followed him about everywhere; that while he was writing “Oliver Twist” Fagin the Jew would never let him rest, even in his most retired moments; that at midnight and in the morning, on the sea and on the land, Tiny Tim and Little Bob Cratchit were ever tugging at his coat-sleeve, as if impatient for him to get back to his desk and continue the story of their lives.  But he said after he had published several books, and saw what serious demands his characters were accustomed to make for the constant attention of his already overtasked brain, he resolved that the phantom individuals should no longer intrude on his hours of recreation and rest, but that when he closed the door of his study he would shut them all in, and only meet them again when he came back to resume his task.  That force of will with which he was so pre-eminently endowed enabled him to ignore these manifold existences till he chose to renew their acquaintance.  He said, also, that when the children of his brain had once been launched, free and clear of him, into the world, they would sometimes turn up in the most unexpected manner to look their father in the face.

Sometimes he would pull my arm while we were walking together and whisper, “Let us avoid Mr. Pumblechook, who is crossing the street to meet us”; or, “Mr. Micawber is coming; let us turn down this alley to get out of his way.”  He always seemed to enjoy the fun of his comic people, and had unceasing mirth over Mr. Pickwick’s misadventures.  In answer one day to a question, prompted by psychological curiosity, if he ever dreamed of any of his characters, his reply was, “Never; and I am convinced that no writer (judging from my own experience, which cannot be altogether singular, but must be a type of the experience of others) has ever dreamed of the creatures of his own imagination.  It would,” he went on to say, “be like a man’s dreaming of meeting himself, which is clearly an impossibility.  Things exterior to one’s self must always be the basis of dreams.”  The growing up of characters in his mind never lost for him a sense of the marvellous.  “What an unfathomable mystery there is in it all!” he said one day.  Taking up a wineglass, he continued:  “Suppose I choose to call this a character, fancy it a man, endue it with certain qualities; and soon the fine filmy webs of thought, almost impalpable, coming from every direction, we know not whence, spin and weave about it, until it assumes form and beauty, and becomes instinct with life.”

In society Dickens rarely referred to the traits and characteristics of people he had known; but during a long walk in the country he delighted to recall and describe the peculiarities, eccentric and otherwise, of dead and gone as well as living friends.  Then Sydney Smith and Jeffrey and Christopher North and Talfourd and Hood and Rogers seemed to live over again in his vivid reproductions, made so impressive by his marvellous memory and imagination.  As he walked rapidly along the road, he appeared to enjoy the keen zest of his companion in the numerous impersonations with which he was indulging him.