1 7 8 J^ISEN B V PERSE VERA NCR. 



broken harness, everything but a broken head, which is the 

 only thing they would have grumbled to pay for.' He has 

 further said in allusion to this period : * Returning home 

 from exciting political meetings in the country to the wait- 

 ing press in London, I do verily believe I have been upset 

 in almost every description of vehicle known in this country. 

 I have been, in my time, belated on miry by-roads, towards 

 the small hours, forty or fifty miles from London, in a wheel- 

 less carriage, with exhausted horses and drunken postboys, 

 and have got back in time for publication, to be received 

 with never-forgotten compliments by the late Mr, Black, 

 coming in the broadest of Scotch from the broadest of hearts 

 I ever knew.' When the New Monthly ceased to pay Dickens 

 for his sketches, he transferred this part of his services to 

 the Chronicle, which remunerated him for them. 



At the beginning of 1836, he found a publisher for the first 

 series of Sketches by Boz, who offered him ;^i5o for the copy- 

 right. In the Times of March 1836, the first announcement 

 of the publication of the Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick 

 Cliib^ edited by Boz, was made. The then young publishing 

 house of Messrs. Chapman & Hall had made overtures to 

 him for this monthly serial, which was to contain certain 

 sketches by Mr, Seymour, the artist, and which was also to con- 

 tain an account of certain members of a Nimrod Club, who 

 should go out shooting and fishing, and meet with sundry 

 mishaps, owing to their inexperience and for other reasons. 

 And thus the Pickwick Papers arose upon the world with 

 their stores of amusement and laughter. Between the issue 

 of the first and second numbers, Seymour, the artist, died by 

 his own hand, but not before he had sketched the form and 

 features of Mr. Pickwick as now so well known to the English 



