Micawber. "Of a son, in difficulties"--the
perfect Micawber nature is respected as to his origin, and then perverted
as to his end. It is a pity that Mr. Peggotty ever came back to England
with such tidings. And our last glimpse of the emigrants had been made
joyous by the sight of the young Micawbers on the eve of emigration;
"every child had its own wooden spoon attached to its body by a strong
line," in preparation for Colonial life. And then Dickens must needs go
behind the gay scenes, and tell us that the long and untiring delight of
the book was over. Mr. Micawber, in the Colonies, was never again to
make punch with lemons, in a crisis of his fortunes, and "resume his
peeling with a desperate air"; nor to observe the expression of his
friends' faces during Mrs. Micawber's masterly exposition of the
financial situation or of the possibilities of the coal trade; nor to eat
walnuts out of a paper bag what time the die was cast and all was over.
Alas! nothing was over until Mr. Micawber's pecuniary liabilities were
over, and the perfect comedy turned into dulness, the joyous
impossibility of a figure of immortal fun into cold improbability.
There are several such late or last chapters that one would gladly cut
away: that of Mercy Pecksniff's pathos, for example; that of Mr. Dombey's
installation in his daughter's home; that which undeceives us as to Mr.
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