resist.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: The same.]

_Sunday Evening._

* * * * *

I have at this moment got Pickwick and his friends on the Rochester
coach, and they are going on swimmingly, in company with a very
different character from any I have yet described, who I flatter myself
will make a decided hit. I want to get them from the ball to the inn
before I go to bed; and I think that will take me until one or two
o'clock at the earliest. The publishers will be here in the morning, so
you will readily suppose I have no alternative but to stick at my desk.

* * * * *

1837.

NARRATIVE.

From the commencement of "The Pickwick Papers," and of Charles Dickens's
married life, dates the commencement of his literary life and his sudden
world-wide fame. And this year saw the beginning of many of those
friendships which he most valued, and of which he had most reason to be
proud, and which friendships were ended only by death.

The first letters which we have been able to procure to Mr. Macready and
Mr. Harley will be found under this date. In January, 1837, he was
living in Furnival's Inn, where his first child, a son, was born. It was
an eventful year to him in many ways. He removed from Furnival's Inn to
Doughty Street in March, and here he sustained the first great grief of
his life. His young sister-in-law, Mary Hogarth, to whom he was
devotedly attached, died very suddenly, at his house, on the 7th May. In
the autumn of this year he took lodgings at Broadstairs. This was his
first visit to that pleasant little watering-place, of which he became
very fond, and whither he removed for the autumn months with all his
household, for many years in succession.

Besides the monthly numbers of "Pickwick," which were going on through
this year until November, when the last number appeared, he had
commenced "Oliver Twist," which was appearing also monthly, in the
magazine called "Bentley's Miscellany," long before "Pickwick" was
completed. And during this year he had edited, for Mr. Bentley, "The
Life of Grimaldi," the celebrated clown. To this book he wrote himself
only the preface, and altered and rearranged the autobiographical MS.
which was in Mr. Bentley's possession.

The letter to Mr. Harley, which bears no date, but must have been
written either in 1836 or 1837, ref