Once when driving with him on a jaunting car in Dublin, he asked me, did I know so-and-so, and I answered promptly in Mr. Winkle's words, "I don't know him, but I have seen him." This _apropos_ made him laugh heartily. I am now inclined to think that the real explanation of his distaste was, that the Book was associated with one of the most painful and distracting episodes of his life, which affected him so acutely, that he actually flung aside his work in the full tumult of success, and left the eager public without its regular monthly number. "I have been so unnerved" he writes, in an unpublished letter to Harrison Ainsworth, "and hurt by the loss of the dear girl whom I loved, after my wife, more dearly and fervently than anyone on earth, that I have been compelled for once to give up all idea of my monthly work, and to try a fortnight's rest and quiet." In this long book, there are found allusions to only two or three other works. What these are might form one of the questions "set" at the next Pickwick examination. Fielding is quoted once. In the dedication allusion is made to Talfourd's three speeches in Parliament, on the copyright question; these were published in a little volume, and make, fairly enough, one of the illustrative documents of "Pickwick." In the first number of the first edition there is an odd note, rather out of place, but it was withdrawn later--meant to ridicule Mr. Jingle's story of "Ponto's" sagacity; it states that in Mr. Jesse's gleanings, there are more amazing stories than this. Mr. Jesse was a sort of personage living at Richmond--where I well remember him, when I was there as a boy. "Jesse's gleanings" was then a well-known and popular book; and his stories of dogs are certainly extraordinary enough to have invoked Boz's ridicule. We are told of the French poodle, who after rolling himself in the mud of the Seine, would rub himself against any well-polished boots that he noticed, and would thus bring custom to his master, who was a shoe black on the _Pont Neuf_. He was taken to London by an English purchaser, but in a few days disappeared, and was discovered pursuing his old trade on the Bridge. Other dogs, we were told, after being transported long distances, would invariably find their way back. These prodigies, however, do not appear so wonderful now, after the strange things about dogs and cats that have been retailed in a well-known "weekly." A third allusion is to Sterne's _Maria of Moulines_, made, of all people in the world, by Sam Weller. "BOZ" AND "BOZZY."