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Chapman and Hall, the publishers, who applied to "Boz" for a serial story to be issued in monthly parts. The result was the "Posthumous Memoirs of the Pickwick Club," with illustrations at first from the pencil of Seymour, and, after he committed suicide, illustrations from Hablot K. Browne,-"Phiz."

"The success of the 'Pickwick Papers' was immediate and great. Its wit, pathos, and shrewd picturing of English character, high and low, touched the heart and fancy of all classes. The sayings of Sam Weller were quoted by speakers in the House of Parliament and the ragged gamins in the slums of London."

"The London Quarterly Review," in October, 1837, said of Mr. Dickens, "The popularity of this writer is one of the most remarkable literary phenomena of recent times; for it has been fairly earned, without resorting to any of the means by which most other writers have succeeded in attracting the attention of their contemporaries. He has flattered no popular prejudice, and profited by no passing folly; he has attempted no caricature of the manners or conversation of the aristocracy; and there are very few political or personal allusions in his works. Moreover, his class of subjects is such as to expose him, at the outset, to the fatal objection of vulgarity; and, with the exception of occasional extracts in the newspapers, he received little or no assistance from the press. And yet, in less than six months from the appearance of the first number of the 'Pickwick

Papers,' the whole reading public was talking about them the names of Winkle, Wardle, Weller, Snodgrass, Dodson, and Fogg, had become familiar in our mouths as household terms; and Mr. Dickens was the grand object of interest to the whole tribe of 'Leohunters,' male and female, of the metropolis. Nay, Pickwick chintzes figured in linen-drapers' windows, and Weller corduroys in breeches-makers' advertisements; Boz cabs might be seen rattling through the streets; and the portrait of the author of Pelham' or 'Crichton' was scraped down or pasted over, to make room for that of the new popular favorite, in the omnibuses. This is only to be accounted for on the supposition that a fresh vein of humor had been opened, that a new and decidedly original genius had sprung up; and the most cursory reference to preceding English writers of the comic order will show, that, in his own peculiar walk, Mr. Dickens is not simply the most distinguished, but the first."

Mr. Dickens was but about twenty-three when he was asked to write "Pickwick;" and of that invitation he thus speaks in a later preface to that humorous vol

ume:

"When I opened my door in Furnival's Inn to the partner who represented the firm, I recognized in him the person from whose hands I had bought, two or three years previously, and whom I had never seen before or

since, my first copy of the magazine in which my first effusion a paper in the Sketches,' called 'MR. MINNS AND HIS COUSIN,' dropped stealthily one evening at twilight, with fear and trembling, into a dark letter-box, in a dark office, up a dark court in Fleet Street-appeared in all the glory of print; on which occasion I walked down to Westminster Hall, and turned into it for half-an-hour, because my eyes were so dimmed with joy and pride that they could not bear the street, and were not fit to be seen there. I told my visitor of the coincidence, which we both hailed as a good omen, and so fell to business."

The high moral purpose of the "Pickwick Papers can be seen by these words from the same preface:

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"Who knows, but, by the time the series reaches its conclusion, it may be discovered that there are even magistrates in town and country who should be taught to shake hands every day with Common-sense and Justice; that even poor-laws may have mercy on the weak, the aged, and unfortunate; that schools, on the broad principles of Christianity, are the best adornment for the length and breadth of this civilized land; that prison-doors should be barred on the outside no less heavily and carefully than they are barred within; that the universal diffusion of common means of decency and health is as much the right of the poorest of the poor as it is indispensable to the safety of the rich and

of the State; that a few petty boards and bodies-less than drops in the great ocean of humanity which roars around them are not forever to let loose fever and consumption on God's creatures at their will, or always to keep their jobbing little fiddles going, for a Dance of Death."

In "Pickwick Papers" may be found the following song, which was exceedingly popular in its day, entitled

"THE IVY GREEN.

"Oh, a dainty plant is the ivy green,

That creepeth o'er ruins old!

Of right choice food are his meals, I ween,

In his cell so lone and cold.

The wall must be crumbled, the stone decayed,
To pleasure his dainty whim;

And the mouldering dust that years have made
Is a merry meal for him.

Creeping where no life is seen,

A rare old plant is the ivy green.

Fast he stealeth on, though he wears no wings;

And a staunch old heart has he.

How closely he twineth, how tight he clings,
To his friend the huge oak-tree!

And slyly he traileth along the ground,
And his leaves he gently waves,

As he joyously hugs and crawleth round
The rich mould of dead men's graves.

Creeping where grim death has been,
A rare old plant is the ivy green.

Whole ages have fled, and their works decayed,
And nations have scattered been;

But the stout old ivy shall never fade
From its hale and hearty green.
The brave old plant in its lonely days
Shall fatten upon the past;

For the stateliest building man can raise
Is the ivy's food at last.

Creeping on, where time has been,
A rare old plant is the ivy green."

One of the humorous sketches in "Pickwick" is that well-known and oft-quoted description of Sam Weller's valentine, which is here inserted.

“Mr. Weller having obtained leave of absence from Mr. Pickwick, who in his then state of excitement and worry was by no means displeased at being left alone, set forth, long before the appointed hour, and, having · plenty of time at his disposal, sauntered down as far as the Mansion House, where he paused and contemplated, with a face of great calmness and philosophy, the numerous cads and drivers of short stages who assemble near that famous place of resort, to the great terror and confusion of the old-lady population of these realms. Having loitered here for half an hour or so, Mr. Weller turned, and began wending his way towards Leadenhall Market, through a variety of by-streets and courts. As he was sauntering away his spare time, and stopped to look at almost every object that met his gaze, it is by

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