[10] By Rail to Parnassus, June 16, 1855.
[11] One of the last things ever written by Dickens was a criticism of M. Fechter’s acting, intended to introduce him to the American public. A false report, by-the-way, declared Dickens to have been the author of the dramatic version of Scott’s novel, which at Christmas, 1865-’66, was produced at the Lyceum, under the title of The Master of Ravenswood; but he allowed that he had done “a great deal towards and about the piece, having an earnest desire to put Scott, for once, on the stage in his own gallant manner.”
[12] Dickens undoubtedly had a genius for titles. Amongst some which he suggested for the use of a friend and contributor to his journal are, “What will he do with it?” and “Can he forgive her?”
[13] This title has helped to extinguish the phrase of which it consists. Few would now be found to agree with the last clause of Flora’s parenthesis in Little Dorrit: “Our mutual friend—too cold a word for me; at least I don’t mean that very proper expression, mutual friend.”
[14] In the last volume of his magnum opus of historical fiction Gustav Freytag describes “Boz” as, about the year 1846, filling with boundless enthusiasm the hearts of young men and maidens in a small Silesian country town.
[15] The passage in Oliver Twist (chapter xxxvii.) which illustrates the maxim that “dignity, and even holiness too, sometimes are more questions of coat and waistcoat than some people imagine,” may, or may not, be a reminiscence of Sartor Resartus, then (1838) first published in a volume.