Nickleby"--after the classics, in fact--the most delightful of
Dickens's books. The story is embroiled, no doubt. What are we to
think of Estelle? Has the minx any purpose? Is she a kind of Ethel
Newcome of odd life? It is not easy to say; still, for a story of
Dickens's the plot is comparatively clear and intelligible. For a
study of a child's life, of the nature Dickens drew best--the river
and the marshes--and for plenty of honest explosive fun, there is no
later book of Dickens's like "Great Expectations." Miss Havisham,
too, in her mouldy bridal splendour, is really impressive; not like
Ralph Nickleby and Monk in "Oliver Twist"--a book of which the plot
remains to me a mystery. {4} Pip and Pumblechook and Mr. Wopsle and
Jo are all immortal, and cause laughter inextinguishable. The
rarity of this book, by the way, in its first edition--the usual
library three volumes--is rather difficult to explain. One very
seldom sees it come into the market, and then it is highly priced.

I have mentioned more than once the obscurity of Dickens's plots.
This difficulty may be accounted for in a very flattering manner.
Where do we lose ourselves? Not in the bare high-road, but among
lanes, between hedges hung with roses, blackberries, morning
glories, where all about us is so full of pleasure that our
attention is distracted and we miss our way. Now, in Dickens--in
"Oliver Twist," in "Martin Chuzzlewit," in "Nicholas Nickleby"--
there is, as in the lanes, so much to divert and beguile, that we
cease to care very much where the road leads--a road so full of
happy marvels. The dark, plotting villains--like the tramp who
frightened Sir Walter Scott so terribly, as he came from Miss
Baillie's at Hampstead--peer out from behind the hedges now and
then. But we are too much amused by the light hearts that go all
the way, by the Dodger and Crummles and Mrs. Gamp, to care much for