roducing the principal characters and events in the novel. The
austere and pompous (not to say selfish) Mr. Dombey, whom "Phiz" had
great difficulty in realizing to the author's satisfaction,[N] is
introduced in many of the plates, although the artist has somewhat
failed in preserving the same type of face throughout. He has succeeded
better with the genial Captain Cuttle. Little Paul, as he sits in his
diminutive arm-chair, contrasts most favourably in his childish
innocence, with the grim Mrs. Pipchin, whose Ogress-like character is
strongly marked. The scene in which Mr. Dombey introduces his daughter
Florence to Mrs. Skewton, is one of the most successful in the book, and
contains the _best_ type of Dombey. Here also, the face of Florence is
truly pretty, and the artist has well portrayed the handsome but
vindictive Edith denouncing Carker for his treachery. A very effective
etching entitled, "On the Dark Road," represents the flight of the
enraged and disappointed libertine. The horses are being urged on their
mad career by the whip and spurs of a postilion, under the dark sky with
a glimmer of light in the horizon caused by the rising sun. The artist
at this time essayed a process of working on plates over which a
half-tint had been previously laid by means of a ruling-machine, and in
which the "high-lights" were afterwards "stopped out," and the "whites"
"burnished out." He frequently availed himself of these ready means of
producing effect. Full-length portraits of the principal characters in
_Dombey_, which were issued as additional plates by "Phiz," are now very
scarce.

_David Copperfield_ (1850), with forty illustrations, was the next
venture, but was not so much an artistic as a literary success. A
favourite character in it of course, is Micawber, a kindly caricature of
the Author's father, the realization of whom, by Browne, obtained the
hearty approval of Dickens.

The most characteristic and, perhaps, most successful work of "Phiz" is
to be seen in the illustrations to _Bleak House_. A view of the "House"
itself forms the subject of the frontispiece. "The Ghost's Walk," the
"Drawing-room at Chesney Wold," "Tom All-alone's," and the gateway
leading to the burial ground where Lady Dedlock has fallen lifeless, are
instances where the artist has obtained some fine effects by the
"ruled-plate" process. A writer in _The Daily Telegraph_, of July 11th,
1882, speaks somewhat disparagingly of these illustrations