ABSTRACT
Dickens good-humouredly chaffed his compatriots for their foibles, making them, as Gottfried Keller and Wilhelm Raabe did for the German world of their day, just a trifle ludicrous, they and their Lilliputian cares and worries. This humour floods his work with sunshine, making his modest landscapes resplendent and cheerful and unendingly attractive, full of wonder and delight. The quality of Dickens's humour lifts his work out of time, and places it in eternity. As with Dickens's other qualities, this humour of his is typically English. Dickens's humour always observes the decencies, always keeps its head. Everything that enters his circle of light seems to be lit up by his own radiance; even his rapscallions are redeemed by humour; the universe itself wants to laugh when Dickens glances at it merrily. Everything is asparkle and aglitter, and thus is eminently grateful to a people whose skies are so often shrouded and grey.
