ially....

Affectionately

Your faithful friend,

C.D.

P.S. I have looked over my journal, and have decided to produce my
American trip in two volumes. I have written about half the first
since I came home, and hope to be out in October. This is "exclusive
news," to be communicated to any friends to whom you may like to
intrust it, my dear F.

What a capital epistolary pen Dickens held! He seems never to have
written the shortest note without something piquant in it; and when he
attempted a _letter_, he always made it entertaining from sheer force of
habit.

When I think of this man, and all the lasting good and abounding
pleasure he has brought into the world, I wonder at the superstition
that dares to arraign him. A sound philosopher once said: "He that
thinks any innocent pastime foolish has either to grow wiser, or is past
the ability to do so"; and I have always counted it an impudent fiction
that playfulness is inconsistent with greatness. Many men and women have
died of Dignity, but the disease which sent them to the tomb was not
contracted from Charles Dickens. Not long ago, I met in the street a
bleak old character, full of dogmatism, egotism, and rheumatism, who
complained that Dickens had "too much exuberant sociality" in his books
for _him_, and he wondered how any one could get through Pickwick. My
solemn friend evidently preferred the dropping-down-deadness of manner,
which he had been accustomed to find in Hervey's "Meditations," and
other kindred authors, where it always seems to be urged that life would
be endurable but for its pleasures. A person once commended to my
acquaintance an individual whom he described as "a fine, pompous,
gentlemanly man," and I thought it prudent, under the circumstances, to
decline the proffered introduction.

But I will proceed with those outbursts of bright-heartedness vouchsafed
to us in Dickens's letters. To me these epistles are good as fresh
"Uncommercials," or unpublished "Sketches by Boz."

1 Devonshire Terrace, York Gate, Regent's Park, London, 1st
September, 1842.

My Dear Felton: Of course that letter in the papers was as foul a
forgery as ever felon swung for.... I have not contradicted it
publicly, nor shall I. When I tilt at such wringings out of the
dirtiest mortality, I shall be another man--indeed, almost the
creature they would make me.

I gave your message to Forster, who sends