[4] The reader will forgive my quoting from a letter of the date of the 22d April, 1848. "I desire no better for my fame, when my personal dustiness shall be past the control of my love of order, than such a biographer and such a critic." "You know me better," he wrote, resuming the same subject on the 6th of July, 1862, "than any other man does, or ever will." In an entry of my diary during the interval between these years, I find a few words that not only mark the time when I first saw in its connected shape the autobiographical fragment which will form the substance of the second chapter of this biography, but also express his own feeling respecting it when written: "20 January, 1849. The description may make none of the impression on others that the reality made on him. . . . Highly probable that it may never see the light. No wish. Left to J. F. or others." The first number of _David Copperfield_ appeared five months after this date; but though I knew, even before he adapted his fragment of autobiography to the eleventh number, that he had now abandoned the notion of completing it under his own name, the "_no wish_," or the discretion left me, was never in any way subsequently modified. What follows, from the same entry, refers to the manuscript of the fragment: "No blotting, as when writing fiction; but straight on, as when writing ordinary letter."
Mr. Dilke's Half-crown--Story of Boyhood told--D. C. and C. D.--Enterprise of the Cousins Lamert--First Employment in Life--Blacking-Warehouse--A Poor Little Drudge--Bob Fagin and Poll Green--"Facilis Descensus"--Crushed Hopes--The Home in Gower Street--Regaling Alamode--Home broken up--At Mrs. Roylance's in Camden-town--Sundays in Prison--Pudding-Shops and Coffee-Shops--What was and might have been--Thomas and Harry--A Lodging in Lant Street--Meals in the Marshalsea--C. D. and the Marchioness--Originals of Garland Family--Adventure with Bob Fagin--Saturday-Night Shows--Appraised officially--Publican and Wife at Cannon Row--Marshalsea Incident in _Copperfield_--Incident as it occurred--Materials for _Pickwick_--Sister Fanny's Musical Prize--From Hungerford Stairs to Chandos Street--Father's Quarrel with James Lamert--Quits the Warehouse--Bitter Associations of Servitude--What became of the Blacking-Business.