PROGRESS OF PUBLICATION.
"Boz" has commenced a periodical under the title of the Pick- wick Club ; which feigns to be a record of the sayings, doings,
and adventures of a knot of aspiring Cocknies, whom he makes butts of for ridiculing the airs of superiority and importance com- monplace people are apt to assume by way of propitiating
their self-love. The " Trip to Rochester," in the First Num-
ber, is cleverly done, though forced. The characters have too much of caricature, and time incidents belong to the stage ra- ther than to real life. " The Duel"—where one of the Pickwickians goes out to give satisfaction for an insult that he only supposes lie might have offered because he cannot recollect what he did over night, but which was really given by an adventurer who bor- rows his coat—is a scene for a farce. " The Assembly " is capi- tally hit off.
Boz is, moreover, the principal contributor to another new pe- riodical, The Library of Fiction. " The Tuggses at Ramsgate" —a smart and lively description of common persons and scenes, in which the ludicrous points that most people perceive but do not particularly note, are brought out with comical effect—is avowedly his ; and " Mr. Firedrake Fidget, ",the only other " original" sketch, is also his—otherwise he has attracted a very close imitator. Box's characters represent classes of people formed by circum- stances : they are individual only in costume. His creations are to nature what the puppet performers on the stage of Le Petit Lazary are to actors of flesh and blood.
'rile comic designs of SEYMOUR, in both these publications, are droll enough, and in keeping with the descriptions they illustrate. They remind us of CRUIKSHANK, but in manner only, not in spirit. They have more of grimace than real humour. SEYMOUR sometimes strikes out an individual character; but he does not preserve the identity of the face in every variety of expression.
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