Page:Fitzgerald - Pickwickian manners and customs (1897).djvu/13



No English book has so materially increased the general gaiety of the country, or inspired the feeling of comedy to such a degree as, "The Pickwick Club." It is now some "sixty years since" this book was published, and it is still heartily appreciated. What English novel or story is there which is made the subject of notes and commentaries on the most elaborate scale; whose very misprints and inconsistencies are counted up; whose earliest "states of the plates" are sought out and esteemed precious? "Pickwick," wonderful to say, is the only story that has produced a literature of its own—quite a little library—and has kept artists, topographers, antiquaries, and collectors all busily at work.

There seems to be some mystery, almost