It is useless to cavil at an author because of the means by which he produces his effects.  The important thing is that he does produce an effect.  That the end justifies the means may be a dangerous doctrine in ethics, but much may be said for it in literature.  The situation is like that of a middle-aged gentleman beset by a small boy on a morning just right for snowballing.  “Give me leave, mister?” cries the youthful sharpshooter.  The good-natured citizen gives leave by pulling up his coat-collar and quickening his pace.  If the small boy can hit him, he is forgiven, if he cannot hit him, he is scorned.  The fact is that Dickens with a method as broad and repetitious as that of Nature herself does succeed in hitting our fancy.  That is, he succeeds nine times out of ten.

It is the minor characters of Dickens that are remembered.  And we remember them for the same reason that we remember certain faces which we have seen in a crowd.  There is some salient feature or trick of manner which first attracts and then holds our attention.  A person must have some tag by which he is identified, or, so far as we are concerned, he becomes one of the innumerable lost articles.  There are persons who are like umbrellas, very useful, but always liable to be forgotten.  The memory is an infirm faculty, and must be humored.  It often clings to mere trifles.  The man with the flamboyant necktie whom you saw on the 8.40 train may also be the author of a volume of exquisite lyrics; but you never saw the lyrics, and you did see the necktie.  In the scale of being, the necktie may be the least important parcel of this good man’s life, but it is the only thing about him which attracts your attention.  When you see it day after day at the same hour you feel that you have a real, though perhaps not a deep, acquaintance with the man behind it.  It is thus we habitually perceive the human world.  We see things, and infer persons to correspond.  One peculiarity attracts us.  It is not the whole man, but it is all of him that is for us.  In all this we are very Dickensy.

We may read an acute character study and straightway forget the person who was so admirably analyzed; but the lady in the yellow curl-papers is unforgettable.  We really see very little of her, but she is real, and she would not be so real without her yellow curl-papers.  A yellow-curl-paper-less lady in the Great White Horse Inn would be as unthinkable to us as a white-plume-less Henry of Navarre at Ivry.

In ecclesiastical art the saints are recognized by their emblems.  Why should not the sinners have the same means of identification?  Dickens has the courage to furnish us these necessary aids to recollection.  Micawber, Mrs. Gummidge, Barkis, Mr. Dick, Uriah Heep, Betsy Trotwood, Dick Swiveiler, Mr. Mantalini, Harold Skimpole, Sairey Gamp, always appear with their appropriate insignia.  We should remember that it is for our sakes.