d see. It has two faces, and looks
into two different streets, with its double gables, and date (1713)
inscribed on a tablet outside. It is a yellow, well-worn little
building. And you enter through darkened tunnels, as it were, cut
through the house, coming into a strange yard of evident antiquity, with
a steep, ladder-like flight of stone steps that leads up to a window much
like the old Canongate houses. Here, then, it was that Boz put up, and
here are preserved traditions and relics of his stay. One of the tales
is that, after some exuberant night _in the election time_, he would get
his candle and, having to cross the court, would have it blown out half a
dozen times, when he would go back patiently to relight it. They show
his chair, and a jug out of which he drank, but one has not much faith in
these chairs and jugs; they always seem to be supplied to demand, and
must be found to gratify the pilgrims.

One of the examination queries which might have found a place in Mr.
Calverley's paper of questions is this: "When did Mr. Pickwick sit down
_to make entries in his journal_, and spend half an hour in so doing?" At
Bath on the night of Mr. Winkle's race round the Crescent. What was this
journal? Or why did he keep it? Or why are so few allusions made to it?
Mr. Snodgrass was the appointed historiographer of the party, and his
"notes" are often spoken of and appealed to as the basis of the
chronicle. But half an hour, as I say, was the time the great man seems
to have allotted to his posting up the day's register: "Mr. Pickwick shut
up the book, wiped his pen _on the bottom of the inside of his
coat-tail_, and opened the drawer of the inkstand to put it carefully
away." How particular--how real all this is! This it is that gives the
_living_ force to the book, and a persuasion--irresistible almost--that
it is all about _some living person_. I have often wondered how it is
that this book of Boz's has such an astounding power of development, such
a fertility in engendering other books, and what is the secret of it.
Scott's astonishing Waverley series, Thackeray's "Vanity Fair," Boz's own
"Nicholas Nickleby," "Oliver Twist," in fact, not one of the whole series
save "the immortal 'Pickwick'" has produced anything in the way of books
or commentaries. I believe it is really owing to this. Boz was a great
admirer of Boswell's equally immortal book. I have heard him speak of
it. He attempted parodies of it