Dickens's characters are improbable, that I grant you. But any man with a marked individuality is improbable. It is all the people in the world to one against his being what he is. Dickens's characters are just a little more improbable, that is all. Dickens's work is called by Chesterton rather mythology than history or fiction, the mythology of the lower middle class. Micawber and Pecksniff, like Falstaff and Lear, Hector and Achilles, are immortal realities, an undying possession of humanity. Their alleged _impossibility_ is, in fact, their passport to immortality. Thackeray's exact copies of life may grow faded and out of date; but Dickens's creations will never be any more impossible than when he created them. They will never be too impossible for our acceptance. The glories of a Toots and a Swiveller were veiled from the eyes of Thackeray. If he could have conceived such characters, he would have exposed their weaknesses (an easy task), and covered them with ridicule and contempt. But as depicted by the kindly hand of Dickens, who is not ready to own them as fellow creatures and admit that they are lovable? The mention of Pecksniff reminds me that Dickens is sometimes accused of merely attaching a label to his characters, of making them living embodiments of some trait or peculiarity; in other words, that Dickens, like Ben Jonson, made his characters mere illustrations of some particular humour. Thus Mark Tapley may be designated by the word "jolly," Micawber will always be "hoping for something to turn up," Pecksniff will always be playing the hypocrite. But though Pecksniff is first and foremost a hypocrite, and though Dickens's purpose is undoubtedly to impress on us and exaggerate his hypocrisy, he has all the other essentials of a human being. He can, for example, get drunk. Let me read a few extracts from that marvellous scene from _Martin Chuzzlewit_ when Mr. Pecksniff gets tipsy at Todgers' Boarding House. If any one, after reading it, can still assert that it is an abstraction or impossible, I give him up in despair. The gentlemen, after the toasts have been drunk, rejoin the ladies: Mr. Pecksniff had followed his younger friends up-stairs and taken a chair at the side of Mrs. Todgers. He had also spilt a cup of coffee over his legs without appearing to be aware of the circumstance; nor did he seem to know that there was muffin on his knee. "And how have they used you down-stairs, sir?" asked the hostess. "Their conduct has been such, my dear madam," said Mr. Pecksniff, "as I can never think of without emotion, or remember without a tear. Oh, Mrs. Todgers!" "My goodness!" exclaimed the lady. "How low you are in your spirits, sir!"