pride and grandeur of mere external circumstance is the falsest of
earthly things, so the truth of virtue in the heart is the most lovely
and lasting; and from the pages of _Oliver Twist_ this teaching is once
again to be taken by all who will look for it there.

And now, while _Oliver_ was running a great career of popularity and
success, the shadow of the tale of _Barnaby Rudge_, which he was to
write on similar terms, and to begin in the _Miscellany_ when the other
should have ended, began to darken everything around him. We had much
discussion respecting it, and I had no small difficulty in restraining
him from throwing up the agreement altogether; but the real hardship of
his position, and the considerate construction to be placed on every
effort made by him to escape from obligations incurred in ignorance of
the sacrifices implied by them, will be best understood from his own
frank and honest statement. On the 21st of January, 1839, inclosing me
the copy of a letter which he proposed to send to Mr. Bentley the
following morning, he thus wrote: "From what I have already said to you,
you will have been led to expect that I entertained some such
intention. I know you will not endeavor to dissuade me from sending it.
Go it MUST. It is no fiction to say that at present I _cannot_ write
this tale. The immense profits which _Oliver_ has realized to its
publisher and is still realizing; the paltry, wretched, miserable sum it
brought to me (not equal to what is every day paid for a novel that
sells fifteen hundred copies at most); the recollection of this, and the
consciousness that I have still the slavery and drudgery of another work
on the same journeyman-terms; the consciousness that my books are
enriching everybody connected with them but myself, and that I, with
such a popularity as I have acquired, am struggling in old toils, and
wasting my energies in the very height and freshness of my fame, and the
best part of my life, to fill the pockets of others, while for those who
are nearest and dearest to me I can realize little more than a genteel
subsistence: all this puts me out of heart and spirits. And I
cannot--cannot and will not--under such circumstances that keep me down
with an iron hand, distress myself by beginning this tale until I have
had time to breathe, and until the intervention of the summer, and some
cheerful days in the country, shall have restored me to a more genial
and composed state of feeling. The