ABSTRACT
Sketches by Boz gained most of its enormous reputation from the freshness of its comic studies of London life. Certainly, scenes such as 'The Parlour Orator' are outrageously funny, but they are matched by a very different sort of writing, as in the following passage from the 'Drunkard's Death' :
The alley into which he turned, might, for filth and misery, have competed with the darkest comer of this ancient sanctuary in its dirtiest and most lawless time. The houses, varying from two stories in height to four, were stained with every indescribable hue that long exposure to the weather, damp, and rottenness can impart to tenements composed originally of the roughest and coarsest materials. The windows were patched with paper, and stuffed with foulest rags; the doors were falling from their hinges; poles with lines on which to dry clothes, projected from every casement, and Sounds of quarrelling or drunkenness issued from every room.
