Mother read us your note and I was interested in the discussion between
you and ----- over Dickens. Dickens' characters are really to a great
extent personified attributes rather than individuals. In consequence,
while there are not nearly as many who are actually like people one
meets, as for instance in Thackeray, there are a great many more who
possess _characteristics_ which we encounter continually, though
rarely as strongly developed as in the fictional originals. So Dickens'
characters last almost as Bunyan's do. For instance, Jefferson Brick
and Elijah Pogram and Hannibal Chollop are all real personifications of
certain bad tendencies in American life, and I am continually thinking
of or alluding to some newspaper editor or Senator or homicidal rowdy by
one of these three names. I never met any one exactly like Uriah Heep,
but now and then we see individuals show traits which make it easy to
describe them, with reference to those traits, as Uriah Heep. It is just
the same with Micawber. Mrs. Nickleby is not quite a real person,
but she typifies, in accentuated form, traits which a great many real
persons possess, and I am continually thinking of her when I meet them.
There are half a dozen books of Dickens which have, I think, furnished
more characters which are the constant companions of the ordinary
educated man around us, than is true of any other half-dozen volumes
published within the same period.