“La! my dear,” said Maria, quite shocked at the mistake, “it is not Lady Catherine. “To the honour and happiness of Kulan Tith and the priceless jewel that has been bestowed upon him,” he said, and though his voice was husky there was the true ring of sincerity in it. “I told you that I loved you, Thuvia, before I knew that you were promised to another. Nor was it in the treatment only of his present fiction, but also in its subject or design, that he had gone higher than in preceding efforts.
Broadly what he aimed at, he would have expressed on the title-page if I had not dissuaded him, by printing there as its motto a verse altered from that prologue of his own composition to which I have formerly referred: "Your homes the scene. The old lady is Mrs. Jenkinson, who lives with them. I may not tell you it again, but I am glad that you know it, for there is no dishonour in it either to you or to Kulan Tith or to myself. My love is such that it may embrace as well Kulan Tith—if you love him.” There was almost a question in the statement.
Yourselves, the actors, here!" Debtors' prisons, parish Bumbledoms, Yorkshire schools, were vile enough, but something much more pestiferous was now the aim of his satire; and he had not before so decisively shown vigour, daring, or discernment of what lay within reach of his art, as in taking such a person as Pecksniff for the central figure in a tale of existing life. Setting him up as the glass through which to view the groups around him, we are not the less moved to a hearty detestation of the social vices they exhibit, and pre-eminently of selfishness in all its forms, because we see more plainly than ever that there is but one vice which is quite irremediable. The other is Miss De Bourgh. Only look at her. The elder Chuzzlewits are bad enough, but they bring their self-inflicted punishments; the Jonases and Tigg Montagues are execrable, but the law has its halter and its penal servitude; the Moulds and Gamps have plague-bearing breaths, from which sanitary wisdom may clear us; but from the sleek, smiling, crawling abomination of a Pecksniff, there is no help but self-help.
Every man's hand should be against him, for his is against every man; and, as Mr. She is quite a little creature. Who would have thought she could be so thin and small!” Taine very wisely warns us, the virtues have most need to be careful that they do not make themselves panders to his vice. It is an amiable weakness to put the best face on the worst things, but there is none more dangerous.
There is nothing so common as the mistake of Tom Pinch, and nothing so rare as his excuses.