[John Moore Capes and J. E. E. D. Acton], from a review in the Rambler

Capes (1812–89), a convert to Roman Catholicism, had founded the Rambler in 1848, had edited it, and was now its proprietor. Richard Simpson, who was now editor, sent some of Capes’s book-reviews to Acton (the great historian, 1834–1902) who, on 3 December 1861, returned them with approval, but added some comments, e.g., that Pickwick was ‘not so decidedly his best book as to deserve to be always referred to as such’. In a further letter to Simpson, Acton discussed Dickens further: ‘Certain Germans of the last century remind me of him as to religion… He…knows nothing of sin when it is not crime…’ (Lord Acton and his Circle, ed. Abbot Gasquet (ND: 1906), 238–42). Simpson incorporated all of Acton’s comments, almost verbatim, into Capes’s review. See R. J. Schoeck, ‘Acton and Dickens’, Dickensian, lii, (1956), 77–80.