The clergy—Tractarian, Erastian, Low Churchmen—you faithfully paint Reveal to our view no SEBASTIAN, No martyr, and hardly a saint; Though perhaps, by so freely discarding Preferment and riches and fame, The guileless and good _Mr. Harding_ Is worthy the name. You looked upon country and city With kindly and tolerant eyes; You never set out to be witty, Though seldom you failed to be wise; You were neither ornate nor elliptic, But most unaffectedly shrewd, For the art that is consciously cryptic You strictly tabooed. Your outlook is certainly narrowed To lives that are never sublime; Our hearts are not haunted or harrowed With desperate anguish or crime; But a mutual trust is for ever ’Twixt author and reader maintained, And we know all along we shall never Be wantonly pained. “BLEAK HOUSE” There was a time when, posing as a purist, I thought it fine to criticize and crab CHARLES DICKENS as a crude caricaturist, Who laid his colours on too thick and slab, Who lacked the temper of a judge or jurist And made life lurid when it should be drab; In short I branded as a brilliant dauber The man who gave us _Pecksniff_ and _Micawber_. True, there are blots—like spots upon the sun— And genius, lavish of imagination, In sheer profusion always has outrun The bounds of strict artistic concentration; But when detraction’s worst is said and done, How much remains for fervent admiration, How much that never palls or wounds or sickens (Unlike some moderns) in great generous DICKENS! And in _Bleak House_, the culminating story That marks the zenith of his swift career, The sovereign qualities that won him glory, As writer and reformer, all appear: Righteous resentment of abuses hoary, Of pomp and cant, self-centred, insincere; And burning sympathy that glows unchecked For those who sit in darkness and neglect. Who, if his heart be not of steel or stone, Can read unmoved of _Charley_ or of _Jo_; Of dear _Miss Flite_, who, though her wits be flown, Has kept a soul as pure as driven snow; Of the fierce “man from Shropshire” overthrown By Law’s delays; of _Caddy’s_ inky woe; Or of the alternating fits and fluster That harass the unhappy slavey, _Guster_? And there are scores of characters so vivid They make us friends or enemies for life: _Hortense_, half-tamed she-wolf, with envy livid; The patient _Snagsby_ and his shrewish wife; The amorous _Guppy_, who poor _Esther_ chivvied; Tempestuous _Boythorn_, revelling in strife; _Skimpole_, the honey-tongued artistic cadger; And that tremendous woman, _Mrs. Badger_.