Page:Fitzgerald - Pickwickian manners and customs (1897).djvu/102

 believe that the situations as he represents them are preferable to them as described. It is therefore likely that the readers will find that he exerts a strong force upon their imagination." This shows, allowing something for the compliment, what a distinct force the great writer attributed to the artist, that he did not consider him an assistant or merely subsidiary. The actor becomes, after his fashion, a distinct creator and originator, supplying details, etc., of his own, but taking care that these are consistent with the text and do not contradict it in any way.

This large treatment was exactly "Phiz's." He seems to "act" "Boz's" drama, yet he did not introduce anything that was not warranted by the spirit of the text. He found himself present at the scene, and felt how it must have occurred. He had a wonderful power of selecting what was essential and what should be essential. Nor did he make a minute inventory of such details as were mentioned in the text. Hence the extra-