cause it
works in and in to its own centre and dies there. But a simple
character goes on for ever in a fresh interest and energy, because it
works out and out into the infinite universe. Mr. George Moore in France
is not by any means so interesting as Mrs. Lirriper in France; for she
is trying to find France and he is only trying to find George Moore.
Mrs. Lirriper is the female equivalent of Mr. Pickwick. Unlike Mrs.
Bardell (another and lesser landlady) she was fully worthy to be Mrs.
Pickwick. For in both cases the essential truth is the same; that
original innocence which alone deserves adventures and because it alone
can appreciate them. We have had Mr. Pickwick in England and we can
imagine him in France. We have had Mrs. Lirriper in France and we can
imagine her in Mesopotamia or in heaven. The subtle character in the
modern novels we cannot really imagine anywhere except in the suburbs or
in Limbo.

BLEAK HOUSE

_Bleak House_ is not certainly Dickens's best book; but perhaps it is
his best novel. Such a distinction is not a mere verbal trick; it has to
be remembered rather constantly in connection with his work. This
particular story represents the highest point of his intellectual
maturity. Maturity does not necessarily mean perfection. It is idle to
say that a mature potato is perfect; some people like new potatoes. A
mature potato is not perfect, but it is a mature potato; the mind of an
intelligent epicure may find it less adapted to his particular purpose;
but the mind of an intelligent potato would at once admit it as being,
beyond all doubt, a genuine, fully developed specimen of his own
particular species. The same is in some degree true even of literature.
We can say more or less when a human being has come to his full mental
growth, even if we go so far as to wish that he had never come to it.
Children are very much nicer than grown-up people; but there is such a
thing as growing up. When Dickens wrote _Bleak House_ he had grown up.

Like Napoleon, he had made his army on the march. He had walked in front
of his mob of aggressive characters as Napoleon did in front of the
half-baked battalions of the Revolution. And, like Napoleon, he won
battle after battle before he knew his own plan of campaign; like
Napoleon, he put the enemies' forces to rout before he had put his own
force into order. Like Napoleon, he had a victorious army almost before
he had an army. After his decisive victories Na