For his pathos, not even his warmest admirer could perhaps offer a satisfactory case.

The charge of exaggeration however is another matter.

To the person who complains that he has never met Dick Swiveller or Micawber or Mrs.Gamp the answer is simply Turner's to the sceptical critic of his sunset, "Don't you wish you could ?" To the other, who objects more plausibly to Dickens's habit of attaching to each of his characters some label which is either so much flaunted all through that you cannot see the character at all or else mysteriously and unaccountably disappears when the story begins to grip the author, Dickens has himself offered an amusing and convincing defence.

In the preface to _Pickwick_ he answers those who criticised the novel on the ground that Pickwick began by being purely ludicrous and developed into a serious and sympathetic individuality, by pointing to the analogous process which commonly takes place in actual human relationships.

You begin a new acquaintanceship with perhaps not very charitable prepossessions; these later a deeper and better knowledge removes, and where you have before seen an idiosyncrasy you come to love a character.