With reserves which will appear in the course of my essay, I believe him to have been, what he always claimed to be, a very accurate painter of the human beings, no less than of the social conditions, he saw about him. He has not a wide scope; he is always noticeably at his best in dealing with an ill-defined order of English folk, a class (or classes) characterized by dullness, prejudice, dogged individuality, and manners, to say the least, unengaging. From this order he chose the living figures of his narrative, and they appear to me, all in all, no less truly representative than the persons selected by Thackeray to illustrate a higher rank of life. Readers of Dickens who exclaim at the "unreality" of his characters (I do not here speak of his conduct of a story) will generally be found unacquainted with the English lower classes of to-day; and one may remark in passing that English people are distinguished among nationalities by the profound mutual ignorance which separates their social ranks.
In a recent publication I have seen it summarily observed that Dickens gives us types, not individuals; types, moreover, of the most abstract kind, something like the figures in the old moralities; embodied hypocrisy, selfishness, pride, and so on, masking as everyday mortals. This appears to me an unconsidered
