is head, his clothes scant, though jauntily cut, and,
after changing a ragged office-coat for a shabby blue, he stood by the
door, collarless and buttoned up, the very personification, I thought,
of a close sailer to the wind." I remember, while my friend lived, our
laughing heartily at this description, hardly a word of which is true;
and I give it now as no unfair specimen of the kind of garbage that
since his death also has been served up only too plentifully by some of
his own as well as by others of Mr. Willis's countrymen.

[8] Not quoted in detail, on that or any other occasion; though referred
to. It was, however, placed in my hands, for use if occasion should
arise, when Dickens went to America in 1867. The letter bears date the
7th July, 1849, and was Mr. Chapman's answer to the question Dickens had
asked him, whether the account of the origin of _Pickwick_ which he had
given in the preface to the cheap edition in 1847 was not strictly
correct. "It is so correctly described," was Mr. Chapman's opening
remark, "that I can throw but little additional light on it." The name
of his hero, I may add, Dickens took from that of a celebrated
coach-proprietor of Bath.

[9] The appeal was then made to him because of recent foolish statements
by members of Mr. Seymour's family, which Dickens thus contradicted: "It
is with great unwillingness that I notice some intangible and incoherent
assertions which have been made, professedly on behalf of Mr. Seymour,
to the effect that he had some share in the invention of this book, or
of anything in it, not faithfully described in the foregoing paragraph.
With the moderation that is due equally to my respect for the memory of
a brother-artist, and to my self-respect, I confine myself to placing on
record here the facts--That Mr. Seymour never originated or suggested an
incident, a phrase, or a word, to be found in this book. That Mr.
Seymour died when only twenty-four pages of this book were published,
and when assuredly not forty-eight were written. That I believe I never
saw Mr. Seymour's handwriting in my life. That I never saw Mr. Seymour
but once in my life, and that was on the night but one before his death,
when he certainly offered no suggestion whatsoever. That I saw him then
in the presence of two persons, both living, perfectly acquainted with
all these facts, and whose written testimony to them I possess. Lastly,
that Mr. Edward Chapman (the survivor of the original fir