terms. It is to consist of matter
sufficient for ten monthly numbers of the size of _Pickwick_ and
_Nickleby_, which you are, however, at liberty to divide and publish in
fifteen smaller numbers if you think fit. The terms for the purchase of
this edition in numbers, and for the copyright of the whole book for six
months after the publication of the last number, are 3000_l._ At the
expiration of the six months the whole copyright reverts to me." The
sequel was, as all the world knows, that Barnaby became successor to
Little Nell, the money being repaid by the profits of the _Clock_; but I
ought to mention also the more generous sequel that my own small
service had, on my receiving from him, after not many days, an antique
silver-mounted jug of great beauty of form and workmanship, but with a
wealth far beyond jeweler's chasing or artist's design in the written
words that accompanied it.[33] I accepted them to commemorate, not the
help they would have far overpaid, but the gladness of his own escape
from the last of the agreements that had hampered the opening of his
career, and the better future that was now before him.

At the opening of August he was with Mrs. Dickens for some days in
Devonshire, on a visit to his father, but he had to take his work with
him; and, as he wrote to me, they had only one real holiday, when
Dawlish, Teignmouth, Babbicombe, and Torquay were explored, returning to
Exeter at night. In the beginning of September he was again at
Broadstairs.

"I was just going to work," he wrote on the 9th, "when I got this
letter, and the story of the man who went to Chapman & Hall's knocked
me down flat. I wrote until now (a quarter to one) against the grain,
and have at last given it up for one day. Upon my word it is
intolerable. I have been grinding my teeth all the morning. I think I
could say in two lines something about the general report with
propriety. I'll add them to the proof" (the preface to the first volume
of the _Clock_ was at this time in preparation), "giving you full power
to cut them out if you should think differently from me, and from C. and
H., who in such a matter must be admitted judges." He refers here to a
report, rather extensively circulated at the time, and which through
various channels had reached his publishers, that he was suffering from
loss of reason and was under treatment in an asylum.[34] I would have
withheld from him the mention of it, as an absurdity that must quickl