here had been growing in the mind
of Dickens a certain formless discontent--something to which he could
not give a name, yet which, cast over him the shadow of disappointment.
He expressed the same feeling in David Copperfield, when he spoke of
David's life with Dora. It seemed to come from the fact that he had
grown to be a man, while his wife had still remained a child.

A passage or two may be quoted from the novel, so that we may set them
beside passages in Dickens's own life, which we know to have referred to
his own wife, and not to any such nebulous person as Mrs. Winter.

The shadow I have mentioned that was not to be between us any more,
but was to rest wholly on my heart--how did that fall? The old unhappy
feeling pervaded my life. It was deepened, if it were changed at all;
but it was as undefined as ever, and addressed me like a strain of
sorrowful music faintly heard in the night. I loved my wife dearly; but
the happiness I had vaguely anticipated, once, was not the happiness I
enjoyed, AND THERE WAS ALWAYS SOMETHING WANTING.

What I missed I still regarded as something that had been a dream of
my youthful fancy; that was incapable of realization; that I was now
discovering to be so, with some natural pain, as all men did. But that
it would have been better for me if my wife could have helped me more,
and shared the many thoughts in which I had no partner, and that this
might have been I knew.

What I am describing slumbered and half awoke and slept again in the
innermost recesses of my mind. There was no evidence of it to me; I knew
of no influence it had in anything I said or did. I bore the weight of
all our little cares and all my projects.

"There can be no disparity in marriage like unsuitability of mind and
purpose." These words I remembered. I had endeavored to adapt Dora to
myself, and found it impracticable. It remained for me to adapt myself
to Dora; to share with her what I could, and be happy; to bear on my own
shoulders what I must, and be still happy.

Thus wrote Dickens in his fictitious character, and of his fictitious
wife. Let us see how he wrote and how he acted in his own person, and of
his real wife.

As early as 1856, he showed a curious and restless activity, as of one
who was trying to rid himself of unpleasant thoughts. Mr. Forster
says that he began to feel a strain upon his invention, a certain
disquietude, and a necessity for jotting down memoranda in note-books,
so as t