Gallant Traddles, of the strong heart and the unruly hair; Sophy,
dearest of girls; Betsy Trotwood, with your gentlemanly manners and
your woman's heart, you have come to me in shabby rooms, making the
dismal place seem bright. In dark hours your kindly faces have
looked out at me from the shadows, your kindly voices have cheered
me.

Little Em'ly and Agnes, it may be my bad taste, but I cannot share my
friend Dickens' enthusiasm for them. Dickens' good women are all too
good for human nature's daily food. Esther Summerson, Florence
Dombey, Little Nell--you have no faults to love you by.

Scott's women were likewise mere illuminated texts. Scott only drew
one live heroine--Catherine Seton. His other women were merely the
prizes the hero had to win in the end, like the sucking pig or the
leg of mutton for which the yokel climbs the greasy pole. That
Dickens could draw a woman to some likeness he proved by Bella
Wilfer, and Estella in "Great Expectations." But real women have
never been popular in fiction. Men readers prefer the false, and
women readers object to the truth.

From an artistic point of view, "David Copperfield" is undoubtedly
Dickens' best work. Its humour is less boisterous; its pathos less
highly coloured.

One of Leech's pictures represents a cab-man calmly sleeping in the
gutter.

"Oh, poor dear, he's ill," says a tender-hearted lady in the crowd.