ntial emancipation. Imprisonments passed over
Micawber like summer clouds. But the imprisonment in _Little Dorrit_ is
like a complete natural climate and environment; it has positively
modified the shapes and functions of the animals that dwell in it. A
horrible thing has happened to Dickens; he has almost become an
Evolutionist. Worse still, in studying the Calvinism of Mrs. Clennam's
house, he has almost become a Calvinist. He half believes (as do some of
the modern scientists) that there is really such a thing as "a child of
wrath," that a man on whom such an early shadow had fallen could never
shake it off. For ancient Calvinism and modern Evolutionism are
essentially the same things. They are both ingenious logical blasphemies
against the dignity and liberty of the human soul.

The workmanship of the book in detail is often extremely good. The one
passage in the older and heartier Dickens manner (I mean the description
of the Circumlocution Office) is beyond praise. It is a complete picture
of the way England is actually governed at this moment. The very core of
our politics is expressed in the light and easy young Barnacle who told
Clennam with a kindly frankness that he, Clennam, would "never go on
with it." Dickens hit the mark so that the bell rang when he made all
the lower officials, who were cads, tell Clennam coldly that his claim
was absurd, until the last official, who is a gentleman, tells him
genially that the whole business is absurd. Even here, perhaps, there is
something more than the old exuberant derision of Dickens; there is a
touch of experience that verges on scepticism. Everywhere else,
certainly, there is the note which I have called Calvinistic; especially
in the predestined passion of Tattycoram or the incurable cruelty of
Miss Wade. Even Little Dorrit herself had, we are told, one stain from
her prison experience; and it is spoken of like a bodily stain; like
something that cannot be washed away.

There is no denying that this is Dickens's dark moment. It adds
enormously to the value of his general view of life that such a dark
moment came. He did what all the heroes and all the really happy men
have done; he descended into Hell. Nor is it irreverent to continue the
quotation from the Creed, for in the next book he was to write he was to
break out of all these dreams of fate and failure, and with his highest
voice to speak of the triumph of the weak of this world. His next book
was to leav