ue Sun_; he then contributed his sketches of life and
character, drawn from personal observation, to the _Morning Chronicle_:
these were an earnest of his future powers. They were collected as
_Sketches by Boz_, in two volumes, and published in 1836.

PICKWICK.--In 1837 he was asked by a publisher to prepare a series of
comic sketches of cockney sportsmen, to illustrate, as well as to be
illustrated by, etchings by Seymour. This yoking of two geniuses was a
trammel to both; but the suicide of Seymour dissolved the connection, and
Dickens had free play to produce the _Pickwick Papers_, by Boz, which were
illustrated, as he proceeded, by H. K. Browne (Phiz). The work met and
has retained an unprecedented popularity. Caricature as it was, it
caricatured real, existent oddities; everything was probable; the humor
was sympathetic if farcical, the assertion of humanity bold, and the
philosophy of universal application. He had touched our common nature in
all ranks and conditions; he had exhibited men and women of all types; he
had exposed the tricks of politics and the absurdity of elections; the
snobs of society were severely handled. He was the censor of law courts,
the exposer of swindlers, the dread of cockneys, the friend of rustics and
of the poor; and he has displayed in the principal character, that of the
immortal Pickwick, the power of a generous, simple-hearted, easily
deceived, but always philanthropic man, who comes through all his trials
without bating a jot of his love for humanity and his faith in human
nature. But the master-work of his plastic hand was Sam Weller, whose wit
and wisdom pervaded both hemispheres, and is as potent to excite laughter
to-day as at the first.

In this work he began that assault, not so much on shams as upon
prominent, unblushing evil, which he carried on in some form or other in
all his later works; and which was to make him prominent among the
reformers and benefactors of his age. He was at once famous, and his pen
was in demand to amuse the idle and to aid the philanthropic.

NICHOLAS NICKLEBY.--The _Pickwick Papers_ were in their intention a series
of sketches somewhat desultory and loosely connected. His next work was
_Nicholas Nickleby_, a complete story, in which he was entirely
successful. Wonderful in the variety and reality of his characters, his
powerful satire was here principally directed against the private
boarding-schools in England, where unloved children, exi