Pickwick_ was a benevolent
gentleman named Swizzle, who was temporarily employed as perpetual
curate of Little Diddlington in the sixties. The evidence on which
this identification is founded seems to me somewhat unconvincing, as
_Pickwick_ was published in the year 1836. But Nature, as it has
been finely said, often borrows from Art, and Fact may similarly be
inspired to emulate Fiction.
* * * * *
I promised not to trouble my readers again with the Mystery of the Man
in the Iron Mask. But I may be allowed merely to mention that there
is an excellent study of the subject in _The Methodist Monthly_, by
my old friend, Professor Corker. The article, which runs to nearly
seventy pages, does the utmost credit to this brilliant writer, who
comes to the conclusion that no satisfactory solution of the mystery
has ever been propounded or ever can be. But while his examination of
the different theories is singularly free from bias he is evidently
impressed by the ingenious view of Dr. Amos Stoot, the eminent Chicago
alienist, that the masked inmate of the Bastille immured himself
voluntarily in order to investigate the conditions of French prison
life at the time, but, owing to the homicidal development of
his subliminal consciousness, was detained indefinitely by the
authorities, and during his imprisonment wrote the _Letters of
Junius_.
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