In the idle mysteries which are made to surround Oliver, and in the incredible weakness of what is meant to be the darkest part of the story, we have pure stage-work. Chapter xvii. contains a passage ridiculing the melodrama of the time, a tissue of medieval villanies; what Dickens himself did, in these worst moments of his invention, was to use the motives of standard melodrama on a contemporary subject. Even the dialogue occasionally proves this. "Wolves tear your throats!' growls Bill Sikes, fleeing from his pursuers—a strange exclamation for a London burglar. And again, when brought to bay after the murder he calls one of the horrified thieves "this screeching Hell-babe"—phrase natural enough on the boards of the Adelphi Theatre, but incongruous in a London slum. That part of the book in which Rose Maylie and her lover appear smacks rather of the circulating library than of the stage. We read of Rose in distress that "a heavy wildness came over her soft blue eyes." I cannot remember that Dickens was ever again guilty of lapses such as these; but the theatric vice appears in his construction to the end.
In the years 1838 and 1839 he did far too much. Nicholas Nickleby was begun long before the end of Oliver Twist, as Oliver was
