nd
the groundwork of the character was then undoubtedly laid; but the
rhetorical exuberance impressed itself upon him later, and from this, as
it expanded and developed in a thousand amusing ways, the full-length
figure took its great charm. Better illustration of it could not perhaps
be given than by passages from letters of Dickens, written long before
Micawber was thought of, in which this peculiarity of his father found
frequent and always agreeable expression. Several such have been given
in this work from time to time, and one or two more may here be added.
It is proper to preface them by saying that no one could know the elder
Dickens without secretly liking him the better for these flourishes of
speech, which adapted themselves so readily to his gloom as well as to
his cheerfulness, that it was difficult not to fancy they had helped him
considerably in both, and had rendered more tolerable to him, if also
more possible, the shade and sunshine of his chequered life. "If you
should have an opportunity _pendente lite_, as my father would
observe--indeed did on some memorable ancient occasions when he informed
me that the ban-dogs would shortly have him at bay"--Dickens wrote in
December 1847. "I have a letter from my father" (May 1841) "lamenting
the fine weather, invoking congenial tempests, and informing me that it
will not be possible for him to stay more than another year in
Devonshire, as he must then proceed to Paris to consolidate Augustus's
French." "There has arrived," he writes from the Peschiere in September
1844, "a characteristic letter for Kate from my father. He dates it
Manchester, and says he has reason to believe that he will be in town
with the pheasants, on or about the first of October. He has been with
Fanny in the Isle of Man for nearly two months: finding there, as he
goes on to observe, troops of friends, and every description of
continental luxury at a cheap rate." Describing in the same year the
departure from Genoa of an English physician and acquaintance, he adds:
"We are very sorry to lose the benefit of his advice--or, as my father
would say, to be deprived, to a certain extent, of the concomitant
advantages, whatever they may be, resulting from his medical skill, such
as it is, and his professional attendance, in so far as it may be so
considered." Thus also it delighted Dickens to remember that it was of
one of his connections his father wrote a celebrated sentence; "And I
must expre