up," or Tapley's "There's some credit in being
jolly here," have passed into current phrases. Dickens' great object
was to celebrate the virtues of the humbler ranks of life, and to
expose the acts of injustice or tyranny to which they are subjected.
This he did in a spirit of the truest philanthropy and most universal
benevolence. The helpless victims of oppression, like little Oliver
Twist, or the inmates of Dotheboys Hall, found in him an effective
champion. Never has hypocrisy, the besetting vice of this age, been so
mercilessly exposed as in the works of Dickens. It is not only in such
a character as Pecksniff that its ugliness is revealed, but wherever
pretence hides guilt behind a sanctimonious countenance, the mask is
surely torn off. Dickens hated hypocrisy as Thackeray hated snobbism.
And both, in their zeal, occasionally saw the hypocrite or the snob
where he did not exist. Dealing, as Dickens did, so exclusively with
common and low-born characters, it is remarkable that his books so
rarely leave any impression of vulgarity behind them. And this result
is due to the author's love of truth and detestation of all pretence.
There can be no vulgarity without pretension. A great many novels of
the day are extremely vulgar, because they describe ill-bred people and
represent them to the reader as ladies and gentlemen. But Dickens'
shopkeeper or street-sweeper makes no pretence to gentility, and
therefore is as far from being vulgar as the man who has never known
what it was to be any thing but a gentleman. The faults, like the
merits, of Dickens' work resulted from the exuberance and power of his
imagination. The same vividness of conception which gives such life to
his description of a thunderstorm or of a quiet family scene, sometimes
betrayed him into exaggeration and caricature. And yet when we consider
the number and variety of the figures conjured up by his creative mind,
from Paul Dombey to the Jew, Fagin, it is extraordinary that to so few
this criticism will apply.

Dickens' vast popularity resulted only in part from the artistic merit
of his works. The breadth of his canvas, his intense realization of
fictitious scenes, and his extraordinary descriptive power are
qualities enough to win for him his eminent position in fiction. But
the affection felt for Dickens as a man, which has made him occupy so
much the hearts as well as the minds of the reading public, was
attrac