hall," "Mr. Pickwick Goes to Margate,"
etc.: we had a narrow escape, it would seem, of this conventional sort of
thing, and no doubt it was this the publishers looked for. But "Boz"
asserted his supremacy, and made the narrative the chief element.

It was interesting thus to know that Mr. Pickwick had visited the borders
of Wales--I suppose, Chester--but what was his celebrated journey to
Birmingham, prompted by his "fondness for the useful arts"? This could
hardly refer to his visit to Mr. Winkle, sen. The Club, it will be seen,
was founded in 1822, and its place of meeting would appear to have been
this Huggin Lane, City, "so intimately associated with Lothbury and
Cateaton Street." The picture of the meeting of the Club shows us that
it consisted of the ominous number of _thirteen_. There is not room for
more. They seem like a set of well-to-do retired tradesmen; the faces
are such as we should see on the stage in a piece of low comedy: for the
one on the left Mr. Edward Terry might have sat. The secretary sits at
the bottom of the table, with his back to us, and the chairman, with
capacious stomach, at the top. Blotton, whom Mr. Pickwick rather
unhandsomely described as a "vain and disappointed haberdasher," may have
followed this business. He is an ill-looking fellow enough, with black,
bushy whiskers. The Pickwickians are decidedly the most gentlemanly of
the party. But why was it necessary for Mr. Pickwick to stand upon a
chair? This, however, may have been a custom of the day at free and easy
meetings.

"Posthumous _papers_"--moreover, did not correctly describe the character
of the Book, for the narrative did not profess to be founded on documents
at all. He was, however, committed to this title by his early
announcement, and indeed intended to carry out a device of using
Snodgrass's "Note Books," whose duty it was during the course of the
adventures to take down diligently all that he observed. But this
cumbrous fiction was discarded after a couple of numbers. "Posthumous
papers" had been used some ten years before, in another work.

Almost every page--save perhaps a dismal story or two--in the 609 pages
of Pickwick is good; but there are two or three passages which are
obscure, if not forced in humour. Witness Mr. Bantam's recognition of
Mr. Pickwick, as the gentleman residing on Clapham Green--not yet
Common--"who lost the use of his limbs from imprudently taking cold after
port wine, who c