g the constituent elements of the characters, these also of
themselves became part of the public. This, which must always be a
novelist's highest achievement, was the art carried to exquisite
perfection on a more limited stage by Miss Austen; and, under widely
different conditions both of art and work, it was pre-eminently that of
Dickens. I told him, on reading the first dialogue of Mrs. Nickleby and
Miss Knag, that he had been lately reading Miss Bates in _Emma_, but I
found that he had not at this time made the acquaintance of that fine
writer.

Who that recollects the numbers of _Nickleby_ as they appeared can have
forgotten how each number added to the general enjoyment? All that had
given _Pickwick_ its vast popularity, the overflowing mirth, hearty
exuberance of humor, and genial kindliness of satire, had here the
advantage of a better-laid design, more connected incidents, and greater
precision of character. Everybody seemed immediately to know the
Nickleby family as well as his own. Dotheboys, with all that rendered
it, like a piece by Hogarth, both ludicrous and terrible, became a
household word. Successive groups of Mantalinis, Kenwigses, Crummleses,
introduced each its little world of reality, lighted up everywhere with
truth and life, with capital observation, the quaintest drollery, and
quite boundless mirth and fun. The brothers Cheeryble brought with them
all the charities. With Smike came the first of those pathetic pictures
that filled the world with pity for what cruelty, ignorance, or neglect
may inflict upon the young. And Newman Noggs ushered in that class of
the creatures of his fancy in which he took himself perhaps the most
delight, and which the oftener he dealt with the more he seemed to know
how to vary and render attractive: gentlemen by nature, however shocking
bad their hats or ungenteel their dialects; philosophers of modest
endurance, and needy but most respectable coats; a sort of humble angels
of sympathy and self-denial, though without a particle of splendor or
even good looks about them, except what an eye as fine as their own
feelings might discern. "My friends," wrote Sydney Smith, describing to
Dickens the anxiety of some ladies of his acquaintance to meet him at
dinner, "have not the smallest objection to be put into a number, but on
the contrary would be proud of the distinction; and Lady Charlotte, in
particular, you may marry to Newman Noggs." Lady Charlotte was not a
more rea