Note 77 — Chapter II · THE CONFLUENCE

Preface to Oliver Twist, xv.

That Dickens was mistaken as to the real point of Don Quixote, does not impair his argument.

Thackeray had the same motive, of course, in his ridicule of Paul Clifford and the sentimental-picaresque; not because it was sentimental or picaresque, but because it was misleading. In that respect it was he who inherited the mantle of Cervantes, as did Fielding before him in his ridicule of Richardson.