grotesque
little oddity among his acquaintance to be safe from recognition, he had
done what Smollett did sometimes, but never Fielding, and given way, in
the first outburst of fun that had broken out around the fancy, to the
temptation of copying too closely peculiarities of figure and face
amounting in effect to deformity. He was shocked at discovering the pain
he had given, and a copy is before me of the assurances by way of reply
which he at once sent to the complainant. That he was grieved and
surprised beyond measure. That he had not intended her altogether. That
all his characters, being made up out of many people, were composite,
and never individual. That the chair (for table) and other matters were
undoubtedly from her, but that other traits were not hers at all; and
that in Miss Moucher's "Ain't I volatile" his friends had quite
correctly recognized the favourite utterance of a different person. That
he felt nevertheless he had done wrong, and would now do anything to
repair it. That he had intended to employ the character in an unpleasant
way, but he would, whatever the risk or inconvenience, change it all, so
that nothing but an agreeable impression should be left. The reader will
remember how this was managed, and that the thirty-second chapter went
far to undo what the twenty-second had done.

A much earlier instance is the only one known to me where a character in
one of his books intended to be odious was copied wholly from a living
original. The use of such material, never without danger, might have
been justifiable here if anywhere, and he had himself a satisfaction in
always admitting the identity of Mr. Fang in _Oliver Twist_ with Mr.
Laing of Hatton-garden. But the avowal of his purpose in that case, and
his mode of setting about it, mark strongly a difference of procedure
from that which, following great examples, he adopted in his later
books. An allusion to a common friend in one of his letters of the
present date--"A dreadful thought occurs to me! how brilliant in a
book!"--expresses both the continued strength of his temptations and the
dread he had brought himself to feel of immediately yielding to them;
but he had no such misgivings in the days of _Oliver Twist_. Wanting an
insolent and harsh police-magistrate, he bethought him of an original
ready to his hand in one of the London offices; and instead of pursuing
his later method of giving a personal appearance that should in some
sort rende