concerned but himself. The original understanding respecting it Mr.
Edward Chapman thus describes for me: "There was no agreement about
_Pickwick_ except a verbal one. Each number was to consist of a sheet
and a half, for which we were to pay fifteen guineas; and we paid him
for the first two numbers at once, as he required the money to go and
get married with. We were also to pay more according to the sale, and I
think _Pickwick_ altogether cost us three thousand pounds." Adjustment
to the sale would have cost four times as much, and of the actual
payments I have myself no note; but, as far as my memory serves, they
are overstated by Mr. Chapman. My impression is that, above and beyond
the first sum due for each of the twenty numbers (making no allowance
for their extension after the first to thirty-two pages), successive
checks were given, as the work went steadily on to the enormous sale it
reached, which brought up the entire sum received to two thousand five
hundred pounds. I had, however, always pressed so strongly the
importance to him of some share in the copyright, that this at last was
conceded in the deed above mentioned, though five years were to elapse
before the right should accrue; and it was only yielded as part
consideration for a further agreement entered into at the same date (the
19th of November, 1837), whereby Dickens engaged to "write a new work,
the title whereof shall be determined by him, of a similar character and
of the same extent as the _Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club_," the
first number of which was to be delivered on the 15th of the following
March, and each of the numbers on the same day of each of the successive
nineteen months; which was also to be the date of the payment to him, by
Messrs. Chapman & Hall, of twenty several sums of one hundred and fifty
pounds each for five years' use of the copyright, the entire ownership
in which was then to revert to Dickens. The name of this new book, as
all the world knows, was _The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby_;
and between April, 1838, and October, 1839, it was begun and finished
accordingly.

All through the interval of these arrangements _Oliver Twist_ had been
steadily continued. Month by month, for many months, it had run its
opening course with the close of _Pickwick_, as we shall see it close
with the opening of _Nickleby_; and the expectations of those who had
built most confidently on the young novelist were more tha