s an enormous work. The
change is partly the disillusion produced by the unveiling of
capitalist civilization, but partly also Dickens's discovery of the
gulf between himself as a man of genius and the public. That he did
not realize this early is shown by the fact that he found out his
wife _before he married her_ as much too small for the job, and yet
plumbed the difference so inadequately that he married her thinking
he could go through with it. When the situation became intolerable,
he must have faced the fact that there was something more than
"incompatibilities" between him and the average man and woman. Little
Dorrit is written, like all the later books, frankly and somewhat
sadly, _de haut en bas_. In them Dickens recognizes that quite
everyday men are as grotesque as Bunsby. Sparkler, one of the most
extravagant of all his gargoyles, is an untouched photograph almost.
Wegg and Riderhood are sinister and terrifying because they are
simply real, which Squeers and Sikes are not. And please remark that
whilst Squeers and Sikes have their speeches written with anxious
verisimilitude (comparatively) Wegg says, "Man shrouds and grapple,
Mr. Venus, or she dies," and Riderhood describes Lightwood's sherry
(when retracting his confession) as, "I will not say a hocussed wine,
but a wine as was far from 'elthy for the mind." Dickens doesn't care
what he makes Wegg or Riderhood or Sparkler or Mr. F's aunt say,
because he knows them and has got them, and knows what matters and
what doesn't. Fledgeby, Lammle, Jerry Cruncher, Trabbs's boy, Wopsle,
etc. etc. are human beings as seen by a master. Swiveller and
Mantalini are human beings as seen by Trabbs's boy. Sometimes
Trabbs's boy has the happier touch. When I am told that young John
Chivery (whose epitaphs you ignore whilst quoting Mrs. Sapsea's)
would have gone barefoot through the prison against rules for little
Dorrit had it been paved with red hot ploughshares, I am not so
affected by his chivalry as by Swiveller's exclamation when he gets
the legacy--"For she (the Marchioness) shall walk in silk attire and
siller hae to spare." Edwin Drood is no good, in spite of the stone
throwing boy, Buzzard and Honeythunder. Dickens was a dead man before
he began it. Collins corrupted him with plots. And oh! the
Philistinism; the utter detachment from the great human heritage of