here had been growing in the
mind of Dickens a certain formless discontent--something to which he
could not give a name, yet which, cast over him the shadow of
disappointment. He expressed the same feeling in David Copperfield,
when he spoke of David's life with Dora. It seemed to come from the
fact that he had grown to be a man, while his wife had still remained a
child.

A passage or two may be quoted from the novel, so that we may set them
beside passages in Dickens's own life, which we know to have referred
to his own wife, and not to any such nebulous person as Mrs. Winter.

The shadow I have mentioned that was not to be between us any more, but
was to rest wholly on my heart--how did that fall? The old unhappy
feeling pervaded my life. It was deepened, if it were changed at all;
but it was as undefined as ever, and addressed me like a strain of
sorrowful music faintly heard in the night. I loved my wife dearly; but
the happiness I had vaguely anticipated, once, was not the happiness I
enjoyed, AND THERE WAS ALWAYS SOMETHING WANTING.

What I missed I still regarded as something that had been a dream of my
youthful fancy; that was incapable of realization; that I was now
discovering to be so, with some natural pain, as all men did. But that
it would have been better for me if my wife could have helped me more,
and shared the many thoughts in which I had no partner, and that this
might have been I knew.

What I am describing slumbered and half awoke and slept again in the
innermost recesses of my mind. There was no evidence of it to me; I
knew of no influence it had in anything I said or did. I bore the
weight of all our little cares and all my projects.

"There can be no disparity in marriage like unsuitability of mind and
purpose." These words I remembered. I had endeavored to adapt Dora to
myself, and found it impracticable. It remained for me to adapt myself
to Dora; to share with her what I could, and be happy; to bear on my
own shoulders what I must, and be still happy.

Thus wrote Dickens in his fictitious character, and of his fictitious
wife. Let us see how he wrote and how he acted in his own person, and
of his real wife.

As early as 1856, he showed a curious and restless activity, as of one
who was trying to rid himself of unpleasant thoughts. Mr. Forster says
that he began to feel a strain upon his invention, a certain
disquietude, and a necessity for jotting down memoranda in note-books,
so as