simplicity.

For the "Sketches" published in _The Old Monthly Magazine_, Dickens
got nothing, beyond the pleasure of seeing himself in print. The
_Chronicle_ treated him somewhat more liberally, and, on his
application, increased his salary, giving him, in view of his original
contributions, seven guineas a week, instead of the five guineas which
he had been drawing as a reporter. Not a particularly brilliant
augmentation, perhaps, and one at which he must often have smiled in
after years, when his pen was dropping gold as well as ink. Still, the
addition to his income was substantial, and the son of John Dickens
must always, I imagine, have been in special need of money. Moreover
the circumstances of the next few months would render any increased
earnings doubly pleasant. For Dickens was shortly after this engaged
to be married to Miss Catherine Hogarth, the daughter of one of his
fellow-workers on the _Chronicle_. There had been, so Forster tells
us, a previous very shadowy love affair in his career,--an affair so
visionary indeed, and boyish, as scarcely to be worthy of mention in
this history, save for three facts: first, that his devotion,
dreamlike as it was, seems to have had love's highest practical effect
in inducing him to throw his whole strength into the study of
shorthand; secondly, that the lady of his love appears to have had
some resemblance to Dora, the child-wife of David Copperfield; and
thirdly, that he met her again long years afterwards, when time had
worked its changes, and the glamour of love had left his eyes, and
that to that meeting we owe the passages in "Little Dorrit" relating
to poor Flora. This, however, is a parenthesis. The engagement to Miss
Hogarth was neither shadowy nor unreal--an engagement only in
dreamland. Better for both, perhaps--who knows?--if it had been. Ah
me, if one could peer into the future, how many weddings there are at