cept a biographical connection.

A picaresque novel is only a very eventful biography; but the opening of
_Bleak House_ is quite another business altogether. It is admirable in
quite another way. The description of the fog in the first chapter of
_Bleak House_ is good in itself; but it is not merely good in itself,
like the description of the wind in the opening of _Martin Chuzzlewit_;
it is also good in the sense that Maeterlinck is good; it is what the
modern people call an atmosphere. Dickens begins in the Chancery fog
because he means to end in the Chancery fog. He did not begin in the
Chuzzlewit wind because he meant to end in it; he began in it because it
was a good beginning. This is perhaps the best short way of stating the
peculiarity of the position of _Bleak House_. In this _Bleak House_
beginning we have the feeling that it is not only a beginning; we have
the feeling that the author sees the conclusion and the whole. The
beginning is alpha and omega: the beginning and the end. He means that
all the characters and all the events shall be read through the smoky
colours of that sinister and unnatural vapour.

The same is true throughout the whole tale; the whole tale is symbolic
and crowded with symbols. Miss Flite is a funny character, like Miss La
Creevy, but Miss La Creevy means only Miss La Creevy. Miss Flite means
Chancery. The rag-and-bone man, Krook, is a powerful grotesque; so is
Quilp; but in the story Quilp only means Quilp; Krook means Chancery.
Rick Carstone is a kind and tragic figure, like Sidney Carton; but
Sidney Carton only means the tragedy of human nature; Rick Carstone
means the tragedy of Chancery. Little Jo dies pathetically like Little
Paul; but for the death of Little Paul we can only blame Dickens; for
the death of Little Jo we blame Chancery. Thus the artistic unity of the
book, compared to all the author's earlier novels, is satisfying, almost
suffocating. There is the _motif_, and again the _motif_. Almost
everything is calculated to assert and re-assert the savage morality of
Dickens's protest against a particular social evil. The whole theme is
that which another Englishman as jovial as Dickens defined shortly and
finally as the law's delay. The fog of the first chapter never lifts.

In this twilight he traced wonderful shapes. Those people who fancy that
Dickens was a mere clown; that he could not describe anything delicate
or deadly in the human character,--those who fancy this