"I regard Dickens as the greatest social reformer in England I have ever known outside politics. His works have tended to revolutionize for the better our law courts, our prisons, our hospitals, our schools, our workhouses, our government offices, etc.
"He was a fearless exposer of cant in every direction,—religious, social, and political."
Such was the broad-gauge estimate of one who knew Dickens well. It may unquestionably be accepted as his greatest eulogy.
None of Dickens' contemporaries are more remembered and revered than the illustrators of his stories. Admitting all that can possibly be said of the types which we have come to recognize as being "Dickenesque," he would be rash who would affirm that none of their success was due to their pictorial delineation.
Dickens himself has said that he would have preferred that his stories were not illustrated, but, on the other hand, he had more than usual concern with regard thereto when the characters were taking form under the pencils of Seymour, Cruikshank, or "Phiz," or even the later Barnard, than whom, since Dickens' death, has there ever been a more sympathetic illustrator?
The greatest of these was undoubtedly George Cruikshank, whose drawings for "Oliver Twist," the last that he did for Dickens' writings, were perhaps more in keeping with the spirit of Dickens' text than was the work of any of the others, not excepting the immortal character of Pickwick, which conception is accredited to Seymour, who unfortunately died before he had completed the quartette of drawings for the second number of the serial.
In this same connection it is recalled that the idea of recounting the adventures of a "club of Cockney sportsmen" was conceived by the senior partner of the firm of Chapman and Hall, and that Dickens was only thought of at first as being the possible author, in connection, among others, with Leigh Hunt and Theodore Hook.
On the death of Seymour, one R. W. Buss, a draughtsman on wood, was commissioned to continue the "Pickwick" illustrations, and he actually made two etchings, which, in the later issues, were suppressed. "Crowquill," Leech, and Thackeray all hoped to fill the vacancy, but the fortunate applicant was Hablôt K. Browne, known in connection with his work for the Dickens stories as "Phiz." This nom de plume was supposed to have been adopted in order to harmonize with "Boz."
"Phiz" in time became known as the artist-in-chief, and he it was who made the majority of illustrations for the tales, either as etchings or wood-blocks. His familiar signature identifies his work to all who are acquainted with Dickens. George Cattermole supplied the illustrations to "The Old Curiosity Shop" and "Barnaby Rudge." Of these Dickens has said "that it was the very first time that any of the designs for which he had written had touched him." Marcus Stone, R. A., provided the pictures for "Our Mutual Friend."
John Leech, of Punch fame, in one of his illustrations to "The Battle of Life," one of the shorter pieces, made the mistake of introducing a wrong character into one of the drawings, and a still more pronounced error was in the Captain Cuttle plates, where the iron hook appears first on the left and then on the right arm of the subject.