gher, until people at this time talked of nothing
else, tradesmen recommended their goods by using its name, and its sale,
outstripping at a bound that of all the most famous books of the
century, had reached to an almost fabulous number. Of part one, the
binder prepared four hundred; and of part fifteen, his order was for
more than forty thousand. Every class, the high equally with the low,
was attracted to it. The charm of its gayety and good humor, its
inexhaustible fun, its riotous overflow of animal spirits, its
brightness and keenness of observation, and, above all, the incomparable
ease of its many varieties of enjoyment, fascinated everybody. Judges on
the bench and boys in the street, gravity and folly, the young and the
old, those who were entering life and those who were quitting it, alike
found it to be irresistible. "An archdeacon," wrote Mr. Carlyle
afterwards to me, "with his own venerable lips, repeated to me, the
other night, a strange profane story: of a solemn clergyman who had been
administering ghostly consolation to a sick person; having finished,
satisfactorily as he thought, and got out of the room, he heard the sick
person ejaculate, 'Well, thank God, _Pickwick_ will be out in ten days
any way!'--This is dreadful."

Let me add that there was something more in it all than the
gratification of mere fun and laughter, more even than the rarer
pleasure that underlies the outbreak of all forms of genuine humor.
Another chord had been struck. Over and above the lively painting of
manners which at first had been so attractive, there was something that
left deeper mark. Genial and irrepressible enjoyment, affectionate
heartiness of tone, unrestrained exuberance of mirth, these are not more
delightful than they are fleeting and perishable qualities; but the
attention eagerly excited by the charm of them in _Pickwick_ found
itself retained by something more permanent. We had all become suddenly
conscious, in the very thick of the extravaganza of adventure and fun
set before us, that here were real people. It was not somebody talking
humorously about them, but they were there themselves. That a number of
persons belonging to the middle and lower ranks of life (Wardles,
Winkles, Wellers, Tupmans, Bardells, Snubbinses, Perkers, Bob Sawyers,
Dodsons, and Foggs) had been somehow added to his intimate and familiar
acquaintance, the ordinary reader knew before half a dozen numbers were
out; and it took not many m