rod, &c.

Snodgrass was another incapable and quite uninteresting--a person whom we
would not care to know. He posed as a poet and, to this end, wore, even
at the club, "a mysterious blue cloak, with a canine skin collar";
imagine this of a warm evening--May 12--in a stuffy room in Huggin Lane!
He must, however, live up to his character, at all hazards.

Snodgrass and his verses, and his perpetual "note book," must have made
him a bore of the first water. How could the charming Emily have
selected him. He, too, had some of Winkle's craft. He had been
entertained cordially and hospitably by old Wardle, and repaid him by
stealing his daughter's affections in a very underhand way, actually
plotting to run away with her.

There was something rather ignominious in his detection at Osborne's
Hotel. He is a very colourless being. As to his being a Poet, it would
seem to be that he merely gave himself out for one and persuaded his
friends that he was such. His remarks at the "Peacock" are truly
sapient: "Show me the man that says anything against women, as women, and
_I boldly declare he is not a man_!" Which is matched by Mr. Winkle's
answer to the charge of his being "a serpent": "Prove it," said Mr.
Winkle, warmly. It is to be suspected that the marriage with the amiable
Emily was not a success. The author throws out a hint to that effect:
"Mr Snodgrass, being occasionally abstracted and melancholy, is to this
day reputed a great poet among his acquaintance, though we do not find he
has ever written anything to encourage the belief." In other words he
was carrying on the old Pickwick game of "Humbug." So great an intellect
had quite thrown itself away on poor Emily--even his abstraction and
melancholy. How natural too that he should "hang on" to his father-in-
law "and establish himself close to Dingly Dell"--to "sponge,"
probably--while he made a sham of farming; for are we not told that he
purchased and cultivated a small farm--"_more for occupation than
profit_"--thus again making believe. Poor Emily!

I lately looked through the swollen pages of the monster London Directory
to find how many of the Pickwickian names were in common use. There was
not a single Snodgrass, though there was one Winkel, and one "Winkle and
Co." in St. Mary Axe. There was one Tupman, a Court dressmaker--no
Nupkins, but some twenty Magnuses, and not a single Pickwick. There
were, however, some twenty-four Wellers.

CH