>if you’re struggling with the opening of “Bleak House,” you can ask for it to be rewritten using easier, more modern English. “Gas looming through the fog in divers places in the streets, much as the sun may, from the spongey fields, be seen to loom by husbandman and ploughboy,” Dickens wrote. Claude takes a more direct path: “Gas lamps glow dimly through the fog at various spots throughout the streets, much like how the sun might appear to farmers working in misty fields.”

As a Dickens-appreciator myself (and Bleak House a particular favorite) that sends a wave of nausea over me. Simpler, in this case, seems worse, not better, because Dickens wasn't writing simply to pass along information.