is
plots, the names of the characters, above all, the titles of the
stories, were evolved with an amount of thought and discussion that
might have sufficed for the plan and the preparations for a battle.
"Martin Chuzzlewit" is not a name suggestive of long and serious
deliberation: one might rather suppose that it had turned up
accidentally and been accepted simply as being as good as another. Yet
it was not adopted till after many others had been discussed and
rejected. "Martin was the prefix to all, but the surname varied from its
first form of Sweezleden, Sweezleback and Sweeztewag, to those of
Chuzzletoe, Chuzzleboy, Chubblewig and Chuzzlewig." _David Copperfield_
was preceded by a still longer list of abortions, and _Household Words,_
as a mere title, was the result of a parturition far exceeding in length
and severity any throes of travail known to natural history.

All this was unaccompanied by any of the doubts and misgivings, the fits
of depression and intervals of lassitude, which are the ordinary
tortures of authorship. Nor had it any connection with the weaknesses of
the craft, its small vanities and jealousies. "It was," as Mr. Forster
well remarks, "part of the intense individuality by which he effected
so much to set the high value which in general he did upon what he was
striving to accomplish." Hence, too, no half-formed and then abandoned
projects were among the stepping-stones of his career. A plan or an
idea, once conceived, was certain to be shaped, developed and matured;
and whatever the result, it left up disheartening effect, no feeling of
distrust, to cripple a subsequent undertaking.

Nor was Dickens so absorbed in his work as to leave it reluctantly, or
to find no fullness of satisfaction in occupations or enjoyments of a
different kind. On the contrary, no man ever threw himself so heartily
and entirely into the business of the hour, or more eagerly sought
diversion and change. Dinners, private and public, excursions in chosen
companionship, amateur theatricals, schemes of charity or benevolence,
occupied a large portion of his time, and were entered into with an
ardor which never flagged or needed to be stimulated. His
correspondence--an unfailing barometer to indicate the state of the
mental atmosphere--is always full of life, overflowing, for the most
part, with animal spirits, often vivid in description both of places and
people, turning discomforts and embarrassments into subjects of li