One of the best brief descriptions of Dickens' appearance is by Leigh Hunt. "What a face is his to meet in a drawing room! It has the life and soul in it of fifty human beings." He lived with an intensity which it is scarcely possible for less intense people to understand. He gave his wonderful vitality without stint to the writing of his books. When he finished _David Copperfield_ his life had been so absorbed in its characters that he wrote "I seem to be sending some part of myself into the Shadowy World." Thackeray said of _A Christmas Carol_, "It seems to me a national benefit..." Dickens was generous in his praise of the work of other writers, and deeply grateful for any kindness shown himself, no matter how slight the benefit was. He quarrelled, one may say, with America as well as with some of his friends and contemporaries, but years afterwards he wrote in a postscript to a later edition of _Martin Chuzzlewit_ a warm tribute to the magnanimity of the country. His married life was not altogether happy. But in Forster's _Life_, there is a story that his daughters Mary and Kate having taken pains to teach him the steps of the polka so {14} that he might dance it at their brother's birthday party, Dickens, waking in the middle of the night before the party, was afraid that he had forgotten the proper steps, and immediately got up out of bed to practise them. Two of his characters, Wilkins Micawber and Mr. Dorritt, are drawn, to some extent at least, from the character of his father; Mrs. Nickleby is said to be a portrait of his mother. It can at least be conceded that Mr. Micawber and Mrs. Nickleby are among the greatest characters ever created by Dickens. Apparently he had no unkind intention; still, one would rather that he had denied himself the use of this material. He was attached to his father and mother and took pleasure in providing for their older years. He bought them a house a mile from the town of Exeter and looked after the furnishing of the house himself. His feeling for his children was deeply rooted in his heart. It expressed itself in numberless ways, never more plainly than in a letter to his youngest son written on the eve of the boy's leaving to join his brother in Australia. (Forster's _Life of Charles Dickens_, Book xi, Part iii).