No doubt the subject inspired. The ever gay and lively Boz, always in spirits, called up many a happy scene, and gave the pen a certain airiness and nimbleness. There is little that is official or magisterial about the volumes. Everything is pleasant and interesting, put together—though there is a crowd of details—with extraordinary art and finish. It furnishes a most truthful and accurate picture of the "inimitable," recognizable in every page. It was only in the third volume, when scared by the persistent clamours of the disappointed and the envious, protesting that there was "too much Forster," that it was virtually a "Life of John Forster, with some recollections of Charles Dickens," that he became of a sudden, official and allowed others to come too much on the scene, with much loss of effect. That third volume, which ought to have been most interesting, is the dull one. We have Boz described as he would be in an encyclopædia, inst. . . Read More