ice. I feel as certain now as I felt when you
came to see me on my breaking down through over fatigue, that the
injunction you laid upon me to stop in my course of Readings was
necessary and wise. And to its firmness I refer (humanly speaking) my
speedy recovery from that moment. I would on no account have resumed,
even on the turn of this year, without your sanction. Your friendly aid
will never be forgotten by me; and again I thank you for it with all my
heart."

CHAPTER XVIII.

LAST BOOK.

1869-1870.

First Fancy for _Edwin Drood_--Story as planned
in his Mind--Nothing written of his
Intentions--Merits of the Fragment--Comparison
of his Early and his Late MSS.--Discovery of
Unpublished Scene--Probable Reason for writing
it in Advance--How Mr. Sapsea ceased to be a
Member of the Eight Club.

THE last book undertaken by Dickens was to be published, in illustrated
monthly numbers, of the old form, but to close with the twelfth.[285] It
closed, unfinished, with the sixth number, which was itself
underwritten by two pages.

His first fancy for the tale was expressed in a letter in the middle of
July. "What should you think of the idea of a story beginning in this
way?--Two people, boy and girl, or very young, going apart from one
another, pledged to be married after many years--at the end of the book.
The interest to arise out of the tracing of their separate ways, and the
impossibility of telling what will be done with that impending fate."
This was laid aside; but it left a marked trace on the story as
afterwards designed, in the position of Edwin Drood and his betrothed.

I first heard of the later design in a letter dated "Friday the 6th of
August 1869," in which after speaking, with the usual unstinted praise
he bestowed always on what moved him in others, of a little tale he had
received for his journal,[286] he spoke of the change that had occurred
to him for the new tale by himself. "I laid aside the fancy I told you
of, and have a very curious and new idea for my new story. Not a
communicable idea (or the interest of the book would be gone), but a
very strong one, though difficult to work." The story, I learnt
immediately afterward, was to be that of the murder of a nephew by his
uncle; the originality of which was to consist in the review of the
murderer's career by himself at the close, when its temptations were to
be dwelt upon as if, n