(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,