ver." Any one who reads the Diary can see that Hone
thoroughly approved of Irving. But just what, in his heart of hearts,
did Irving think of Hone?

The Diary gives some significant glimpses of Charles Dickens in America.
In 1842 New York welcomed the Englishman riotously. Washington laughed
at New York for doing too much and went to the other extreme. John
Quincy Adams gave the Dickenses a dinner at which Hone was a guest.
"Some clever people were invited to meet them" is the way the ingenuous
Hone puts it. "They" (Dickens and Mrs. Dickens) "came, he in a
frock-coat, and she in her bonnet. They sat at table until four o'clock,
when he said: 'Dear, it is time for us to go home and dress for dinner.'
They were engaged to dine with Robert Greenhow at the fashionable hour
of half-past five! A most particularly funny idea to leave the table of
John Quincy Adams to dress for a dinner at Robert Greenhow's!" Hone
referred to the visitors as "The Boz and Bozess," and described the
author of "Pickwick" as "a small, bright-eyed, intelligent-looking young
fellow, thirty years of age, somewhat of a dandy in his dress, with
'rings and things and fine array,' brisk in his manner, and of a lively
conversation"; and Mrs. Dickens as "a little, fat, English-looking
woman, of an agreeable countenance, and, I should think, 'a nice
person.'"

Dickens was not the only British author of those days to kindle the
flames of American resentment. Almost all who came to our shores seemed
to possess the faculty of "getting a rise" out of Yankee sensibilities.
Captain Marryat was one of the offenders. At a dinner in Toronto he gave
an injudicious toast. Thereupon the town of Lewistown, Maine, built a
huge bonfire on the shore directly opposite Queenstown and destroyed all
the "Midshipman Easys," "Peter Simples," "Japhets," and "Jacob
Faithfuls" that could be obtained. Hone commented sensibly on the
affair in his Diary for May 5, 1838. "Captain Marryat, I dare say, made
a fool of himself (not a very difficult task, I should judge, from what
I have seen of him); but the Lewistownians have beaten him all to smash,
as the Kentuckians say. How mortified he must have been to hear that his
books had been burned after they were paid for!" A year before Marryat
had dined at the Hone house in New York and the host wrote: "The lion,
Captain Marryat, is no great things of a lion, after all. In truth, the
author of 'Peter Simple' and 'Jacob Faithful' is a very e