more important. In considering Dickens as an artist, I propose first of all to deal with the construction of his stories. Let it be understood that in the present chapters I discuss his novels solely from this point of view, postponing consideration of those features of the master's work which are his strength and his glory.
However ill-constructed, Pickwick, I imagine, was never found uninteresting. One may discourse about it in good set terms, pointing out that it belongs to a very old school of narrative, and indicating resemblances with no less a work than Don Quixote,—Mr. Pickwick and Sam Weller being in some degree the antitypes of the Knight of La Mancha and Sancho. Intrigue there is none (save in the offices of Messrs. Dodson and Fogg). The thing is aimed at the reader's diaphragm, and, by ricochet, touches his heart. Lord Campbell declared that he would rather have written Pickwick than be Chief Justice of England; yet here we have simply the rambles and accidents and undignified escapades of certain Londoners, one of them accompanied by a manservant, whom he picked up as boots at an inn; we have a typical London landlady, a breach-of-promise case, and a debtors' prison. What unpromising material, in the year 1837, for
