in which Mr. Forster disposed
of that pretension. We have referred elsewhere to the edifying
controversy between George Cruikshank and Harrison Ainsworth, in
relation to the origin of the latter's novels of the "Miser's Daughter"
and "The Tower of London." The republication of Seymour's "Humorous
Sketches" in 1866, led to a very curious claim on the part of his
friends, in which they sought to establish the fact that he was the
originator and inventor of the incidents of "Pickwick." This claim
happily was made while Dickens was yet alive, and was very promptly and
satisfactorily disposed of by himself in a letter which he wrote to the
_Athenaeum_ on the 20th of March, 1866. Author and artist have long since
gone to their rest; and the plan which the author of this work proposed
when he sat down to write the story of Robert Seymour, was to place that
artist in the position which he believes him to occupy in the ranks of
British graphic humourists, and not to rake up or revive the memory of a
somewhat painful controversy. Of the claim itself we would simply
remark, that not only was it made in all sincerity by those who loved
and cherished the memory of Robert Seymour, but that to a certain extent
the claim has a foundation of fact to rest upon; for who will deny that
had not Seymour communicated his idea to Chapman, and Chapman introduced
the artist to Dickens, the "Pickwick Papers" themselves would have
remained unwritten. In this sense, but in this sense only, therefore,
Robert Seymour was the undoubted originator of "Pickwick." He was an
artist of great power, talent, and ability; and it seems to us that
those only detract from his fame who, in a kind but mistaken spirit of
zeal, would claim for him any other position than that which he so
justly and honestly earned for himself, as one of the most talented of
English graphic satirists.

FOOTNOTES:

[97] "Greville Memoirs." vol. i. p. 180.

[98] _Ibid._, p. 207.

[99] His theory, as stated in a book which he published, was this:
that as all men are born in moral sin, so they have about them a
physical depravity in the form of an acrid humour, which, flying
about the system, at length finds vent in diseases which afflict or
terminate existence. He professed by the means afterwards explained
to bring this acrid humour to the surface, and having thus expelled
the cause of disease, to put an end to every bodily ailment.

[100] In al