That _David
Copperfield_ is not autobiographical we have the positive assertion of
Charles Dickens the younger, yet at the same time every lover of this
book feels that the boyhood of David reproduces memories of the
novelist's childhood and youth, and that from real people and real
scenes are drawn the humble home and the loyal hearts of the
Peggottys, the great self-sacrifice of Ham, the woes of Little Emily
and the tragedy of Steerforth's fate. One misses much who does not
follow the chief actors in this great story, the masterpiece of
Dickens.
Other fine novels, if you have time for them, are _Nicholas Nickleby_,
which broke up the unspeakably cruel boarding schools for boys in
Yorkshire, in one of which poor Smike was done to death; or _Our
Mutual Friend_ which Dickens attacked the English poor laws; or
_Dombey and Son_, that paints the pathos of the child of a rich man
dying for the love which his father was too selfish to give him; or
_Bleak House_, in which the terrible sufferings wrought by the law's
delay in the Court of Chancery are drawn with so much pathos that the
book served as a valuable aid in removing a great public wrong, while
the satire on foreign missions served to draw the English nation's
attention to the wretched heathen at home in the East Side of London,
of whom Poor Jo was a pitiable specimen. In other novels other good
purposes were also served.
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