in
occasional forms of restlessness and desire of change of place, which
were themselves, when his books were in progress, so incident as well to
the active requirements of his fancy as to call, thus far, for no other
explanation. Up to the date of the completion of _Copperfield_ he had
felt himself to be in possession of an all-sufficient resource. Against
whatever might befall he had a set-off in his imaginative creations, a
compensation derived from his art that never failed him, because there
he was supreme. It was the world he could bend to his will, and make
subserve to all his desires. He had otherwise, underneath his exterior
of a singular precision, method, and strictly orderly arrangement in all
things, and notwithstanding a temperament to which home and home
interests were really a necessity, something in common with those eager,
impetuous, somewhat overbearing natures, that rush at existence without
heeding the cost of it, and are not more ready to accept and make the
most of its enjoyments than to be easily and quickly overthrown by its
burdens.[213] But the world he had called into being had thus far borne
him safely through these perils. He had his own creations always by his
side. They were living, speaking companions. With them only he was
everywhere thoroughly identified. He laughed and wept with them; was as
much elated by their fun as cast down by their grief; and brought to the
consideration of them a belief in their reality as well as in the
influences they were meant to exercise, which in every circumstance
sustained him.

It was during the composition of _Little Dorrit_ that I think he first
felt a certain strain upon his invention which brought with it other
misgivings. In a modified form this was present during the latter
portions of _Bleak House_, of which not a few of the defects might be
traced to the acting excitements amid which it was written; but the
succeeding book made it plainer to him; and it is remarkable that in the
interval between them he resorted for the first and only time in his
life to a practice, which he abandoned at the close of his next and last
story published in the twenty-number form, of putting down written
"Memoranda" of suggestions for characters or incidents by way of
resource to him in his writing. Never before had his teeming fancy
seemed to want such help; the need being less to contribute to its
fullness than to check its overflowing; but it is another proof th