are mostly
people whose position is explicable in many easy ways. The vast majority
of the fastidious critics have, in the quite strict and solid sense of
the words, never read Dickens at all; hence their opposition is due to
and inspired by a hearty innocence which will certainly make them
enthusiastic Dickensians if they ever, by some accident, happen to read
him. In other cases it is due to a certain habit of reading books under
the eye of a conventional critic, admiring what we expect to admire,
regretting what we are told to regret, waiting for Mr. Bumble to admire
him, waiting for Little Nell to despise her. Yet again, of course, it is
sometimes due to that basest of all artistic indulgences (certainly far
baser than the pleasure of absinthe or the pleasure of opium), the
pleasure of appreciating works of art which ordinary men cannot
appreciate. Surely the vilest point of human vanity is exactly that; to
ask to be admired for admiring what your admirers do not admire. But
whatever be the reason, whether rude or subtle, which has prevented any
particular man from personally admiring Dickens, there is in connection
with a book like _Bleak House_ something that may be called a solid and
impressive challenge. Let anyone who thinks that Dickens could not
describe the semi-tones and the abrupt instincts of real human nature
simply take the trouble to read the stretch of chapters which detail the
way in which Carstone's mind grew gradually morbid about his chances in
Chancery. Let him note the manner in which the mere masculinity of
Carstone is caught; how as he grows more mad he grows more logical, nay,
more rational. Good women who love him come to him, and point out the
fact that Jarndyce is a good man, a fact to them solid like an object of
the senses. In answer he asks them to understand his position. He does
not say this; he does not say that. He only urges that Jarndyce may have
become cynical in the affair in the same sense that he himself may have
become cynical in the affair. He is always a man; that is to say, he is
always unanswerable, always wrong. The passionate certainty of the woman
beats itself like battering waves against the thin smooth wall of his
insane consistency. I repeat: let any one who thinks that Dickens was a
gross and indelicate artist read that part of the book. If Dickens had
been the clumsy journalist that such people represent, he never could
have written such an episode at all. A clumsy