y fall into a paroxysm of fear, tremble all
over, clutch the arms of the railway carriage, large beads of
perspiration standing on his face, and suffer agonies of terror.... He
had ... apparently no idea of our presence." And Mr. Dolby tells us
also how in travelling it was often necessary for him to ward off such
attacks by taking brandy. Dickens had been failing before only too
surely; and this accident, like a coward's blow, struck him heavily as
he fell.

But whether failing or stricken, he bated no jot of energy or courage;
nay, rather, as his health grew weaker, did he redouble the pressure
of his work. I think there is a grandeur in the story of the last five
years of his life, that dwarfs even the tale of his rapid and splendid
rise. It reads like some antique myth of the Titans defying Jove's
thunder. There is about the man something indomitable and heroic. He
had, as we have seen, given a series of readings in 1858-59; and he
gave another in the years 1861 to 1863--successful enough in a
pecuniary sense, but through failure of business capacity on the part
of the manager, entailing on the reader himself a great deal of
anxiety and worry.[32] Now, in the spring of 1866, with his left foot
giving him unceasing trouble, and his nerves shattered, and his heart
in an abnormal state, he accepted an offer from Messrs. Chappell to
read "in England, Ireland, Scotland, and Paris," for L1,500, and the
payment of all expenses, and then to give forty-two more readings for
L2,500. Mr. Dolby, who accompanied Dickens as business manager in this
and the remaining tours, has told their story in an interesting
volume.[33] Of course the wear was immense. The readings themselves
involved enormous fatigue to one who so identified himself with what
he read, and whose whole being seemed to vibrate not only with the
emotions of the characters in his stories, but of the audience. Then
there was the weariness of long railway journeys in all seasons and
weathers--journeys that at first must have been rendered doubly
tedious, as he could not bear to travel by express trains. Yet,
notwithstanding failure of strength, notwithstanding fatigue, his
native gaiety and good spirits smile like a gleam of winter sunlight
over the narrative. As he had been the brightest and most genial of
companions in the old holiday days when strolling about the country
with his actor-troupe, so now he was occasionally as frolic as a boy,
dancing a hornpipe in t