I 



CHARLES DICKENS, 189 



Smith wrote to him during the progress of the work : ' Peck- 

 sniff and his daughters, and Pinch, are admirable — quite first- 

 rate painting, such as no one but yourself can execute.' That 

 he had openness of soul and liberality of mind sufficient to 

 recognise and acknowledge merit in another, was made apparent 

 by his pointing out to John Forster two stories in course of 

 publication in Blackwood's Magazine, by George Eliot. ' Do 

 read them,' he wrote ; ' they are the best things I have seen 

 since I began my course.' This year he presided at the 

 opening of the Manchester Athenasum, when Mr, Cobden and 

 Mr. Disraeli also assisted. He spoke on the education of the 

 very poor. In the intervals of the composition of Martin 

 Chuzzlewit, A Christmas Carol was written, which appeared in 

 December, illustrated by John Leech. 'I can testify,' says 

 John Forster, ' to the accuracy of his own account of what 

 befell him in its composition, with what a strange mastery it 

 seized him for itself; how he wept over it, and laughed, and 

 wept again, and excited himself to an extraordinary degree ; 

 and how he walked thinking of it fifteen and twenty miles 

 about the black streets of London, many and many a night, 

 after all sober folks had gone to bed.' 



The sale of Chuzzlewit in numbers, at its best, was never 

 over 23,000, a great falling off from the Curiosity Shop and 

 Barnaby Riidge, which sold over 70,000. Although before 

 the close of the year he had received a sum of J^^^^zd 

 for the sale of 15,000 copies of the Carol, yet he found 

 himself in monetary difficulties. Determined in the mean- 

 time to break off his publishing relationships with Messrs. 

 Chapman & Hall, his usual publishers, at the same time 

 he concluded an agreement with Messrs. Bradbury & Evans, 

 printers, which, upon an advance made to him of ^^2800, 



