ABSTRACT
Few writers have risen so rapidly into extensive popularity as Dickens, and that by no mean or unjustifiable panderings to public favour, or the use of low arts of tricking, puffery, or pretence. Four years ago his name was almost unknown, except in some narrow newspaper circles; and his compositions had not extended beyond ephemeral sketches and essays, which, though shrewd, clever, and amusing, would never have been collected as they now are into volumes, but for the speedily acquired and far-diffused fame of Pickwick. Before we pass from these sketches, we must say that they contain germs of almost every character Boz has since depicted, as well as of his incidents and stories, and that they display the quaint peculiarities of his style. Some of them, indeed, are, we think, better than any thing which he has written in his more celebrated performances.
