the greatness of one Bigod, who had been as a king among those who by
process of loan obtain possession of other people's money. Shift the
line of division a little, so that instead of separating borrowers and
lenders, it separates those who pay their debts from those who do not
pay them, and then Dickens the elder may succeed to something of
Bigod's kingship. He was of the great race of debtors, possessing
especially that _ideal_ quality of mind on which Lamb laid such
stress. Imagination played the very mischief with him. He had
evidently little grasp of fact, and moved in a kind of haze, through
which all clear outlines would show blurred and unreal.
Sometimes--most often, perhaps--that haze would be irradiated with
sanguine visionary hopes and expectations. Sometimes it would be
fitfully darkened with all the horrors of despair. But whether in
gloom or gleam, the realities of his position would be lost. He never,
certainly, contracted a debt which he did not mean honourably to pay.
But either he had never possessed the faculty of forming a just
estimate of future possibilities, or else, through the indulgence of
what may be called a vague habit of thought, he had lost the power of
seeing things as they are. Thus all his excellencies and good gifts
were neutralized at this time, so far as his family were concerned,
and went for practically nothing. He was, according to his son's
testimony, full of industry, most conscientious in the discharge of
any business, unwearying in loving patience and solicitude when those
bound to him by blood or friendship were ill or in trouble, "as
kind-hearted and generous a man as ever lived in the world." Yet as
debts accumulated, and accommodation bills shed their baleful shadow
on his life, and duns grew many and furious, he became altogether
immersed in mean money troubles, and suffered the son who was to shed
such lustre on his name to remain for a time without the means of
learning, and to sink first into a little household drudge, and then