Page:Works of Charles Dickens, ed. Lang - Volume 18.djvu/8

vi what he regarded as the disappointing reward of £230. "And the last four [thousand] will yield as much more. I had set my heart and soul upon a thousand, clear." Sir Walter Scott regarded twopence in the shilling as a fair ratio of an author's profits on a book. On this plan Dickens would have received £300, not £230, for 6000 copies of a five-shilling book. He finally got £726 for 15,000, which comes pretty near to Scott's idea of what is right, but the wonderful result "of such a great success" was "intolerable anxiety and disappointment." "My year's bills, unpaid, are terrific." He had, it seems, spent money on the strength of expectations which were defeated by the sudden, and inexplicable, fall in his popularity. Mr. Forster thinks that "want of judgment had been shown in not adjusting the expenses of production with a more equable regard to the selling price." Coloured woodcuts by John Leech are expensive luxuries, and probably did not add, in due proportion, to the success of the work. Dickens changed his publishers, as has been already seen, and went abroad. If not financially, the book was indeed a success of appreciation. It founded "the Carol philosophy," and was warmly praised by Mr. Michael Angelo Titmarsh. "The last two people I heard speak of it were women," says Thackeray; "neither knew the other, or the author, and both said, by way of criticism, 'God bless him'" The book was pirated, and Dickens suffered much, in the Court of Chancery, during his efforts to stop the robbers. He complains of "expense, anxiety, and horrible injustice." The Carol was the first of five Christmas Books. The traditions of Christmas, the explosion of good will, the ancient survivals which give ghosts a kind of holiday at the winter solstice, were combined. The old-fashioned phenomena