and
1839.

In the former of these years the sports were necessarily quieter[24]
than at Petersham, where extensive garden-grounds admitted of much
athletic competition, from the more difficult forms of which I in
general modestly retired, but where Dickens for the most part held his
own against even such accomplished athletes as Maclise and Mr. Beard.
Bar-leaping, bowling, and quoits were among the games carried on with
the greatest ardor; and in sustained energy, what is called keeping it
up, Dickens certainly distanced every competitor. Even the lighter
recreations of battledoor and bagatelle were pursued with relentless
activity; and at such amusements as the Petersham races, in those days
rather celebrated, and which he visited daily while they lasted, he
worked much harder himself than the running horses did.

What else his letters of these years enable me to recall, that could
possess any interest now, may be told in a dozen sentences. He wrote a
farce by way of helping the Covent Garden manager which the actors could
not agree about, and which he turned afterwards into a story called _The
Lamplighter_. He entered his name among the students at the inn of the
Middle Temple, though he did not eat dinners there until many years
later. We made together a circuit of nearly all the London prisons, and,
in coming to the prisoners under remand while going over Newgate,
accompanied by Macready and Mr. Hablot Browne,[25] were startled by a
sudden tragic cry of "My God! there's Wainewright!" In the
shabby-genteel creature, with sandy disordered hair and dirty moustache,
who had turned quickly round with a defiant stare at our entrance,
looking at once mean and fierce, and quite capable of the cowardly
murders he had committed, Macready had been horrified to recognize a man
familiarly known to him in former years, and at whose table he had
dined. Between the completion of _Oliver_ and its publication, Dickens
went to see something of North Wales; and, joining him at Liverpool, I
returned with him.[26] Soon after his arrival he had pleasant
communication with Lockhart, dining with him at Cruikshank's a little
later; and this was the prelude to a _Quarterly_ notice of _Oliver_ by
Mr. Ford, written at the instance of Lockhart, but without the raciness
he would have put into it, in which amende was made for previous less
favorable remarks in that review. Dickens had not, however, waited for
this to express publicly his hearty