Mr Micawber gave David Copperfield some parting advice, drawn from his own experience – not because he had benefited from it himself, but because he had suffered from not heeding it. His first word of counsel to never put something off until later, but to seize every opportunity, a rule by which his own father-in-law had sworn.

After advising David Copperfield to follow his own father-in-law’s maxim, and never do tomorrow what can be done today, Mr Micawber expressed regret that his father-in-law had encouraged him to rush into marriage. However, he quickly passed on to his second piece of advice: never to let annual expenditure exceed annual income, even by a sixpence.

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