"BOZ " AS A JOURNALIST.*
IN this bulky volume Mr. Fitzgerald, surely one of the latest left of all Dickens's old lieutenants on Household Words and AU the Year Round, gives a record of his fifteen years' intimacy with the master. We use the word " master " advisedly, for " Boz " is Mr. Fitzgerald's hero, and the whole volume is in reality a paean in his honour. However, the author's enthusiasm, though it has led him rather astray in the matter of length and repetition, has not prevented him from giving us some very vivid pictures of Dickens. There is a capital description of -his struggles with an enthusiastic parson, and of the way in which the great man contrived, in spite of his sufferings, to extract amusement out of the "D.D." or " dreadful Doctor." Amusing, too, is the sketch of "Boz's " imitation of the poet Rogers telling a story—in the voice which he "used for Mr. Justice Stareleigh at the Readings." Then there are interesting glimpses of other great names. John Forster looms through them, rugged, vain, and dominating. And there are some exceedingly vivid pictures of Carlyle. But perhaps the most valuable chapters are those (and they constitute the greater part of the book) in which Mr. Fitzgerald describes "Boz" in his relations with the two famous magazines. Here we have sight of many interesting personalities—some well known, some now forgotten. Our author is apt to look at them all through editorial spectacles, and to dwell more upon the difficulties which they caused the staff than on their actual achievements. Thus we hear of editorial troubles with Mrs. Gaskell and Harriet Martineau, while Mr. Fitzgerald is hardly fair to J. S. Le Pane, whose Uncle Silas is surely not his "one single success." The House in the Churchyard and Green Tea are still read by all who have any taste for the supernatural, and the former contains perhaps the best ghost story in the world. None the leas, it is pleasant to read these names in Mr. Fitzgerald's desultory chronicle, and to hear of Charles Alston Collins, author of that delightful work A Cruise upon Wheels, of his brother, the more famous "Wilkie," of G. A. Sala, and half a hundred others who flutter in the rays of the central sun, the exuberant, irresistible, generous, masterful "Boa."
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