the _Morning Chronicle_, and was just starting on a journey, but yet
there are here two separate flourishes; one begins under the _s_ of
_Charles_ and ends under the _C_ of that name; the other starts under
the capital _D_ and finishes below the _n_ of _Dickens_.

[Illustration: AGE 23.
_From a Miniature by Miss R. E. Drummond._]

[Illustration: NO. 7.--WRITTEN IN 1836.]

[Illustration: NO. 8.--WRITTEN OCT. 1, 1836.]

The intricacy of the next facsimile, No. 7, is an ugly but a very active
piece of movement. This group of curves is equal to about a two-feet
length of pen-stroke, a fact which indicates an extraordinary amount of
personal energy. Dickens was then writing his "Sketches by Boz," and
this ungraceful elaboration of his signature was probably accompanied by
a growing sense of his own capacity and power. During the time-interval
between the signatures shown in Nos. 7 and 8, the first number of the
"Pickwick Papers" was published--March, 1836--and Charles Dickens
married Catherine Hogarth on the 2nd of April in that year. The original
of a very different facsimile (No. 9) was written as a receipt in the
account-book of Messrs. Chapman and Hall for an advance of £5.

[Illustration: NO. 9.--WRITTEN IN 1837.]

The six facsimiles numbered 9 to 15 deserve special notice. The
originals were all written in the year 1837, and I have purposely shown
them because their extraordinary variations entirely negative the
popular idea about the uniformity of Dickens's handwriting, and because