notices of it from
his letters. "If people at large understand a Cheap Jack, my part of the
Christmas number will do well. It is wonderfully like the real thing, of
course a little refined and humoured." "I do hope that in the beginning
and end of this Christmas number you will find something that will
strike you as being fresh, forcible, and full of spirits." He described
its mode of composition afterwards. "Tired with _Our Mutual_, I sat down
to cast about for an idea, with a depressing notion that I was, for the
moment, overworked. Suddenly, the little character that you will see,
and all belonging to it, came flashing up in the most cheerful manner,
and I had only to look on and leisurely describe it." This was _Dr.
Marigold's Prescriptions_, one of the most popular of all the pieces
selected for his readings, and a splendid example of his humour, pathos,
and character. There were three more Christmas pieces before he made his
last visit to America: _Barbox Brothers_, _The Boy at Mugby Station_,
and _No Thoroughfare_: the last a joint piece of work with Mr. Wilkie
Collins, who during Dickens's absence in the States transformed it into
a play for Mr. Fechter, with a view to which it had been planned
originally. There were also two papers written for first publication in
America, _George Silverman's Explanation_, and _Holiday Romance_,
containing about the quantity of half a shilling number of his ordinary
serials, and paid for at a rate unexampled in literature. They occupied
him not many days in the writing, and he received a thousand pounds for
them.

* * * * *

The year after his return, as the reader knows, saw the commencement of
the work which death interrupted. The fragment will hereafter be
described; and here meanwhile may close my criticism--itself a fragment
left for worthier completion by a stronger hand than mine.

But at least I may hope that the ground has been cleared by it from
those distinctions and comparisons never safely to be applied to an
original writer, and which always more or less intercept his fair
appreciation. It was long the fashion to set up wide divergences between
novels of incident and manners, and novels of character; the narrower
range being left to Fielding and Smollett, and the larger to Richardson;
yet there are not many now who will accept such classification. Nor is
there more truth in other like distinctions alleged between novelists
who ar