h sensibility." He speaks, too, of the beardless face
and rich brown hair in "most luxuriant abundance." What remained to the
last was the expression of "keenness and practical power," and the
"eager, restless, energetic outlook" which suggested a man of action
rather than a writer of books. Leigh Hunt said of it, "What a face . . .
to meet in a drawing-room! . . . It had the life and soul in it of fifty
human beings."

A touching proof of Dickens' sensibility is given by the fact that the
writing of _Pickwick_ was interrupted for two months by the death of his
wife's younger sister Mary.

The _Quarterly Review_, Oct. 1837, referring to the fact that _Pickwick_
and _Oliver Twist_ were appearing at the same time, said, "Indications
are not wanting that the particular vein of humour which has hitherto
yielded so much attractive metal, is worked out. . . . The fact is, Mr
Dickens writes too often and too fast. . . . If he persists much longer
in this course it requires no gift of prophecy to foretell his fate--he
has risen like a rocket, and he will come down like the stick"--a
singularly incorrect prediction.

The success of _Pickwick_ {208} was enormous, but the profits reaped by
the author can hardly share in that adjective. There was no agreement
about its publication, except a verbal one. For each number Dickens was
to receive fifteen guineas, and the publishers paid him at once for the
first two numbers "as he required the money to go and get married with."
Besides these payments he seems at the time to have received only 2500
pounds. In 1839 Dickens wrote to Forster of "the immense profits which
_Oliver_ has realised to its publisher, and is still realising," and "the
paltry, wretched sum it brought to me." . . .

His friends made an important part of Dickens' life. One of the earliest
was Macready, {209} the actor, to whom he first wrote apparently in 1837,
inviting him to a Pickwick dinner. He here addresses him as "My dear
Sir," but in 1838 he becomes "My dear Macready."

In that year Dickens wrote a farce for Macready, which, however, had to
be withdrawn, and its author wrote characteristically, "Believe me that I
have no other feeling of disappointment . . . but that arising from the
not having been able to be of use to you." Macready remained a close
friend as long as he lived, and Dickens does not seem to have suffered
from the churlishness referred to in the _Dictionary of National
Biography