While the public were still rejoicing in the first sprightly runnings of the "new humour," the humorist set to work desperately on the grim scenes of _Oliver Twist_, the story of a parish orphan, the nucleus of which had already seen the light in his _Sketches_. The early scenes are of a harrowing reality, despite the germ of forced pathos which the observant reader may detect in the pitiful parting between Oliver and little Dick; but what will strike every reader at once in this book is the directness and power of the English style, so nervous and unadorned: from its unmistakable clearness and vigour Dickens was to travel far as time went on. But the full effect of the old simplicity is felt in such masterpieces of description as the drive of Oliver and Sikes to Chertsey, the condemned-cell ecstasy of Fagin, or the unforgettable first encounter between Oliver and the Artful Dodger. Before November 1837 had ended, Charles Dickens entered on an engagement to write a successor to _Pickwick_ on similar lines of publication. _Oliver Twist_ was then in mid-career; a _Life of Grimaldi_ and _Barnaby Rudge_ were already covenanted for. Dickens forged ahead with the new tale of _Nicholas Nickleby_ and was justified by the results, for its sale far surpassed even that of _Pickwick_. As a conception it is one of his weakest. An unmistakably 18th-century character pervades it. Some of the vignettes are among the most piquant and besetting ever written. Large parts of it are totally unobserved conventional melodrama; but the Portsmouth Theatre and Dotheboys Hall and Mrs Nickleby (based to some extent, it is thought, upon Miss Bates in _Emma_, but also upon the author's Mamma) live for ever as Dickens conceived them in the pages of _Nicholas Nickleby_.
Having got rid of _Nicholas Nickleby_ and resigned his editorship of _Bentley's Miscellany_, in which _Oliver Twist_ originally appeared, Dickens conceived the idea of a weekly periodical to be issued as _Master Humphrey's Clock_, to comprise short stories, essays and miscellaneous papers, after the model of Addison's _Spectator_. To make the weekly numbers "go," he introduced Mr Pickwick, Sam Weller and his father in friendly intercourse. But the public requisitioned "a story," and in No. 4 he had to brace himself up to give them one. Thus was commenced _The Old Curiosity Shop_, which was continued with slight interruptions, and followed by _Barnaby Rudge_. For the first time we find Dickens obsessed by a highly complicated plot. The tonality achieved in _The Old Curiosity Shop_ surpassed anything he had attempted in this difficult vein, while the rich humour of Dick Swiveller and the Marchioness, and the vivid portraiture of the wandering Bohemians, attain the very highest level of Dickensian drollery; but in the lamentable tale of Little Nell (though Landor and Jeffrey thought the character-drawing of this infant comparable with that of Cordelia), it is generally admitted that he committed an indecent assault upon the emotions by exhibiting a veritable monster of piety and long-suffering in a child of tender years. In _Barnaby Rudge_ he was manifestly affected by the influence of Scott, whose achievements he always regarded with a touching veneration. The plot, again, is of the utmost complexity, and Edgar Allan Poe (who predicted the conclusion) must be one of the few persons who ever really mastered it. But few of Dickens's books are written in a more admirable style.