DOMBEY &
SON to Mr. TOOTS, is believed, on internal evidence, to have been
composed by the patron of the CHICKEN himself. A few prefatory
notes, an introductory essay, and two letters have been added.
The portrait in the frontispiece, copied by Mr. T. Hodge from an
old painting in the Club at St. Andrews, is believed to represent
the Baron Bradwardine addressing himself to his ball.
A. L.
FRIENDS IN FICTION
Every fancy which dwells much with the unborn and immortal
characters of Fiction must ask itself, Did the persons in
contemporary novels never meet? In so little a world their paths
must often have crossed, their orbits must have intersected, though
we hear nothing about the adventure from the accredited narrators.
In historical fiction authors make their people meet real men and
women of history--Louis XI., Lazarus, Mary Queen of Scots, General
Webbe, Moses, the Man in the Iron Mask, Marie Antoinette; the list
is endless. But novelists, in spite of Mr. Thackeray's advice to
Alexandre Dumas, and of his own example in "Rebecca and Rowena,"
have not introduced each other's characters. Dumas never pursued
the fortunes of the Master of Ravenswood after he was picked up by
that coasting vessel in the Kelpie's Flow. Sometimes a meeting
between characters in novels by different hands looked all but
unavoidable. "Pendennis" and "David Copperfield" came out
simultaneously in numbers, yet Pen never encountered Steerforth at
the University, nor did Warrington, in his life of journalism,
jostle against a reporter named David Copperfield.
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