les, or scroll-work
flourishes, thus, [Illustration] which must have caused greater muscular
labour in execution. Let any one try the two methods for himself.
Dickens was fond of flourishes, as witness his first published
autograph, under the portrait which was issued with _Nicholas Nickleby_
(1839). Some evidence of "writer's cramp," as it is termed, appears
where the C in Charles becomes almost a G, and where the line-like
flourishes to the signature thirty years later, under the portrait
forming the frontispiece to _Edwin Drood_, are much shorter and less
elaborate. All the earlier manuscripts are in black ink--the
characteristic _blue_ ink, which he was so fond of using in later years,
not appearing until _Hard Times_ was written (1854), and this continued
to be (with one exception, _Little Dorrit_) his favourite writing
medium, for the reason, it is said, that it was fluent to write with and
dried quickly.

From a valuable collection of letters (more than a dozen--recently in
the possession of Messrs. Noel Conway and Co., of Martineau Street,
Birmingham, and kindly shown to me by Mr. Charles Fendelow), written by
the novelist between 1832 and 1833 to a friend of his earlier years--Mr.
W. H. Kolle--and not hitherto published, it appears that he had not then
acquired that precise habit of inscribing the place, day of the week,
month, and the year which marked his later correspondence (as has been
pointed out by Miss Hogarth and Miss Dickens in the preface to the
_Letters of Charles Dickens_), very few of the letters to Mr. Kolle
bearing any record whatever except the day of the week, occasionally
preceded by Fitzroy Street or Bentinck Street, where he resided at the
time. It would be extremely interesting to ascertain the reason which
subsequently led him to adopt the extraordinarily precise method which
almost invariably marked his correspondence from the year 1840 until the
close of his life. Possibly arrangements with publishers and others may
have given him the exact habit which afterwards became automatic.

In addition to the manuscripts in the Forster Collection in the Museum
there are corrected proofs of a portion of the _Pickwick Papers_,
_Dombey and Son_, _David Copperfield_, _Bleak House_, and _Little
Dorrit_. Some of the corrections in _Dombey and Son_ are said to be in
the handwriting of Mr. Forster. All these proofs show marvellous
attention to detail--one of the most conspicuous of Dickens's
character