wrote of his friend:—­“I am grateful for the innocent laughter and the sweet and unsullied page which the author of David Copperfield gives to my children.”  We need not formulate any dogma or rule on such a topic, nor is it essential that all books should be written virginibus puerisque; but it is certain that every word of Charles Dickens was so written, even when he set himself (as he sometimes did) to describe animal natures and the vilest of their sex.  Dickens is a realist in that he probes the gloomiest recesses and faces the most disheartening problems of life:  he is an idealist in that he never presents us the common or the vile with mere commonplace or repulsiveness, and without some ray of humane and genial charm to which ordinary eyes are blind.  Dickens, then, was above all things a humourist, an inexhaustible humourist, to whom the humblest forms of daily life wore a certain sunny air of genial mirth; but the question remains if he was a humourist of the highest order:  was he a poet, a creator of abiding imaginative types?  Old Johnson’s definition of humour as “grotesque imagery,” and “grotesque” as meaning some distortion in figure, may not be adequate as a description of humour, but it well describes the essential feature of Charles Dickens.  His infallible instrument is caricature—­which strictly means an “overload,” as Johnson says, “an exaggerated resemblance.”  Caricature is a likeness having some comical exaggeration or distortion.  Now, caricature is a legitimate and potent instrument of humour, which great masters have used with consummate effect.  Leonardo da Vinci, Michael Angelo, Rembrandt, Hogarth, use it; but only at times, and in a subsidiary way.  Rabelais, Swift, Fielding, use this weapon not unfrequently; Shakespeare very sparingly; Goldsmith and Scott, I think, almost never.  Caricature, the essence of which is exaggeration of some selected feature, distortion of figure, disproportion of some part, is a potent resource, but one to which the greater masters resort rarely and with much moderation.

Now with Charles Dickens caricature—­that comical exaggeration of a particular feature, distortion of some part beyond nature—­is not only the essence of his humour, but it is the universal and ever-present source of his mirth.  It would not be true to say that, exaggeration is the sole form of humour that he uses, but there is hardly a character of his to which it is not applied, nor a scene of which it is not the pervading “motive.”  Some feature, some oddity, some temperament is seized, dwelt upon, played with, and turned inside out, with incessant repetition and unwearied energy.  Every character, except the walking gentleman and the walking lady, the insipid lover, or the colourless friend, have some feature thrust out of proportion, magnified beyond nature.  Sam Weller never speaks without his anecdote, Uriah is always “’umble,” Barkis is always “willin’,” Mark Tapley is always “jolly,” Dombey is always