Page:Fitzgerald - Pickwickian manners and customs (1897).djvu/104

 dramatic spirited story also failed, for "Boz" had abandoned the free, almost reckless style of his first tale. There was a living distinctness, too, in the Pickwickian coterie, and every figure, familiar and recognizable, seemed to have infinite possibilities. The very look of them would inspire.

In this spirit of vitality and reality also, "Phiz" rather suggests a famous foreign illustrator, Chodowiecki, who a century ago was in enormous request for the illustration of books of all kinds, and whose groups and figures, drawn with much spirit and roundness, arrested the eye at once and told the situation. Later "Phiz" fell off in his work and indeed adopted quite new and more commercial methods, such as would enable him to get through the vast amount of work that came to him. There were no longer these telling situations to limn which spoke for themselves, and without straw, bricks are not to be made. In this later manner we seem to have bid adieu to the inspiration—to