1838. child. without significance in regard to it, from the LONDON: parent's familiar epistle. It describes the child Parent's as aged two years and two months (so long had epistle to he watched over it); gives sundry pieces of advice concerning its circulation, and the importance thereto of light and pleasant articles of food; and concludes, after some general moralizing on the shiftings and changes of this world having taken so wonderful a turn that mail-coach guards were become no longer judges of horse-flesh: "I reap "no gain or profit by parting from you, nor will "any conveyance of your property be required, "for in this respect you have always been literally "Bentley's Miscellany and never mine.” LONDON: Doubts of Dispelled. CHAPTER IX. NICHOLAS NICKLEBY. 1838 AND 1839. I WELL recollect the doubt there was, mixed with the eager expectation which the announcement of his second serial story had awakened, whether the event would justify all that interest; and if indeed it were possible that the young writer could continue to walk steadily under the burthen of the popularity laid upon him. The first number dispersed this cloud of a question in a burst of sunshine; and as much of the gaiety of nations as had been eclipsed by old Mr. Pickwick's voluntary exile to Dulwich, was restored by the cheerful confidence with which young Mr. Nicholas Nickleby stepped into his shoes. Everything that had given charm to the first book was here, with more attention to the important requisite of a story, and more wealth as well as truth of character. How this was poured forth in each successive 1838-9. number, it hardly needs that I should tell. To LONDON: recall it now, is to talk of what since has so interwoven itself with common speech and thought, as to have become almost part of the daily life of us all. It was well said of him, soon after his death, in mentioning how largely his compositions had furnished one of the chief sources of intellectual enjoyment to this generation, that his language had become part of the language of every class and rank of his countrymen, and his characters were a portion of our contemporaries. "It Remark of the Saturday "seems scarcely possible," continued this other- Review. wise not too indulgent commentator, "to believe "that there never were any such persons as Mr. "Pickwick and Mrs. Nickleby and Mrs. Gamp. "They are to us not only types of English life, "but types actually existing. They at once revealed "the existence of such people, and made them "thoroughly comprehensible. They were not "studies of persons, but persons. And yet they "were idealized in the sense that the reader did Idealization "not think that they were drawn from the life. "They were alive; they were themselves." The writer might have added that this is proper to all true masters of fiction who work in the higher regions of their calling. Nothing certainly could express better what of the real. 1838-9. Characters self-revealed. LONDON the new book was at this time making manifest to its thousands of readers; not simply an astonishing variety in the creations of character, but what it was that made these creations so real; not merely the writer's wealth of genius, but the secret and form of his art. There never was any one who had less need to talk about his characters, because 'never were characters so surely revealed by themselves; and it was thus their reality made itself felt at once. They talked so well that everybody took to repeating what they said, as the writer just quoted has pointed out; and the sayings being the constituent elements of the characters, these also of themselves became part of the public. This, which must always be a novelist's highest achievement, was the art carried to exquisite perfection on a more limited stage by Miss Austen; and, under widely different conditions both of art and work, it was pre-eminently that of Dickens. I told him, on reading the first Miss Bates dialogue of Mrs. Nickleby and Miss Knag, that he had been lately reading Miss Bates in Emma, but I found that he had not at this time made the acquaintance of that fine writer. and Mrs. Nickleby. Who that recollects the numbers of Nickleby as they appeared can have forgotten how each number added to the general enjoyment? All LONDON! 1838-9. that had given Pickwick its vast popularity, the overflowing mirth, hearty exuberance of humour, and genial kindliness of satire, had here the advantage of a better laid design, more connected incidents, and greater precision of character. Everybody seemed immediately to know the Nickleby family as well as his own. Dotheboys, Dotheboys. with all that rendered it, like a piece by Hogarth, both ludicrous and terrible, became a household word. Successive groups of Mantalinis, Kenwigses, Crummleses, introduced each its little world of reality, lighted up everywhere with truth and life, with capital observation, the quaintest drollery, and quite boundless mirth and fun. The brothers Cheeryble brought with them all the charities. With Smike came the first of those pathetic pic- Smike and tures that filled the world with pity for what Noggs. cruelty, ignorance, or neglect may inflict upon the young. And Newman Noggs ushered in that class of the creatures of his fancy in which he took himself perhaps the most delight, and which the oftener he dealt with the more he seemed to know how to vary and render attractive; gentlemen by A favourite nature, however shocking bad their hats or un- character. genteel their dialects; philosophers of modest endurance, and needy but most respectable coats; a sort of humble angels of sympathy and selfThe Life of Charles Dickens. I. 14 Newman type of |