of dark things; all healthy men do that. It is when he dwells
on the darkness of bright things that we have reason to fear some
disease of the emotions. There must really have been some depression
when a man can only see the sad side of flowers or the sad side of
holidays or the sad side of wine. And there must be some depression of
an uncommonly dark and genuine character when a man has reached such a
point that he can see only the sad side of Mr. Wilkins Micawber.

Yet this is in reality what had happened to Dickens about this time.
Staring at Wilkins Micawber he could see only the weakness and the
tragedy that was made possible by his indifference, his indulgence, and
his bravado. He had already indeed been slightly moved towards this
study of the feebleness and ruin of the old epicurean type with which he
had once sympathised, the type of Bob Sawyer or Dick Swiveller. He had
already attacked the evil of it in _Bleak House_ in the character of
Harold Skimpole, with its essentially cowardly carelessness and its
highly selfish communism. Nevertheless, as I have said before, it must
have been no small degree of actual melancholia which led Dickens to
look for a lesson of disaster and slavery in the very same career from
which he had once taught lessons of continual recuperation and a kind of
fantastic freedom. There must have been at this time some melancholy
behind the writings. There must have existed on this earth at the time
that portent and paradox--a somewhat depressed Dickens.

Perhaps it was a reminiscence of that metaphorical proverb which tells
us that "truth lies at the bottom of a well." Perhaps these people
thought that the only way to find truth in the well was to drown
oneself. But on whatever thin theoretic basis, the type and period of
George Gissing did certainly consider that Dickens, so far as he went,
was all the worse for the optimism of the story of Micawber; hence it is
not unnatural that they should think him all the better for the
comparative pessimism of the story of _Little Dorrit_. The very things
in the tale that would naturally displease the ordinary admirers of
Dickens, are the things which would naturally please a man like George
Gissing. There are many of these things, but one of them emerges
pre-eminent and unmistakable. This is the fact that when all is said and
done the main business of the story of _Little Dorrit_ is to describe
the victory of circumstances over a soul. The circums