offered to like everybody he also offered to hit everybody. To almost every man that can be called a man this especial moment of the romantic culmination has come. In the first resort the man wished to live a romance. In the second resort, in the last and worst resort, he was content to write one. Now there is a certain moment when this element enters independently into the life of Dickens. There is a particular time when we can see him suddenly realise that he wants to write a romance and nothing else. In reading his letters, in appreciating his character, this point emerges clearly enough. He was full of the afterglow of his marriage; he was still young and psychologically ignorant; above all, he was now, really for the first time, sure that he was going to be at least some kind of success. There is, I repeat, a certain point at which one feels that Dickens will either begin to write romances or go off on something different altogether. This crucial point in his life is marked by _Nicholas Nickleby_. It must be remembered that before this issue of _Nicholas Nickleby_ his work, successful as it was, had not been such as to dedicate him seriously or irrevocably to the writing of novels. He had already written three books; and at least two of them are classed among the novels under his name. But if we look at the actual origin and formation of these books we see that they came from another source and were really designed upon another plan. The three books were, of course, the _Sketches by Boz_, _the Pickwick Papers_, and _Oliver Twist_. It is, I suppose, sufficiently well understood that the _Sketches by Boz_ are, as their name implies, only sketches. But surely it is quite equally clear that the _Pickwick Papers_ are, as their name implies, merely papers. Nor is the case at all different in spirit and essence when we come to _Oliver Twist_. There is indeed a sort of romance in _Oliver Twist_, but it is such an uncommonly bad one that it can hardly be regarded as greatly interrupting the previous process; and if the reader chooses to pay very little attention to it, he cannot pay less attention to it than the author did. But in fact the case lies far deeper. _Oliver Twist_ is so much apart from the ordinary track of Dickens, it is so gloomy, it is so much all in one atmosphere, that it can best be considered as an exception or a solitary excursus in his work. Perhaps it can best be considered as the extension of one of his old sketches, of some sketch that happened to be about a visit to a workhouse or a gaol. In the _Sketches by Boz_ he might well have visited a workhouse where he saw Bumble; in the _Sketches by Boz_ he might well have visited a prison where he saw Fagin. We are still in the realm of sketches and sketchiness. _The Pickwick Papers_ may be called an extension of one of his bright sketches. _Oliver Twist_ may be called an extension of one of his gloomy ones.