agog Relaxations--Savage
Chronicles--Others as well as himself to
write--Travels to Ireland and America in
View--Stipulation as to Property and
Payments--Great Hopes of Success--Assent of his
Publishers--No Planned Story--Terms of
Agreement--Notion for his Hero--A Name hit
upon--Sanguine of the Issue.

THE time was now come for him seriously to busy himself with a successor
to _Pickwick_ and _Nickleby_, which he had not, however, waited thus
long before turning over thoroughly in his mind. _Nickleby's_ success
had so far outgone even the expectation raised by _Pickwick's_, that,
without some handsome practical admission of this fact at the close, its
publishers could hardly hope to retain him. This had been frequently
discussed by us, and was well understood. But, apart from the question
of his resuming with them at all, he had persuaded himself it might be
unsafe to resume in the old way, believing the public likely to tire of
the same twenty numbers over again. There was also another and more
sufficient reason for change which naturally had great weight with him,
and this was the hope that, by invention of a new mode as well as kind
of serial publication, he might be able for a time to discontinue the
writing of a long story with all its strain on his fancy, in any case to
shorten and vary the length of the stories written by himself, and
perhaps ultimately to retain all the profits of a continuous publication
without necessarily himself contributing every line that was to be
written for it. These considerations had been discussed still more
anxiously; and for several months some such project had been taking form
in his thoughts.

While he was at Petersham (July, 1839) he thus wrote to me: "I have been
thinking that subject over. Indeed, I have been doing so to the great
stoppage of _Nickleby_ and the great worrying and fidgeting of myself. I
have been thinking that if Chapman & Hall were to admit you into their
confidence with respect to what they mean to do at the conclusion of
_Nickleby_, without admitting me, it would help us very much. You know
that I am well disposed towards them, and that if they do something
handsome, even handsomer perhaps than they dreamt of doing, they will
find it their interest, and will find me tractable. You know also that I
have had straightforward offers from responsible men to publish anything
for me at a percentage on the