been a bishop--and sich
a lively young chap as wos with him, full o' spirits, chucking a' the
gurls under the chins. And their sarvant! O _he_ were one. Sam, he
were caa'd--I moind that--Sam Summut. And they caa'd for the best o'
everythin', and took away wi' them a lot, Madeary, and wot not," and so
on.

II.--The Greyhound, Dulwich

Mr. Pickwick, as we know, at the close of his wanderings retired to this
tranquil and pleasant suburb--then much more retired than it is now. In
accordance with his habit of enshrining his own personal sympathies in
his writing, Boz was, as it were, conveying that it was such a
sequestered spot as he himself would choose under similar conditions.
Last year (1898), the interesting old road-side Inn, The Greyhound, was
levelled--an Inn to which Mr. Pickwick must have found his way in the
dull evening to drink "cold Punch" or preside at the club which he most
certainly--if we know him well--must have founded. A wealthy gentleman
of social tastes, and with a love for tavern life, would have no
difficulty in establishing a new Pickwick Club.

At the Greyhound, nigh a century ago, there was actually a club which
entertained Tom Campbell, Mark Lemon, Byron's tutor, and many more. Boz
himself, we are told, used to find his way there with Theodore Hook,
Moore, and others. Boz, therefore, must have regarded this place with
much favour, owing to his own experiences of it--and to have selected it
for his hero's tranquil old age shows how high a place it had in his
memory. The description is charming and brings this sylvan retreat to
which we have walked many a time perfectly before us.

This taste for surrounding himself with persons of lower degree--such as
were the rank and file--was curiously enough shared by Mr. Pickwick's
predecessor, Dr. Johnson, who, when he found the Literary Club somewhat
too much of a republic, and getting "out of hand," established a social
meeting at the Essex Head Club--in the street of that name, off the
Strand--composed in the main of respectable tradesmen, who would listen
obsequiously. Thus, it may be repeated, does the same sort of character
develop invariably on the same lines, and thus did Mr. Pickwick
unconsciously follow in the footsteps of the "great Lexicographer."

III.--Grimaldi the Younger

As I was the first to point out, the powerful "Stroller's Tale" of which
Boz himself thought so highly, was founded on the career of the
unfo