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.

Had he continued along this line all his books might very well have been
note-books. It would be very easy to split up all his subsequent books
into scraps and episodes, such as those which make up the _Sketches by
Boz_. It would be easy enough for Dickens, instead of publishing
_Nicholas Nickleby_, to have published a book of sketches, one of which
was called "A Yorkshire School," another called "A Provincial Theatre,"
and another called "Sir Mulberry Hawk or High Life Revealed," another
called "Mrs. Nickleby or a Lady's Monologue." It would have been very
easy to have thrown over the rather chaotic plan of the _Old Curiosity
Shop_. He might have merely written short stories called "The Glorious
Apollos," "Mrs. Quilp's Tea-Party," "Mrs. Jarley's Waxwork," "The Little
Servant," and "The Death of a Dwarf." _Martin Chuzzlewit_ might have
been twenty stories instead of one story. _Dombey and Son_ might have
been twenty stories instead of one story. We might have lost all
Dickens's novels; we might have lost altogether Dickens the novelist. We
might have lost that steady love of a seminal and growing romance which
grew on him steadily as the years advanced, and which gave us towards
the end some of his greatest