they are still adventures and
not merely events; they are still things met on a road. The facts of the
story fall away from David as such facts do fall away from a traveller
walking fast. We are more likely perhaps, to pass by Mr. Creakle's
school than to pass by Mrs. Jarley's wax-works. The only point is that
we should pass by both of them. Up to this point in Dickens's
development, his novel, however true, is still picaresque; his hero
never really rests anywhere in the story. No one seems really to know
where Mr. Pickwick lived. Here he has no abiding city.

When we come to _Bleak House_, we come to a change in artistic
structure. The thing is no longer a string of incidents; it is a cycle
of incidents. It returns upon itself; it has recurrent melody and
poetic justice; it has artistic constancy and artistic revenge. It
preserves the unities; even to some extent it preserves the unities of
time and place. The story circles round two or three symbolic places; it
does not go straggling irregularly all over England like one of Mr.
Pickwick's coaches. People go from one place to another place; but not
from one place to another place on the road to everywhere else. Mr.
Jarndyce goes from Bleak House to visit Mr. Boythorn; but he comes back
to Bleak House. Miss Clare and Miss Summerson go from Bleak House to
visit Mr. and Mrs. Bayham Badger; but they come back to Bleak House. The
whole story strays from Bleak House and plunges into the foul fogs of
Chancery and the autumn mists of Chesney Wold; but the whole story comes
back to Bleak House. The domestic title is appropriate; it is a
permanent address.

Dickens's openings are almost always good; but the opening of _Bleak
House_ is good in a quite new and striking sense. Nothing could be
better, for instance, than the first foolish chapter about the genealogy
of the Chuzzlewits; but it has nothing to do with the Chuzzlewits.
Nothing could be better than the first chapter of _David Copperfield_;
the breezy entrance and banging exit of Miss Betsy Trotwood. But if
there is ultimately any crisis or serious subject-matter of _David
Copperfield_, it is the marred marriage with Dora, the final return to
Agnes; and all this is in no way involved in the highly-amusing fact
that his aunt expected him to be a girl. We may repeat that the matter
is picaresque. The story begins in one place and ends in another place,
and there is no real connection between the beginning and the end
ex