Dickens has told us, in his preface to the later editions, much of how “Pickwick” came to be projected and published.  It was in this wise:  Seymour, a caricaturist of very considerable merit, though not, as we should now consider, in the first rank of the great caricaturists, had proposed to Messrs. Chapman and Hall, then just starting on their career as publishers, a “series of Cockney sporting plates.”  Messrs. Chapman and Hall entertained the idea favourably, but opined that the plates would require illustrative letter-press; and casting about for some suitable author, bethought themselves of Dickens, whose tales and sketches had been exciting some little sensation in the world of journalism; and who had, indeed, already written for the firm a story, the “Tuggs at Ramsgate,” which may be read among the “Sketches.”  Accordingly Mr. Hall called on Dickens for the purpose of proposing the scheme.  This would be in 1835, towards the latter end of the year; and Dickens, who had apparently left the paternal roof for some little time, was living bachelorwise, in Furnival’s Inn.  What was his astonishment, when Mr. Hall came in, to find he was the same person who had sold him the copy of the magazine containing his first story—­that memorable copy at which he had looked, in Westminster Hall, through eyes bedimmed with joyful tears.  Such coincidences always had for Dickens a peculiar, almost a superstitious, interest.  The circumstance seemed of happy augury to both the “high contracting parties.”  Publisher and author were for the nonce on the best of terms.  The latter, no doubt, saw his opening; was more than ready to undertake the work, and had no quarrel with the remuneration offered.  But even then he was not the man to play second fiddle to anybody.  Before they parted, he had quite succeeded in turning the tables on Seymour.  The original proposal had been that the artist should produce four caricatures on sporting subjects every month, and that the letter-press should be in illustration of the caricatures.  Dickens got Mr. Hall to agree to reverse that position. He, Dickens, was to have the command of the story, and the artist was to illustrate him.  How far these altered relations would have worked quite smoothly if Seymour had lived, and if Dickens’ story had not so soon assumed the proportions of a colossal success, it is idle to speculate.  Seymour died by his own hand before the second number was published, and so ceased to be in a position to assert himself.  It was, however, in deference to the peculiar bent of his art that Mr. Winkle, with his disastrous sporting proclivities, made part of the first conception of the book; and it is also very significant of the book’s origin, that the design on the green wrapper in which the monthly parts made their appearance, should have had a purely sporting character, and exhibited Mr. Pickwick sleepily fishing in a punt, and Mr. Winkle shooting at what looks like a cock-sparrow, the whole