energy, pluck, essential goodness of heart, fertility of resource, abundance of animal spirits, and also an imagination of a peculiar kind, in which wit enters as a main ingredient.  And having noted how highly vitalized were the characters in “Pickwick,” I think the first readers might also fairly be expected to note,—­and, in fact, it is clear from Dickens’ preface that they did note—­how greatly the book increased in scope and power as it proceeded.  The beginning was conceived almost in a spirit of farce.  The incidents and adventures had scarcely any other object than to create amusement.  Mr. Pickwick himself appeared on the scene with fantastic honours and the badge of absurdity, as “the man who had traced to their source the mighty ponds of Hampstead, and agitated the scientific world with the Theory of Tittlebats.”  But in all this there is a gradual change.  Mr. Pickwick is presented to us latterly as an exceedingly sound-headed as well as sound-hearted old gentleman, whom we should never think of associating with the sources of Hampstead Ponds or any other folly.  While in such scenes as those at the Fleet Prison, the author is clearly endeavouring to do much more than raise a laugh.  He is sounding the deeper, more tragic chords in human feeling.

Ah, if we add to all this—­to the freshness, the “go,” the good spirits, the keen observation, the graphic painting, the humour, the vitality of the characters, the gradual development of power—­if we add to all this that something which is in all, and greater than all, viz., genius, and genius of a highly popular kind, then we shall have no difficulty in understanding why everybody read “Pickwick,” and how it came to pass that its publishers made some L20,000 by a work that they had once thought of abandoning as worthless.[12]

FOOTNOTES: 

[10] See the Letters published by Chapman and Hall.

[11] It was finished in January, 1837, and not published till six months afterwards.

[12] They acknowledged to Dickens that they had made L14,000 by the sale of the monthly parts alone.

CHAPTER IV.

Dickens was not at all the man to rest on his oars while “Pickwick” was giving such a magnificent impetus to the boat that contained his fortunes.  The amount of work which he accomplished in the years 1836, 1837, 1838, and 1839 is, if we consider its quality, amazing.  “Pickwick,” as we have seen, was begun with the first of these years, and its publication continued till the November of 1837.  Independently of his work on “Pickwick,” he was, in the year 1836, engaged in the arduous profession of a reporter till the close of the parliamentary session, and also wrote a pamphlet on Sabbatarianism, a farce in two acts, “The Strange Gentleman,” for the St. James’s Theatre, and a comic opera, “The Village Coquettes,” which was set to music by Hullah.  With the very commencement