Cruikshank was alive, and living within half an hour’s drive of Mr. Forster’s library, when he put the case in this roundabout, and, I must say, unwarrantably uncivil way. But let us see what this story was that came from across the Atlantic in the columns of the _Round Table_. It is Dr. Shelton Mackenzie who speaks.’ “In London I was intimate with the brothers Cruikshank, Robert and George, but more particularly the latter. Having called upon him one day at his house (it was then in Myddelton Terrace, Pentonville), I had to wait while he was finishing an etching, for which a printer’s boy was waiting. To while away the time, I glady 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 or thirty drawings, very carefully finished, through most of which were carried the well-known portraits of Fagin, Bill Sykes and his Dog, Nancy, the Artful Dodger, and Master Charles Bates--all well known to the readers of “Oliver Twist.” 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, whilst 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 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 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 individuality suggesting (sic) my drawings.’” Mr. Forster adds,--“Since this was in type I have seen the Life of Dickens published in America (Philadelphia: Peterson Brothers) by Dr. Shelton Mackenzie, in which I regret to find this story literally repeated. The only differences from it as here quoted are that 1847 is given as the date of the visit; that besides the ‘portraits’ named, there are said to have been ‘many others who were not introduced;’ and that the final words run thus: ‘My drawings suggested them, rather than his strong individuality my drawings.’”