offend him by his "heavy grubbing," or
by the oaths he lets fall now and then; and pathetically hopes his Pip,
his dear boy, won't think him "low": but, upon a chum of Pip's appearing
unexpectedly while they are together, he pulls out a jack-knife by way
of hint he can defend himself, and produces afterwards a greasy little
clasped black Testament on which the startled new-comer, being found to
have no hostile intention, is sworn to secrecy. At the opening of the
story there had been an exciting scene of the wretched man's chase and
recapture among the marshes, and this has its parallel at the close in
his chase and recapture on the river while poor Pip is helping to get
him off. To make himself sure of the actual course of a boat in such
circumstances, and what possible incidents the adventure might have,
Dickens hired a steamer for the day from Blackwall to Southend. Eight or
nine friends and three or four members of his family were on board, and
he seemed to have no care, the whole of that summer day (22nd of May
1861), except to enjoy their enjoyment and entertain them with his own
in shape of a thousand whims and fancies; but his sleepless observation
was at work all the time, and nothing had escaped his keen vision on
either side of the river. The fifteenth chapter of the third volume is a
masterpiece.

The characters generally afford the same evidence as those two that
Dickens's humour, not less than his creative power, was at its best in
this book. The Old-Bailey attorney Jaggers, and his clerk Wemmick (both
excellent, and the last one of the oddities that live in everybody's
liking for the goodheartedness of its humorous surprises), are as good
as his earliest efforts in that line; the Pumblechooks and Wopsles are
perfect as bits of _Nickleby_ fresh from the mint; and the scene in
which Pip, and Pip's chum Herbert, make up their accounts and schedule
their debts and obligations, is original and delightful as Micawber
himself. It is the art of living upon nothing and making the best of it,
in the most pleasing form. Herbert's intentions to trade east and west,
and get himself into business transactions of a magnificent extent and
variety, are as perfectly warranted to us, in his way of putting them,
by merely "being in a counting-house and looking about you," as Pip's
means of paying his debts are lightened and made easy by his method of
simply adding them up with a margin. "The time comes," says Herbert,
"when