[John Forster], from a review of The Chimes, Edinburgh Review

John Forster took the very unusual step of writing to the Editor of the Edinburgh Review on 16 November 1844 (‘Very Private’) asking if he might review The Chimes, which he has just received in manuscript from Dickens, who was then in Italy and ‘does not know that I think of proposing any such thing to you’. Forster thought it ‘in some essential points the best of his writings. It will certainly make a strong impression’ (B.M. Add. MS. 34, 624 ff., cited Wellesley Index, i, 494). The review occasioned some comment: doubtless Forster’s authorship became known. In a dialogue by ‘Bon Gaultier’ [Theodore Martin] in Tait’s Edinburgh Magazine, April 1845, one character asks: ‘did you ever read anything so fulsome as that notice of The Chimes in the Edinburgh Review?’—‘I certainly do not think I ever perused a more pitiable paper’, Bon Gaultier replies (xii, 239).