The real achievement of the earlier part of _David Copperfield_ lies in
a certain impression of the little Copperfield living in a land of
giants. It is at once Gargantuan in its fancy and grossly vivid in its
facts; like Gulliver in the land of Brobdingnag when he describes
mountainous hands and faces filling the sky, bristles as big as hedges,
or moles as big as molehills. To him parents and guardians are not
Olympians (as in Mr. Kenneth Grahame's clever book), mysterious and
dignified, dwelling upon a cloudy hill. Rather they are all the more
visible for being large. They come all the closer because they are
colossal. Their queer features and weaknesses stand out large in a sort
of gigantic domesticity, like the hairs and freckles of a
Brobdingnagian. We feel the sombre Murdstone coming upon the house like
a tall storm striding through the sky. We watch every pucker of
Peggotty's peasant face in its moods of flinty prejudice or whimsical
hesitation. We look up and feel that Aunt Betsey in her garden gloves
was really terrible--especially her garden gloves. But one cannot avoid
the impression that as the boy grows larger these figures grow smaller,
and are not perhaps so completely satisfactory.