e
character than that gesture with which Quilp punches his own face with
his own fist. It is indeed a perfect symbol; for Quilp is always
fighting himself for want of anybody else. He is energy, and energy by
itself is always suicidal; he is that primordial energy which tears and
which destroys itself.

BARNABY RUDGE

_Barnaby Rudge_ was written by Dickens in the spring and first flowing
tide of his popularity; it came immediately after _The Old Curiosity
Shop_, and only a short time after _Pickwick_. Dickens was one of those
rare but often very sincere men in whom the high moment of success
almost coincides with the high moment of youth. The calls upon him at
this time were insistent and overwhelming; this necessarily happens at a
certain stage of a successful writer's career. He was just successful
enough to invite offers and not successful enough to reject them. At the
beginning of his career he could throw himself into _Pickwick_ because
there was nothing else to throw himself into. At the end of his life he
could throw himself into _A Tale of Two Cities_, because he refused to
throw himself into anything else. But there was an intervening period,
early in his life, when there was almost too much work for his
imagination, and yet not quite enough work for his housekeeping. To this
period _Barnaby Rudge_ belongs. And it is a curious tribute to the quite
curious greatness of Dickens that in this period of youthful strain we
do not feel the strain but feel only the youth. His own amazing wish to
write equalled or outstripped even his readers' amazing wish to read.
Working too hard did not cure him of his abstract love of work.
Unreasonable publishers asked him to write ten novels at once; but he
wanted to write twenty novels at once. All this period is strangely full
of his own sense at once of fertility and of futility; he did work which
no one else could have done, and yet he could not be certain as yet that
he was anybody.

_Barnaby Rudge_ marks this epoch because it marks the fact that he is
still confused about what kind of person he is going to be. He has
already struck the note of the normal romance in _Nicholas Nickleby_; he
has already created some of his highest comic characters in _Pickwick_
and _The Old Curiosity Shop_, but here he betrays the fact that it is
still a question what ultimate guide he shall follow. _Barnaby Rudge_ is
a romantic, historical novel. Its design reminds us of Scott; some