ssions_ might open Nos. 1 and 2. Now, WHAT SAY YOU?"

What I said is to be inferred from what he wrote back on the 28th. "The
_Survey_ has been my favourite from the first. Kate picked it out from
the rest, without my saying anything about it. Georgy too. You hit upon
it, on the first glance. Therefore I have no doubt that it is
indisputably the best title; and I will stick to it." There was a change
nevertheless. His completion of the second chapter defined to himself,
more clearly than before, the character of the book; and the propriety
of rejecting everything not strictly personal from the name given to it.
The words proposed, therefore, became ultimately these only: "The
Personal History, Adventures, Experience, and Observation of David
Copperfield the Younger, of Blunderstone Rookery, which he never meant
to be published on any account." And the letter which told me that with
this name it was finally to be launched on the first of May, told me
also (19th April) the difficulties that still beset him at the opening.
"My hand is out in the matter of _Copperfield_. To-day and yesterday I
have done nothing. Though I know what I want to do, I am lumbering on
like a stage-waggon. I can't even dine at the Temple to-day, I feel it
so important to stick at it this evening, and make some head. I am quite
aground; quite a literary Benedict, as he appeared when his heels
wouldn't stay upon the carpet; and the long Copperfieldian perspective
looks snowy and thick, this fine morning."[159] The allusion was to a
dinner at his house the night before; when not only Rogers had to be
borne out, having fallen sick at the table, but, as we rose soon after
to quit the dining-room, Mr. Jules Benedict had quite suddenly followed
the poet's lead, and fallen prostrate on the carpet in the midst of us.
Amid the general consternation there seemed a want of proper attendance
on the sick: the distinguished musician faring in this respect hardly so
well as the famous bard, by whose protracted sufferings in the library,
whither he had been removed, the sanitary help available on the
establishment was still absorbed; and as Dickens had been eloquent
during dinner on the atrocities of a pauper-farming case at Tooting
which was then exciting a fury of indignation, Fonblanque now declared
him to be no better himself than a second Drouet, reducing his guests to
a lamentable state by the food he had given them, and aggravating their
sad condition by abs