w of morals.
The end of Bill Sikes exactly in the way that the law would have killed
him--this is a Hogarthian incident; it carries on that tradition of
startling and shocking platitude.

All this element in the book was a sincere thing in the author, but none
the less it came from old soils, from the graveyard and the gallows, and
the lane where the ghost walked. Dickens was always attracted to such
things, and (as Forster says with inimitable simplicity) "but for his
strong sense might have fallen into the follies of spiritualism." As a
matter of fact, like most of the men of strong sense in his tradition,
Dickens was left with a half belief in spirits which became in practice
a belief in bad spirits. The great disadvantage of those who have too
much strong sense to believe in supernaturalism is that they keep last
the low and little forms of the supernatural, such as omens, curses,
spectres, and retributions, but find a high and happy supernaturalism
quite incredible. Thus the Puritans denied the sacraments, but went on
burning witches. This shadow does rest, to some extent, upon the
rational English writers like Dickens; supernaturalism was dying, but
its ugliest roots died last. Dickens would have found it easier to
believe in a ghost than in a vision of the Virgin with angels. There,
for good or evil, however, was the root of the old _diablerie_ in
Dickens, and there it is in _Oliver Twist_. But this was only the first
of the new Dickens elements, which must have surprised those Dickensians
who eagerly bought his second book. The second of the new Dickens
elements is equally indisputable and separate. It swelled afterwards to
enormous proportions in Dickens's work; but it really has its rise here.
Again, as in the case of the element of _diablerie_, it would be
possible to make technical exceptions in favour of _Pickwick_. Just as
there were quite inappropriate scraps of the gruesome element in
_Pickwick_, so there are quite inappropriate allusions to this other
topic in _Pickwick_. But nobody by merely reading _Pickwick_ would even
remember this topic; no one by merely reading _Pickwick_ would know what
this topic is; this third great subject of Dickens; this second great
subject of the Dickens of _Oliver Twist_.

This subject is social oppression. It is surely fair to say that no one
could have gathered from _Pickwick_ how this question boiled in the
blood of the author of _Pickwick_. There are, indeed, passage