cup of benevolent rejoicing. What man save Dickens ever dared so much; what man will ever find the courage to strike that note again?
It is necessary to bear in mind that these novels appeared in monthly parts—twenty of them—and that the author began publishing with only three or four parts completed. Such a mode of writing accounts for many things. Dickens admitted certain disadvantages, but held to the end that this was still the best way of pursuing his art. Of course the novel became an improvisation. In beginning Chuzzlewit, he had no intention whatever of sending his hero to America; the resolve was taken, suddenly, when a declining sale proved that the monthly instalments were not proving so attractive as usual. Impossible ever to make changes in the early chapters of a story, however urgently the artist's conscience demanded it; impossible, in Dickens's case, to see mentally as a whole the work on which he was engaged. What he had written, he had written; it had to serve its purpose. One can only lament that such were the defects of his inimitable qualities.
The next great book was not finished till 1848; meanwhile there had been travel and residence on the Continent; a bright chapter
