Page:Fitzgerald - Pickwickian manners and customs (1897).djvu/80

 posted to Bury St. Edmunds; thence to London. Next came their third expedition to Dingley Dell for the Christmas festivities. Then the second visit to Ipswich. Then the journey to Bath, and that from Bath to Bristol. Later a second journey to Bristol—another from Bristol to Birmingham, and from Birmingham to London, Mr. Pickwick's final junketing before retiring to Dulwich.

Yet another interesting side of the Pickwick story is its almost biographical character. Boz seems to take us with him from his very boyhood. During the old days when his father was at Chatham he had seen all the Rochester incidents, sat by the old Castle and Bridge, noted with admiring awe the dockyard people, the Balls at "The Bull," the Reviews on the Lines. The officers—like Dr. Slammer, all the figures—fat boy included—were drawn from this stage of his life. The Golden Cross, which figures also in Copperfield, he had constantly stopped at. He knew, too, the inns in the Boro'. The large legal element