it were
possible that the young writer could continue to walk steadily under the
burden of the popularity laid upon him. The first number dispersed this
cloud of a question in a burst of sunshine; and as much of the gayety of
nations as had been eclipsed by old Mr. Pickwick's voluntary exile to
Dulwich was restored by the cheerful confidence with which young Mr.
Nicholas Nickleby stepped into his shoes. Everything that had given
charm to the first book was here, with more attention to the important
requisite of a story, and more wealth as well as truth of character.

How this was poured forth in each successive number, it hardly needs
that I should tell. To recall it now, is to talk of what since has so
interwoven itself with common speech and thought as to have become
almost part of the daily life of us all. It was well said of him, soon
after his death, in mentioning how largely his compositions had
furnished one of the chief sources of intellectual enjoyment to this
generation, that his language had become part of the language of every
class and rank of his countrymen, and his characters were a portion of
our contemporaries. "It seems scarcely possible," continued this
otherwise not too indulgent commentator, "to believe that there never
were any such persons as Mr. Pickwick and Mrs. Nickleby and Mrs. Gamp.
They are to us not only types of English life, but types actually
existing. They at once revealed the existence of such people, and made
them thoroughly comprehensible. They were not studies of persons, but
persons. And yet they were idealized in the sense that the reader did
not think that they were drawn from the life. They were alive; they were
themselves." The writer might have added that this is proper to all true
masters of fiction who work in the higher regions of their calling.

Nothing certainly could express better what the new book was at this
time making manifest to its thousands of readers; not simply an
astonishing variety in the creations of character, but what it was that
made these creations so real; not merely the writer's wealth of genius,
but the secret and form of his art. There never was any one who had
less need to talk about his characters, because never were characters so
surely revealed by themselves; and it was thus their reality made itself
felt at once. They talked so well that everybody took to repeating what
they said, as the writer just quoted has pointed out; and the sayings
bein