people laugh, which, as we now know, is not the purpose of humour--a
novelist who incessantly "caricatured Nature" and by these inartistic
and underhand methods created characters that are more real to us than
the folk we jostle in the street and (God knows!) far more vital and
worthy of attention than the folk who "cannot read Dickens"--you will
find, I say, a note of an idea which he never afterward developed,
running to this effect: "Full length portrait of his lordship,
surrounded by worshippers. Sensible men enough, agreeable men enough,
independent men enough in a certain way; but the moment they begin
to circle round my lord, and to shine with a borrowed light from