"I had to wait while he was finishing an etching, for which a printer's boy was waiting. To while away the time, I gladly complied with his suggestion that I should look over a portfolio crowded with etchings, proofs, and drawings, which lay upon the sofa. Among these, carelessly tied together in a wrap of brown paper, was a series of some twenty-five to thirty drawings, very carefully finished, through most of which were carried the now well-known portraits of Fagin, Bill Sikes and his dog, Nancy, the Artful Dodger, and Master Charles Bates--all well known to the readers of 'Oliver Twist'--and many others who were not introduced. There was no mistake about it, and when Cruikshank turned round, his work finished, I said as much. He told me that it had long been in his mind to show the life of a London thief by a series of drawings, engraved by himself, in which, without a single line of letterpress, the story would be strikingly and clearly told. 'Dickens,' he continued, 'dropped in here one day just as you have done, and, while waiting until I could speak with him, took up that identical portfolio and ferreted out that bundle of drawings. When he came to that one which represents Fagin in the condemned cell, he silently studied it for half-an-hour, and told me that he was tempted to change the whole plot of his story; not to carry Oliver Twist through adventures in the country, but to take him up into the thieves' den in London, show what their life was, and bring Oliver safely through it without sin or shame. I consented to let him write up to as many of the designs as he thought would suit his purpose; and that was the way in which Fagin, Sikes, and Nancy were created. My drawings suggested them, rather than his strong individuality suggested my drawings." PLATE X "OLIVER AMAZED AT THE DODGER'S MODE OF 'GOING TO WORK'" _Facsimile_ of the First Sketch for the Etching by GEORGE CRUIKSHANK [Illustration] Forster naturally characterises this story as a deliberate untruth, related with "a minute conscientiousness and particularity of detail that might have raised the reputation of Sir Benjamin Backbite himself," and points out that the artist's version, as here narrated, is completely refuted by Dickens's letter to Cruikshank, which unquestionably proves that the closing illustrations had not even been seen by the novelist until the book was ready for publication. Cruikshank, on reading in the _Times_ a criticism of Forster's biography, in which this charge against Dickens was commented upon, at once indited the following letter to that journal, where it appeared on December 30, 1871:-- "_To the Editor of 'The Times._'