lculated to make one doubt
death itself, to feel that sublime doubt which has created all
religion--the doubt that found death incredible. Edwin Drood may or may
not have really died; but surely Dickens did not really die. Surely our
real detective liveth and shall appear in the latter days of the earth.
For a finished tale may give a man immortality in the light and literary
sense; but an unfinished tale suggests another immortality, more
essential and more strange.

MASTER HUMPHREY'S CLOCK

It is quite indispensable to include a criticism of _Master Humphrey's
Clock_ in any survey of Dickens, although it is not one of the books of
which his admirers would chiefly boast; although perhaps it is almost
the only one of which he would not have boasted himself. As a triumph of
Dickens, at least, it is not of great importance. But as a sample of
Dickens it happens to be of quite remarkable importance. The very fact
that it is for the most part somewhat more level and even monotonous
than most of his creations, makes us realise, as it were, against what
level and monotony those creations commonly stand out. This book is the
background of his mind. It is the basis and minimum of him which was
always there. Alone, of all written things, this shows how he felt when
he was not writing. Dickens might have written it in his sleep. That is
to say, it is written by a sluggish Dickens, a half automatic Dickens, a
dreaming and drifting Dickens; but still by the enduring Dickens.

But this truth can only be made evident by beginning nearer to the root
of the matter. _Nicholas Nickleby_ had just completed, or, to speak more
strictly, confirmed, the popularity of the young author; wonderful as
_Pickwick_ was it might have been a nine days' wonder; _Oliver Twist_
had been powerful but painful; it was _Nicholas Nickleby_ that proved
the man to be a great productive force of which one could ask more, of
which one could ask all things. His publishers, Chapman and Hall, seem
to have taken at about this point that step which sooner or later most
publishers do take with regard to a half successful man who is becoming
wholly successful. Instead of asking him for something, they asked him
for anything. They made him, so to speak, the editor of his own works.
And indeed it is literally as the editor of his own works that he next
appears; for the next thing to which he proposes to put his name is not
a novel, but for all practical purposes