, as he afterwards
entitled it, but which appeared in the magazine as A Dinner at Poplar
Walk)." There is another mistake at p. 159, of "bandy-legged" instead of
"bulky-legged" and, at p. 177, of "fresh fields" for "fresh woods."

Those several corrections were made in the Tenth Edition. To the
Eleventh these words were prefixed (under date of the 23rd of January,
1872): "Since the above mentioned edition went to press, a published
letter has rendered necessary a brief additional note to the remarks
made at pp. 155-6." The remark occurs in my notice of the silly story
of Mr. Cruikshank having originated _Oliver Twist_, and, with the note
referred to, now stands in the form subjoined. "Whether all Sir
Benjamin's laurels however should fall to the person by whom the tale is
told,* or whether any part belongs to the authority alleged for it, is
unfortunately not quite clear. There would hardly have been a doubt, if
the fable had been confined to the other side of the Atlantic; but it
has been reproduced and widely circulated on this side also; and the
distinguished artist whom it calumniates by attributing the invention to
him has been left undefended from its slander. Dickens's letter spares
me the necessity of characterizing, by the only word which would have
been applicable to it, a tale of such incredible and monstrous absurdity
as that one of the masterpieces of its author's genius had been merely
an illustration of etchings by Mr. Cruikshank!" Note to the words
"person by whom the tale is told:" "*This question has been partly
solved, since my last edition, by Mr. Cruikshank's announcement in the
_Times_, that, though Dr. Mackenzie had 'confused some circumstances
with respect to Mr. Dickens looking over some drawings and sketches,'
the substance of his information as to who it was that originated
_Oliver Twist_, and all its characters, had been derived from Mr.
Cruikshank himself. The worst part of the foregoing fable, therefore,
has not Dr. Mackenzie for its author; and Mr. Cruikshank is to be
congratulated on the prudence of his rigid silence respecting it as long
as Mr. Dickens lived."

In the Twelfth Edition I mentioned, in the note at p. 149, a little work
of which all notice had been previously omitted; and the close of that
note now runs: "He had before written for them, without his name,
_Sunday under Three Heads_; and he added subsequently a volume of _Young
Couples_." At p. 157, "parish abuses" is correct