Timson, The Reverend Charles. A friend of Mr. Parsons. He marries Miss Lillerton.

Tottle, Mr. Watkins. A plump, clean, rosy bachelor of fifty; a compound of strong uxorious inclinations and an unparalleled degree of anti-connubial timidity. Having been arrested for debt, and confined in a sponging-house, his friend Parsons engages to pay the debt, and take him out, if he will agree to marry Miss Lillerton, who has five hundred pounds a year in her own right. On being released, he offers himself to that lady, but after such an awkward and ambiguous fashion, that she quite mistakes his meaning, and answers him in a way that makes him think himself accepted. On being sent by her with a note— respecting their marriage, as he supposes to the Reverend Mr. Timson, it transpires that she has been engaged to that gentleman for several weeks. The upshot of the whole affair is, that Mr. Parsons renounces the friendship and acquaintance of Mr. Tottle, who takes refuge from "the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune" by walking into the Regent's Canal. Walker, Mr. An imprisoned debtor, inmate of Mr. Solomon Jacobs's private lock-up.

Willis, Mr. Another inmate of the same establishment.

THE BLOOMSBURY CHRISTENING.

Danton, Mr. A young man with a considerable stock of impudence, and a very small share of ideas, who passes for a wit. He is a friend of Mr. Kitterbell's, and a great favorite generally, especially with young ladies. Dumps, Mr. Nicodemus, called "LONG DUMPS." An old bachelor, never happy but when he is miserable, and always miserable when he has the best reason to be happy, and whose only real comfort is to make everybody about him wretched. He is uncle to Mr. Charles Kitterbell, and, having been invited to stand as godfather to that gentleman's infant son, reluctantly does so, but takes his revenge by suggesting the most dismal possibilities of sickness and accident as altogether likely to happen to the child, and by making a speech at the supper after the christening, so lugubrious and full of gloomy forebodings as to throw Mrs. Kitterbell into violent hysterics, thus breaking up the party, and enabling him to walk home with a cheerful heart.

Kitterbell, Mr. Charles. A small, sharp, spare man, with an extraordinarily large head and a cast in his eye; very credulous and matter-of-fact.

Kitterbell, Mrs. Jemima. His wife; a tall, thin young lady with very light hair, a particularly white face, a slight cough, and a languid smile.

Kitterbell, Master Frederick Charles William. Their first baby.

THE DRUNKARD'S DEATH.

Tom. One of the officers who arrest young Warden. Warden. A confirmed and irreclaimable drunkard. Remorse, fear, and shame; the loss of friends, happiness, and station; the death of his wife from grief and care; the murder of one of his sons, whom he had driven from home in a drunken fit; his own betrayal of another son into the hangman's hands from a like cause; his final desertion by his daughter, who has stayed by him and supported him for years; the utmost extremity of poverty, disease, and houseless want, — do not avail to conquer his fierce rage for drink, which drives him remorselessly on, until at last he seeks release in death by drowning himself in the Thames. Warden, Mary. His daughter.

Warden, William. His son. He avenges his brother's death by killing the gamekeeper who shot him; flees from justice to his father's solitary attic-room in the obscurest portion of Whitefriars; is discovered by the officers in consequence of his father's getting intoxicated and betraying his hiding-place; and is seized, handcuffed, carried off, and made to suffer the penalty of his crime.

2*

Posthumous Papers of the Pick

wick Club.

THIS work was issued in monthly shilling numbers, with green covers, - a form of publication which Mr. Dickens adopted in all his subsequent monthly serials. The first number appeared in March, 1836, with four illustrations by Robert Sey. mour. But this artist dying suddenly, before the publication of the second number (for which, however, he had furnished three plates), á Mr. R. W. Buss was chosen to succeed him; and two plates "drawn and etched " by this gentleman appeared in No. 3. But they were so inferior both in conception and execution, that he was dismissed, and Mr. Hablot Knight Browne was selected as the illustrator of the work, furnishing the two plates for No. 4. In No. 5 he used for the first time the pseudonym of Phiz, which he has ever since retained. In the second edition of the work, the publishers cancelled the two plates by Mr. Buss, which appeared in the third number, and substituted two others by Mr. Browne.

The author has given the following account of the origin of the work: "The idea propounded to me was, that the monthly something should be a vehicle for certain plates to be executed by Mr. Seymour; and there was a notion, either on the part of that admirable humorous artist, or of my visitor [Mr. Chapman, of the publishing-house of Chapman and Hall] (I forget which), that a 'Nimrod Club,' the members of which were to go out shooting, fishing, and so forth, and getting themselves into difficulties through their want of dexterity, would be the best means of introducing these. I objected, on consideration, that, although born and partly bred in the country, I was no great sportsman, except in regard of all kinds of locomotion; that the idea was not novel, and had been already much used; that it would be infinitely better for the plates to arise naturally out of the text; and that I should like to take my own way, with a freer range of English scenes and people, and was afraid I should ultimately do so in any case, whatever course I might prescribe to myself at starting. My views being deferred to, I thought of Mr. Pickwick, and wrote the first number; from the proof-sheets of which Mr. Seymour made his drawing of the club, and that happy portrait of its founder by which he is always recognized, and which may be said to have made him a reality. I connected Mr. Pickwick with a club, because of the original suggestion; and I