been the strain of incessant and exaggerated intellectual
labour. He had not an easy time; and on top of that (or perhaps rather
at the bottom of it) he had not an easy nature. Not only did his life
necessitate work, but his character necessitated worry about work; and
that combination is always one which is very dangerous to the
temperament which is exposed to it. The only people who ought to be
allowed to work are the people who are able to shirk. The only people
who ought to be allowed to worry are the people who have nothing to
worry about. When the two are combined, as they were in Dickens, you are
very likely to have at least one collapse. _Little Dorrit_ is a very
interesting, sincere, and fascinating book. But for all that, I fancy
it is the one collapse.

The complete proof of this depression may be difficult to advance;
because it will be urged, and entirely with reason, that the actual
examples of it are artistic and appropriate. Dickens, the Gissing school
will say, was here pointing out certain sad truths of psychology; can
any one say that he ought not to point them out? That may be; in any
case, to explain depression is not to remove it. But the instances of
this more sombre quality of which I have spoken are not very hard to
find. The thing can easily be seen by comparing a book like _Little
Dorrit_ with a book like _David Copperfield_. David Copperfield and
Arthur Clennam have both been brought up in unhappy homes, under bitter
guardians and a black, disheartening religion. It is the whole point of
David Copperfield that he has broken out of a Calvinistic tyranny which
he cannot forgive. But it is the whole point of Arthur Clennam that he
has not broken out of the Calvinistic tyranny, but is still under its
shadow. Copperfield has come from a gloomy childhood; Clennam, though
forty years old, is still in a gloomy childhood. When David meets the
Murdstones again it is to defy them with the health and hilarious anger
that go with his happy delirium about Dora. But when Clennam re-enters
his sepulchral house there is a weight upon his soul which makes it
impossible for him to answer, with any spirit, the morbidities of his
mother, or even the grotesque interferences of Mr. Flintwinch. This is
only another example of the same quality which makes the Dickens of
_Little Dorrit_ insist on the degradation of the debtor, while the
Dickens of _David Copperfield_ insisted on his splendid
irresponsibility, his esse