Note 8 to Chapter 5 of the author's Dickens and the Rhetoric of Laughter which Clarendon Press published in 1972. It has been included in the Victorian Web with the kind permission of the author and of the Clarendon Press, which retains copyright.
Dickens makes it very clear in his Preface that one of his targets in this novel is the fact that "what we falsely call a religious cry is easily raised by men who have no religion" (p. xxiv).
Last modified: 3 May 2001