themselves the most corrupt town in England.  As far as I remember, Sam’s story of the canal ends with Mr. Pickwick eagerly asking whether everybody was rescued, and Sam solemnly replying that one old gentleman’s hat was found, but that he was not sure whether his head was in it.  If the canal is to be taken as realistic, why not the hat and the head?  If these critics ever find the canal I recommend them to drag it for the body of the old gentleman.

Both sides refuse to allow for the fact that the characters in the story are comic characters.  For instance, Mr. Percy Fitzgerald, the eminent student of Dickens, writes to the Eatanswill Gazette to say that Sudbury, a small town, could not have been Eatanswill, because one of the candidates speaks of its great manufactures.  But obviously one of the candidates would have spoken of its great manufactures if it had had nothing but a row of apple-stalls.  One of the candidates might have said that the commerce of Eatanswill eclipsed Carthage, and covered every sea; it would have been quite in the style of Dickens.  But when the champion of Sudbury answers him, he does not point out this plain mistake.  He answers by making another mistake exactly of the same kind.  He says that Eatanswill was not a busy, important place.  And his odd reason is that Mrs. Pott said she was dull there.  But obviously Mrs. Pott would have said she was dull anywhere.  She was setting her cap at Mr. Winkle.  Moreover, it was the whole point of her character in any case.  Mrs. Pott was that kind of woman.  If she had been in Ipswich she would have said that she ought to be in London.  If she was in London she would have said that she ought to be in Paris.  The first disputant proves Eatanswill grand because a servile candidate calls it grand.  The second proves it dull because a discontented woman calls it dull.

The great part of the controversy seems to be conducted in the spirit of highly irrelevant realism.  Sudbury cannot be Eatanswill, because there was a fancy-dress shop at Eatanswill, and there is no record of a fancy-dress shop at Sudbury.  Sudbury must be Eatanswill because there were heavy roads outside Eatanswill, and there are heavy roads outside Sudbury.  Ipswich cannot be Eatanswill, because Mrs. Leo Hunter’s country seat would not be near a big town.  Ipswich must be Eatanswill because Mrs. Leo Hunter’s country seat would be near a large town.  Really, Dickens might have been allowed to take liberties with such things as these, even if he had been mentioning the place by name.  If I were writing a story about the town of Limerick, I should take the liberty of introducing a bun-shop without taking a journey to Limerick to see whether there was a bun-shop there.  If I wrote a romance about Torquay, I should hold myself free to introduce a house with a green door without having studied a list of all the coloured doors in the town.  But if, in order to make it particularly obvious that I had not meant the town