these collected pieces were published under the familiar
title "Sketches by Boz," it is not too much to say that the
Dickens of the "Pickwick Papers" (which was to appear next year)
was revealed. Certainly, the main qualities of a great master of
the Comic were in these pages; so, in truth, was the master of
both tears and smiles. But not at full-length: the writer had
not yet found his occasion;--the man needs the occasion, even as
it awaits the man. And so, hard upon the Boz book, followed, as
it were by an accident, the world-famous "Adventures of Mr.
Pickwick." By accident, I say, because the promising young
author was asked to furnish the letter-press for a series of
comic sporting pictures by the noted artist, Seymour;
whereupon--doubtless to the astonishment of all concerned, the
pictures became quite secondary to the reading matter and the Wellers
soon set all England talking and laughing over their inimitable
sayings. Here in a loosely connected series of sketches the main
unity of which was the personality of Mr. Pickwick and his club,
its method that of the episodic adventure story of "Gil Blas"
lineage, its purpose frankly to amuse at all costs, a new
creative power in English literature gave the world over three
hundred characters in some sixty odd scenes: intensely English,
intensely human, and still, after the lapse of three quarters of
a century, keenly enjoyable.

In a sense, all Dickens' qualities are to be found in "The
Pickwick Papers," as they have come to be called for brevity's
sake. But the assertion is misleading, if it be taken to mean
that in the fifteen books of fiction which Dickens was to
produce, he added nothing, failed to grow in his art or to widen
and deepen in his hold upon life. So far is this from the truth,
that one who only knows Charles Dickens in this first great book
of fun, knows a phase of him, not the whole man: more, hardly
knows the novelist at all. He was to become, and to remain, not
only a great humorist, but a great novelist as well: and
"Pickwick" is not, by definition, a Novel at all. Hence, the
next book the following year, "Oliver Twist," was important as
answering the question: Was the brilliant new writer to turn out
very novelist, able to invent, handle and lead to due end a
tangled representation of social life?

Before replying, one rather important matter may be adverted to,
concerning the Dickens introduced to the world by "Pickwick":
his astonishing p