There were certain books of which Dickens liked to talk during his walks Among his especial favorites were the writings of Cobbett, DeQuincey, the Lectures on Moral Philosophy by Sydney Smith, and Carlyle’s French Revolution.  Of this latter Dickens said it was the book of all others which he read perpetually and of which he never tired,—­the book which always appeared more imaginative in proportion to the fresh imagination he brought to it, a book for inexhaustibleness to be placed before every other book.  When writing the “Tale of Two Cities,” he asked Carlyle if he might see one of the works to which he referred in his history; whereupon Carlyle packed up and sent down to Gad’s Hill all his reference volumes, and Dickens read them faithfully.  But the more he read the more he was astonished to find how the facts had passed through the alembic of Carlyle’s brain and had come out and fitted themselves, each as a part of one great whole, making a compact result, indestructible and unrivalled; and he always found himself turning away from the books of reference, and re-reading with increased wonder this marvellous new growth.  There were certain books particularly hateful to him, and of which he never spoke except in terms of most ludicrous raillery.  Mr. Barlow, in “Sandford and Merton,” he said was the favorite enemy of his boyhood and his first experience of a bore.  He had an almost supernatural hatred for Barlow, “because he was so very instructive, and always hinting doubts with regard to the veracity of ‘Sindbad the Sailor,’ and had no belief whatever in ‘The Wonderful Lamp’ or ‘The Enchanted Horse.’” Dickens rattling his mental cane over the head of Mr. Barlow was as much better than any play as can be well imagined.  He gloried in many of Hood’s poems, especially in that biting Ode to Rae Wilson, and he would gesticulate with a fine fervor the lines,

    “...the hypocrites who ope Heaven’s door
      Obsequious to the sinful man of riches,—­
    But put the wicked, naked, bare-legged poor
      In parish stocks instead of breeches.”

One of his favorite books was Pepys’s Diary, the curious discovery of the key to which, and the odd characteristics of its writer, were a never-failing source of interest and amusement to him.  The vision of Pepys hanging round the door of the theatre, hoping for an invitation to go in, not being able to keep away in spite of a promise he had made to himself that he would spend no more money foolishly, delighted him.  Speaking one day of Gray, the author of the Elegy, he said:  “No poet ever came walking down to posterity with so small a book under his arm.”  He preferred Smollett to Fielding, putting “Peregrine Pickle” above “Tom Jones.”  Of the best novels by his contemporaries he always spoke with warm commendation, and “Griffith Gaunt” he thought a production of very high merit.  He was “hospitable to the thought” of all writers who were really in earnest, but at the first exhibition of floundering or inexactness he became an unbeliever.  People with dislocated understandings he had no tolerance for.