th great
skill and cheerfulness. For Mr. Winkle he had no feeling but contempt,
and in fact regarded a fowling-piece as only a toy for a squaw. He had
no Bible; and perhaps if he practised in his rude savage way all Dickens
taught, he might less have felt the want even of that companion."

FOOTNOTES:

[261] I hope my readers will find themselves able to understand that, as
well as this which follows: "What seems preposterous, impossible to us,
seemed to him simple fact of observation. When he imagined a street, a
house, a room, a figure, he saw it not in the vague schematic way of
ordinary imagination, but in the sharp definition of actual perception,
all the salient details obtruding themselves on his attention. He,
seeing it thus vividly, made us also see it; and believing in its
reality however fantastic, he communicated something of his belief to
us. He presented it in such relief that we ceased to think of it as a
picture. So definite and insistent was the image, that even while
knowing it was false we could not help, for a moment, being affected, as
it were, by his hallucination."

[262] "Though," John Ballantyne told Lockhart, "he often turned himself
on his pillow with a groan of torment, he usually continued the sentence
in the same breath. But when dialogue of peculiar animation was in
progress, spirit seemed to triumph altogether over matter--he arose from
his couch and walked up and down the room, raising and lowering his
voice, and as it were acting the parts." _Lockhart_, vi. 67-8. The
statement of James Ballantyne is at p. 89 of the same volume. The
original incidents on which Scott had founded the tale he remembered,
but "not a single character woven by the romancer, not one of the many
scenes and points of humour, nor anything with which he was connected as
the writer of the work."

[263] "Do you know _Master Humphrey's Clock_! I admire Nell in the _Old
Curiosity Shop_ exceedingly. The whole thing is a good deal borrowed
from _Wilhelm Meister_. But little Nell is a far purer, lovelier, more
_English_ conception than Mignon, treasonable as the saying would seem
to some. No doubt it was suggested by Mignon."--Sara Coleridge to Aubrey
de Vere (_Memoirs and Letters_, ii. 269-70). Expressing no opinion on
this comparison, I may state it as within my knowledge that the book
referred to was not then known to Dickens.

[264] The distinction I then pointed out was remarked by Sara Coleridge
(_Memoirs and L