P. [341], second line from bottom. Not "subsequent" but "modified" is the proper word.
[398]. In mentioning the painters who took an interest in the Guild scheme I omitted the distinguished name of Mr. E. M. Ward, R.A., by whom an admirable design, taken from Defoe's life, was drawn for the card of membership.
[455], [456]. In supposing that the Child's Dream of a Star was not among Dickens's Reprinted Pieces, I fell into an error, which is here corrected.
[468]. I did not mean to imply that Lady Graham was herself a Sheridan. She was only connected with the family she so well "represented" by being the sister of the lady whom Tom Sheridan married.
The incident at Mr. Hone's funeral quoted at pp. [31]-[33] from a letter to Mr. Felton written by Dickens shortly after the occurrence (2nd of March, 1843), and published, a year before my volume, in Mr. Field's Yesterdays with Authors (pp. [146]-[8]), has elicited from the "Independent clergyman" referred to a counter statement of the alleged facts, of which I here present an abridgement, omitting nothing that is in any way material. "Though it is thirty years since . . . several who were present survive to this day, and have a distinct recollection of all that occurred. One of these is the writer of this article—another, the Rev. Joshua Harrison. . . . The Independent clergyman never wore bands, and had no Bible under his arm. . . . An account of Mr. Hone had appeared in some of the newspapers, containing an offensive paragraph to the effect that one 'speculation' having failed, Mr. Hone was disposed, and persuaded by the Independent clergyman, to try another, that other being 'to try his powers in the pulpit.' This was felt by the family to be an insult alike to the living and the dead. . . . Mr. Harrison's account is, that the Independent clergyman was observed speaking to Miss Hone about something apparently annoying to both, and that, turning to Mr. Cruikshank, he said 'Have you seen the sketch of Mr. Hone's life in the Herald?' Mr. C. replied 'Yes.' 'Don't you think it very discreditable? It is a gross reflection on our poor friend, as if he would use the most sacred things merely for a piece of bread; and it is a libel on me and the denomination I belong to, as if we could be parties to such a proceeding.' Mr. C. said in reply, 'I know something of the article, but what you complain of was not in it originally—it was an addition by another hand.' Mr. C. afterwards stated that he wrote the article, 'but not the offensive paragraph.' The vulgar nonsense put into the mouth of the clergyman by Mr. Dickens was wound up, it is said, by 'Let us pray' . . . but this cannot be true; and for this reason, the conversation with Mr. Cruikshank took place before the domestic service, and that service, according to Nonconformist custom, is always begun by reading an appropriate passage of Scripture. . . . Mr. Dickens says that while they were kneeling at prayer Mr. Cruikshank whispered to him what he relates. Mr. C. denies it; and I believe him. . . . In addition to the improbability, one of the company remembers that Mr. Dickens and Mr. Cruikshank did not sit together, and could not have knelt side by side." The reader must be left to judge between what is said of the incident in the text and these recollections of it after thirty years.
At the close of the corrections to the first volume, prefixed to the second, the intention was expressed to advert at the end of the work to information, not in correction but in illustration of my text, forwarded by obliging correspondents who had been scholars at the Wellington House Academy (i. [74]). But inexorable limits of space prevent, for the present, a fulfilment of this intention.
J. F.