But undoubtedly it might be contended that something further was needed: and it came.

This was verisimilitude--the holding of the true mirror to actual society.
This verisimilitude, it should be observed, is not only difficult to attain: it seems not to be easy even to recognise.

I have seen it said that the reason which makes it "hopeless for many people even to try to get through _Pickwick_" (their state itself must be "hopeless" enough, and it is to be hoped there are not "many" of them) is that it "describes states of society unimaginable to many people of to-day." Again, these many people must be somewhat unimaginative.

But that is not the point of the matter.

The point is that Dickens depicts no "state of society" that ever existed, except in the _Dickensium Sidus_.