One fears that
the Major would have called Steerforth a tiger, that Pen would have
been very loftily condescending to the nephew of Betsy Trotwood.
But Captain Costigan would scarcely have refused to take a sip of
Mr. Micawber's punch, and I doubt, not that Litimer would have
conspired darkly with Morgan, the Major's sinister man. Most of
those delightful sets of old friends, the Dickens and Thackeray
people, might well have met, though they belonged to very different
worlds. In older novels, too, it might easily have chanced that
Mr. Edward Waverley of Waverley Honour, came into contact with
Lieutenant Booth, or, after the Forty-five, with Thomas Jones, or,
in Scotland, Balmawhapple might have foregathered with Lieutenant
Lismahagow. Might not even Jeanie Deans have crossed the path of
Major Lambert of the "Virginians," and been helped on her way by
that good man? Assuredly Dugald Dalgetty in his wanderings in
search of fights and fortune may have crushed a cup or rattled a
dicebox with four gallant gentlemen of the King's Mousquetaires.
It is agreeable to wonder what all these very real people would
have thought of their companions in the region of Romance, and to
guess how their natures would have acted and reacted on each other.
This was the idea which suggested the following little essays in
parody. In making them the writer, though an assiduous and veteran
novel reader, had to recognise that after all he knew, on really
intimate and friendly terms, comparatively few people in the
Paradise of Fiction.
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