him, and was jealous of Miss Teman."

Some years before this time, however, there had been growing in
the mind of Dickens a certain formless discontent--something to
which he could not give a name, yet which, cast over him the
shadow of disappointment. He expressed the same feeling in David
Copperfield, when he spoke of David's life with Dora. It seemed to
come from the fact that he had grown to be a man, while his wife
had still remained a child.

A passage or two may be quoted from the novel, so that we may set
them beside passages in Dickens's own life, which we know to have
referred to his own wife, and not to any such nebulous person as
Mrs. Winter.

The shadow I have mentioned that was not to be between us any
more, but was to rest wholly on my heart--how did that fall? The
old unhappy feeling pervaded my life. It was deepened, if it were
changed at all; but it was as undefined as ever, and addressed me
like a strain of sorrowful music faintly heard in the night. I
loved my wife dearly; but the happiness I had vaguely anticipated,
once, was not the happiness I enjoyed, AND THERE WAS ALWAYS
SOMETHING WANTING.

What I missed I still regarded as something that had been a dream
of my youthful fancy; that was incapable of realization; that I
was now discovering to be so, with some natural pain, as all men
did. But that it would have been better for me if my wife could
have helped me more, and shared the many thoughts in which I had
no partner, and that this might have been I knew.