Page:Fitzgerald - Pickwickian manners and customs (1897).djvu/55

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A MONUMENTAL PICKWICK.
49

tumult of success, and left the eager public without its regular monthly number. "I have been so unnerved" he writes, in an unpublished letter to Harrison Ainsworth, "and hurt by the loss of the dear girl whom I loved, after my wife, more dearly and fervently than anyone on earth, that I have been compelled for once to give up all idea of my monthly work, and to try a fortnight's rest and quiet."

In this long book, there are found allusions to only two or three other works. What these are might form one of the questions "set" at the next Pickwick examination. Fielding is quoted once. In the dedication allusion is made to Talfourd's three speeches in Parliament, on the copyright question; there were published in a little volume, and make, fairly enough, one of the illustrative documents of "Pickwick." In the first number of the first edition there is an odd note, rather out of place, but it was withdrawn later—meant to ridicule Mr.