othing in all his writings more perfect, for
what it shows of his best qualities, than the life and death of Paul
Dombey. The comedy is admirable; nothing strained, everything hearty and
wholesome in the laughter and fun; all who contribute to the mirth,
Doctor Blimber and his pupils, Mr. Toots, the Chicks and the Toodles,
Miss Tox and the Major, Paul and Mrs. Pipchin, up to his highest mark;
and the serious scenes never falling short of it, from the death of
Paul's mother in the first number, to that of Paul himself in the fifth,
which, as a writer of genius with hardly exaggeration said, threw a
whole nation into mourning. But see how eagerly this fine writer takes
every suggestion, how little of self-esteem and self-sufficiency there
is, with what a consciousness of the tendency of his humour to
exuberance he surrenders what is needful to restrain it, and of what
small account to him is any special piece of work in his care and his
considerateness for the general design. I think of Ben Jonson's
experience of the greatest of all writers. "He was indeed honest, and of
an open and free nature; had an excellent phantasy, brave notions and
gentle expressions; wherein he flowed with that facility, that sometimes
it was necessary he should be stopped." Who it was that stopped _him_,
and the ease of doing it, no one will doubt. Whether he, as well as the
writer of later time, might not with more advantage have been left
alone, will be the only question.

Thus ran the letter of the 3rd of October: "Miss Tox's colony I will
smash. Walter's allusion to Carker (would you take it _all_ out?) shall
be dele'd. Of course, you understand the man! I turned that speech over
in my mind; but I thought it natural that a boy should run on, with such
a subject, under the circumstances: having the matter so presented to
him. . . . I thought of the possibility of malice on christening points of
faith, and put the drag on as I wrote. Where would you make the
insertion, and to what effect? _That_ shall be done too. I want you to
think the number sufficiently good stoutly to back up the first. It
occurs to me--might not your doubt about the christening be a reason for
not making the ceremony the subject of an illustration? Just turn this
over. Again: if I could do it (I shall have leisure to consider the
possibility before I begin), do you think it would be advisable to make
number three a kind of half-way house between Paul's infancy, and his
b