PICKWICK PARALLELS

Shannon News, 26 July 1929, Page 2

PICKWICK PARALLELS

AN OLD COMPARISON. When only nine of the twenty, num bers of the PickAvick Papers had beer published, a Avriter in the. Athenaeum described them as consisting of “twe pounds of Smollett, three ounces oa Sterne, a handful of Hooke, and a das 1 ! of a grammatical Pierce Egan—incidents at pleasure'served with an original source piquanto.” Students of the completed A\ T ork have pointed tc traces, more or less distinct, $f the influence of ail the authors named by.this early critic, and of others. Forster suggested that Dickens when' ho resolved that Sam Welle] should share Mr Pickwick’s imprisonment in the “Fleet,” was thinking of the Peregrine Pickle of his favoouritc Smollett. Dr Bayne has pointed out the similarity between the incarceration of Jingle in “Pickwick” and of Jonkinson in “The Vicar -of Wake field.” The Anthenaeum’s “dash’, or Pierce Eigan, Sayis Mr Hamm one Hall, in Chambers’ Journal, is riot sc easy ’to recognise. Egan, popular though he Ava.s in his day, is dull read ing now, and his only obvious para! lei with Dickens 'is that both authors like some before and many after, fount a mine of descriptive material in the manners of contemporary cockneydom