Pickwickian Studies

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more of the drink at the Bell than of the Bell itself. It is, indeed, no more than c?cum nomen-much as though we read the name at the end of "Bradshaw"-yet, somehow, from the life and movement of the journey, it offers a sort of attraction: it seems familiar, and we have an interest in it. The Bell now "goes on," as the proprietor tells me. There are travellers who come there and drink Boz'

private "settin'-room." It was to a certainty the coffee-room, as they only stayed a short time. So the proprietor, with a safe conscience, might exhibit "the room where Mr. Pickwick lunched." On the face is imbedded a tablet bearing the date 1729, and there is an ancient farmer close by who was born in "The Bell" in the year 1820. If we lend ourselves properly to the delusion, he might recall Mr. Pickwick's chaise

Greyhoun

, conveying that it was such a sequestered spot as he himself would choose under similar conditions. Last year (1898), the interesting old road-side Inn, The Greyhound, was levelled-an Inn to which Mr. Pickwick must have found his way in the dull

way there with Theodore Hook, Moore, and others. Boz, therefore, must have regarded this place with much favour, owing to his own experiences of it-and to have selected it for his h

what too much of a republic, and getting "out of hand," established a social meeting at the Essex Head Club-in the street of that name, off the Strand-composed in the main of respectable tradesmen, who would

maldi th

hat Gledinning, a Printer, was sent by the father to his son's dying bed, and he was probably the Hutley of the Stroller's Tale, and, perhaps, the person who brought old Grimaldi the news of his death. We are told in the "Tale" that he had an engagement "at one of the Theatres on the Surrey side of the water," and in the memoirs we find that he was offered "an engagement for the Christmas at the Coburg." There his death is described:-"He rose in bed, drew up his withered limbs-he was acting-he was at the Theatre. He then sang some roaring song. The walls were alive with reptiles, frightful figures flitted to and fro . . . His eyes s

fast on him that it was found impossible to employ him in the situations in which he really was useful." In the "memoirs" this is more than supported: "The man who might have earned with ea

energies, lose prematurely their physical powers." This was what occurred to Grimaldi, the father, whose curious decay he was to describe later in the memoirs. It may be added that th