Is there any writer, now living, I may be asked, who could furnish such a
picture as this, one so full of reality and true humour, of one of our
modern Courts of Justice? The answer must be that it would be idle to
look for such a person. There are thousands who could supply minute
drawings in which not a single detail would be omitted. But the piercing
to the essence, the happy generalization, the knowledge of the true
points of character, these would be sought in vain.
Footnotes:
{26} So confused is the chronology of _Pickwick_, that it is difficult
to fix the exact date of the Trial. Boz, writing some ten years after
the event, seems to have got a little confused and uncertain as to the
exact year of the Trial. He first fixed the opening of the story in
1817: but on coming to the compromising incident in Goswell Street, which
occurred only a few weeks later, he changed the year to 1827. Then
Jingle's anachronism of the French Revolution of July suggested that the
new date would not do. So 1830 was next adopted. But this did not end
the matter, for in the "errata" we are directed to change this date back
again to 1827. And so it now stands. The Trial therefore really took
place on April 1, 1828.
{84} Seven years after the Trial this monopoly was taken away from the
Serjeants--namely in 1834: then capriciously given back to them, and
finally abolished in 1840.
{85} I have heard from the daughter of Mr. Chapman, the original
publisher of _Pickwick_, that Talfourd revised and directed the "Trial."
On one occasion Boz was dining with him when the proof was brought in,
with some legal mistakes noted by Talfourd. Boz left the table and put
it right.