A hundred years ago From the 'Spectator', 4 January 1868—There
is a mania for Mr. Dickens's readings in the United States of such force and magnitude that the day breaks,—we hope not so cold a day as we have had recently in England,—on hundreds of persons waiting in file at the box office to be supplied with tickets. . . . It is an odd mania. Mr. Dickens reads his comic parts admirably, is inimitable in "Mr. Toots," and very great in "Serjeant Buzfuz." Still it is a mild order of amusement for which to suffer martyrdom. Reading really cannot much enhance the humour of his most humorous touches, for Mr. Dickens's humour is too broad to need any 'of the interpretation of a subtle delivery. And his pathos is excruciating. It is an open question whether his reading of the death of little "Paul Dombey" does not more than balance the pleasure of his reading of "Mr. Toots."
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