Sidelights on his life and his personality. The essays in this volume are a selection of the Claudius Clear letters Nicoll contributed to the British Weekly between 1901 and 1918. The reader will note that Nicoll was no blind idolater of Dickens, although he did not write as much about any other author as he did of Dickens. He is keenly sensible to the faults no less in his character than in his work. However, one thing that baffled Nicoll was the cause of Dickens’ dislike of non-conformity, especially of non-conformist ministers. In these essays, the reader will find Nicoll hovering around this questions and confessing his inability to answer it.