these I should like to linger a moment. The head-boy, and a kind of
parlour-boarder, at Mr. Creakles' establishment, is one Steerforth,
the spoilt only son of a widow. This Steerforth, David meets again
when both are young men, and they go down together to Yarmouth, and
there David is the means of making him known to a family of
fisherfolk. He is rich, handsome, with an indescribable charm,
according to his friends' testimony, and he induces the fisherman's
niece, the pretty Em'ly, to desert her home, and the young
boat-builder to whom she is engaged, and to fly to Italy. Now to this
story, as Dickens tells it, French criticism objects that he dwells
exclusively on the sin and sorrow, and sets aside that in which the
French novelist would delight, viz., the mad force and irresistible
sway of passion. To which English criticism may, I think, reply, that
the "pity of it," the wide-working desolation, are as essentially part
of such an event as the passion; and, therefore, even from an
exclusively artistic point of view, just as fit subjects for the
novelist.

While "David Copperfield" was in progress, Dickens started on a new
venture. He had often before projected a periodical, and twice, as we
have seen,--once in _Master Humphrey's Clock_, and again as editor of
_The Daily News_,--had attempted quasi-journalism or its reality. But
now at last he had struck the right vein. He had discovered a means of
utilizing his popularity, and imparting it to a paper, without being
under the crushing necessity of writing the whole of that paper
himself. The first number of _Household Words_ appeared on the 30th of
March, 1850.

The "preliminary word" heralds the paper in thoroughly characteristic
fashion, and is, not unnaturally, far more personal in tone than the
first leading article of the first number of _The Daily News_, though
that, too, be it said in passing, bears traces, through all its
officialism, of having come from the same pen.[22] In introducing
_Household Words_ to his new readers, Dickens speaks feelingly,
eloquently, of his own position as a writer, and the responsibilities
attached to his popularity, and tells of his hope that a future of
instruction, and amusement, and kindly playful fancy may be in store
for the paper. Nor were his happy anticipations belied. All that he
had promised, he gave. _Household Words_ found an entrance into
innumerable homes, and was everywhere recognized as a friend. Never
did edito