of drollery as I knew how to make it. In four or five days there came a
reply in the same spirit,--boiling over with fun. He had kept my letter
by him, not daring to open it,--as he says that he did with that
eligible invitation. At last he had given it to one of his girls to
examine,--to see whether the thorn would be too sharp, whether I had
turned upon him with reproaches. A man so susceptible, so prone to work
by fits and starts, so unmethodical, could not have been a good editor.

In 1862 he went into the new house which he had built for himself at
Palace Green. I remember well, while this was still being built, how his
friends used to discuss his imprudence in building it. Though he had
done well with himself, and had made and was making a large income, was
he entitled to live in a house the rent of which could not be counted at
less than from five hundred to six hundred pounds a year? Before he had
been there two years, he solved the question by dying,--when the house
was sold for two thousand pounds more than it had cost. He himself, in
speaking of his project, was wont to declare that he was laying out his
money in the best way he could for the interest of his children;--and it
turned out that he was right.

In 1863 he died in the house which he had built, and at the period of
his death was writing a new novel in numbers, called _Denis Duval_. In
_The Cornhill_, _The Adventures of Philip_ had appeared. This new
enterprise was destined for commencement on 1st January, 1864, and,
though the writer was gone, it kept its promise, as far as it went.
Three numbers, and what might probably have been intended for half of a
fourth, appeared. It may be seen, therefore, that he by no means held to
my theory, that the author should see the end of his work before the
public sees the commencement. But neither did Dickens or Mrs. Gaskell,
both of whom died with stories not completed, which, when they died,