Never do to-morrow what you can do to-day. Procrastination is…

The advice comes in chapter 12 of David Copperfield, on the eve of a parting: the Micawbers, with whom young David has been lodging, are leaving London. Mr Micawber explains that his advice is worth taking since he has “never taken it” himself, and is now “the miserable wretch you behold”. His wife recognises the words at once: “My poor papa’s maxim.” Micawber replies that her father applied it to their own marriage, entered into so “prematurely” that he “never recovered the expence”.

Micawber, forever waiting for something to “turn up”, is the living opposite of his advice. Even the words are borrowed: the first sentence adapts an old proverb, and the second is a line from Edward Young’s poem Night-Thoughts, written in the 1740s. Only “Collar him!” is his own, as if the thief of time could be grabbed like a pickpocket.

The novel appeared in monthly parts in 1849 and 1850. Dickens drew Micawber partly from his own father, John Dickens, who was imprisoned for debt in 1824.

David Copperfield, Chapter 12 (Mr Micawber), 1850

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