suddenly as his hero, might increase the number of his
readers, that reason influenced him less than the challenge to make good
his _Notes_ which every mail had been bringing him from unsparing
assailants beyond the Atlantic. The substantial effect of the American
episode upon the sale was yet by no means great. A couple of thousand
additional purchasers were added, but the highest number at any time
reached before the story closed was twenty-three thousand. Its sale,
since, has ranked next after _Pickwick_ and _Copperfield_.

We were now, however, to have a truth brought home to us which few that
have had real or varied experience in such matters can have failed to be
impressed by--that publishers are bitter bad judges of an author, and
are seldom safe persons to consult in regard to the fate or fortunes
that may probably await him. Describing the agreement for this book in
September 1841, I spoke of a provision against the improbable event of
its profits proving inadequate to certain necessary repayments. In this
unlikely case, which was to be ascertained by the proceeds of the first
five numbers, the publishers were to have power to appropriate fifty
pounds a month out of the two hundred pounds payable for authorship in
the expenses of each number; but though this had been introduced with my
knowledge, I knew also too much of the antecedent relations of the
parties to regard it as other than a mere form to satisfy the attorneys
in the case. The fifth number, which landed Martin and Mark in America,
and the sixth, which described their first experiences, were published;
and on the eve of the seventh, in which Mrs. Gamp was to make her first
appearance, I heard with infinite pain that from Mr. Hall, the younger
partner of the firm which had enriched itself by _Pickwick_ and
_Nickleby_, and a very kind well-disposed man, there had dropped an
inconsiderate hint to the writer of those books that it might be
desirable to put the clause in force. It had escaped him without his
thinking of all that it involved; certainly the senior partner, whatever
amount of as thoughtless sanction he had at the moment given to it,
always much regretted it, and made endeavours to exhibit his regret; but
the mischief was done, and for the time was irreparable.

"I am so irritated," Dickens wrote to me on the 28th of June, "so rubbed
in the tenderest part of my eyelids with bay-salt, by what I told you
yesterday, that a wrong kind of fire is