Upon looking over the sketches of Robert Seymour, which used to appear from time to time in the windows--price threepence--while Boz was getting _his_ "Sketches" through the press, we perceive that Dickens really derived fruitful hints from this artist, besides the original suggestion of the work. Mr. Winkle is recognizable in several of them; Mr. Pickwick's figure occurs occasionally; the Fat Boy is distinctly suggested; the famous picnic scene is anticipated; and there is much in the spirit of the pictures to remind us that among the admiring crowd which they attracted, the author of "Pickwick" might often have been found. Seymour, however, gave him only hints. In every instance he has made the suggested character or incident absolutely his own. Seymour only supplied a piece of copper, which the alchemy of genius turned into gold. In Dickens's broadest and most boisterous humor there are ever a certain elegance and refinement of tone that are wanting in Seymour, Seymour's cockney hunters being persons of the Tittlebat Titmouse grade, who long ago ceased to amuse and began to offend. Seymour's discovery, in the first numbers of "Pickwick," that it was the author, not the artist, who was to dominate a work which was his own conception and long-cherished dream, was probably among the causes of his fatal despair. When he first mentioned to Chapman & Hall his scheme of a Cockney Club ranging over England, he was a popular comic artist of several years' standing, and Charles Dickens was a name unknown. Nor was it supposed to be of so very much consequence who should write the descriptive matter. The firm closed the bargain with Mr. Seymour without having bestowed a thought upon the writer; and when they had suggested the unknown "Boz," and procured a copy of his "Sketches" by way of recommendation, Mrs. Seymour's remark was that, though she could not see any humor in his writings herself, yet he might do as well as another, and fifteen pounds a month to a poor and struggling author would be a little fortune. To a sensitive and ambitious man, made morbid by various hard usage such as the men who delight the world often undergo, it must have been a cutting disappointment to be asked, in the infancy of an enterprise which he deemed peculiarly his own, to put aside an illustration that he had prepared, and make another to suit the fancies of a subordinate. It was like requiring a star actor to omit his favorite and most special "business" in order to afford a member of the company an opportunity to shine.