re--for six months _Barnaby Rudge_
stands over. And but for you, it should stand over altogether. For I do
most solemnly declare that morally, before God and man, I hold myself
released from such hard bargains as these, after I have done so much for
those who drove them. This net that has been wound about me so chafes
me, so exasperates and irritates my mind, that to break it at whatever
cost--_that_ I should care nothing for--is my constant impulse. But I
have not yielded to it. I merely declare that I must have a postponement
very common in all literary agreements; and for the time I have
mentioned--six months from the conclusion of _Oliver_ in the
_Miscellany_--I wash my hands of any fresh accumulation of labor, and
resolve to proceed as cheerfully as I can with that which already
presses upon me."[20]

To describe what followed upon this is not necessary. It will suffice to
state the results. Upon the appearance in the _Miscellany_, in the early
months of 1839, of the last portion of _Oliver Twist_, its author,
having been relieved altogether from his engagement to the magazine,
handed over, in a familiar epistle from a parent to his child, the
editorship to Mr. Ainsworth; and the still subsisting agreement to write
_Barnaby Rudge_ was, upon the overture of Mr. Bentley himself in June of
the following year, 1840, also put an end to, on payment by Dickens, for
the copyright of _Oliver Twist_ and such printed stock as remained of
the edition then on hand, of two thousand two hundred and fifty pounds.
What was further incident to this transaction will be told hereafter;
and a few words may meanwhile be taken, not without significance in
regard to it, from the parent's familiar epistle. It describes the child
as aged two years and two months (so long had he watched over it); gives
sundry pieces of advice concerning its circulation, and the importance
thereto of light and pleasant articles of food; and concludes, after
some general moralizing on the shiftings and changes of this world
having taken so wonderful a turn that mail-coach guards were become no
longer judges of horse-flesh, "I reap no gain or profit by parting from
you, nor will any conveyance of your property be required, for in this
respect you have always been literally Bentley's Miscellany and never
mine."

FOOTNOTES:

[17] Here is another of the same month: "All day I have been at work on
_Oliver_, and hope to finish the chapter by bedtime. I wish you'd