me proof that he had really very
little overstated the effect upon himself. Making allowance, which
sometimes he failed to do, for special peculiarities, and for the
excitability never absent when he had in hand an undertaking such as
_Copperfield_, I observed a nervous tendency to misgivings and
apprehensions to the last degree unusual with him, which seemed to make
the commonest things difficult; and though he stayed out his time, and
brought away nothing that his happier associations with the place and
its residents did not long survive, he never returned to Bonchurch.

In the month that remained he completed his fifth number, and with the
proof there came the reply to some questions of which I hardly remember
more than that they referred to doubts of mine; one being as to the
propriety of the kind of delusion he had first given to poor Mr.
Dick,[155] which I thought a little too farcical for that really
touching delineation of character. "Your suggestion is perfectly wise
and sound," he wrote back (22nd of August). "I have acted on it. I have
also, instead of the bull and china-shop delusion, given Dick the idea,
that, when the head of king Charles the First was cut off, some of the
trouble was taken out of it, and put into his (Dick's)". When he next
wrote, there was news very welcome to me for the pleasure to himself it
involved. "Browne has sketched an uncommonly characteristic and capital
Mr. Micawber for the next number. I hope the present number is a good
one. I hear nothing but pleasant accounts of the general satisfaction."
The same letter told me of an intention to go to Broadstairs, put aside
by doubtful reports of its sanitary condition; but it will be seen
presently that there was another graver interruption. With his work well
off his hands, however, he had been getting on better where he was; and
they had all been very merry. "Yes," he said, writing after a couple of
days (23rd of September), "we have been sufficiently rollicking since I
finished the number; and have had great games at rounders every
afternoon, with all Bonchurch looking on; but I begin to long for a
little peace and solitude. And now for my less pleasing piece of news.
The sea has been running very high, and Leech, while bathing, was
knocked over by a bad blow from a great wave on the forehead. He is in
bed, and had twenty of his namesakes on his temples this morning. When I
heard of him just now, he was asleep--which he had not been