hood. Long afterwards, when he had thought of a periodical publication (which was to become Household Words), he wrote about it to Forster: "I strongly incline to the notion of a kind of Spectator (Addison's)—very cheap and pretty frequent." How strange it sounds to our ears! What editor would nowadays dream of taking Addison as his model? But Dickens was so much nearer to the age of graceful leisure, and, on one side of his personality, had profited so well by its teaching.
Of Sir Walter Scott, I believe, he never speaks with any special enthusiasm, and, as regards the purely Scottish novels, this is easily understood; they could make no strong appeal to the mind of Dickens. But it seems to me that Scott's influence is not to be mistaken in the narrative of Barnaby Rudge.
One artist there was, an artist with the brush and an engraver, of whom it may be said that Dickens assuredly learnt, though I cannot see the possibility of comparing their work, of which Forster and others make so much. The genius of Hogarth differed widely from that of the author of Pickwick, but it was inevitable that such profound studies of life and character should attract, even fascinate, a mind absorbed in contem-
