Page:Fitzgerald - Pickwickian manners and customs (1897).djvu/26

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
20
PICKWICKIAN MANNERS AND CUSTOMS.

tendered their cards. For so amiable a man, Mr. Pickwick had some extraordinary failings. He seems to have had no restraint where drink was in the case, and was hopelessly drunk about six times—on three occasions, at least, he was preparing to assault violently. He once hurled an inkstand; he once struck a person; once challenged his friend to "come on." Yet the capital comedy spirit of the author carries us over these blemishes.

When Sam was relating to his master the story of the sausage maker's disappearance, Mr. Pickwick, horrified, asked had he been "Burked?" There Boz might have repeated his apologetic footnote, on Jingle's share in the Revolution of 1830. "A remarkable instance of his force of prophetic imagination, etc." For the sausage story was related in the year of grace 1827, and Burke was executed in 1829, some two years later.

Mr. Lang has suggested that the bodies Mr. Sawyer and his friend subscribed for,