Green
INTRODUCTORY NOTE
THERE is one question upon which the critics and lovers of Dickens seem never able to get into agreement, and that is the question of the original illustrations to his works. To the thorough-going enthusiast Phiz and Dickens seem inseparable, and no edition which does not contain the old, familiar grotesques of Hablot Browne's imagination, or, in the earlier volume, the equally abnormal lineaments portrayed by Cruikshank or Seymour, would be deemed worthy of a place upon his bookshelf. But a younger generation is growing up, for whom the time-honoured pictures have not the charm of long association, and among them it is common to hear the complaint that the natural humour and pathos of the author's best works are spoiled to modern fancy by the violent caricatures of the illustrator. "Let us
