With “The Tale of Two Cities” Hablot K. Browne’s connection with Dickens, as the illustrator of his books, came to an end.  The “Sketches” had been illustrated by Cruikshank, who was the great popular illustrator of the time, and it is amusing to read, in the preface to the first edition of the first series, published in 1836, how the trembling young author placed himself, as it were, under the protection of the “well-known individual who had frequently contributed to the success of similar undertakings.”  Cruikshank also illustrated “Oliver Twist;” and indeed, with an arrogance which unfortunately is not incompatible with genius, afterwards set up a rather preposterous claim to have been the real originator of that book, declaring that he had worked out the story in a series of etchings, and that Dickens had illustrated him, and not he Dickens.[27] But apart from the drawings for the “Sketches” and “Oliver Twist,” and the first few drawings by Seymour, and two drawings by Buss,[28] in “Pickwick,” and some drawings by Cattermole in Master Humphrey’s Clock, and by Samuel Palmer in the “Pictures from Italy,” and by various hands in the Christmas stories—­apart from these, Browne, or “Phiz,” had executed the illustrations to Dickens’ novels.  Nor, with all my admiration for certain excellent qualities which his work undeniably possessed, do I think that this was altogether a good thing.  Such, I know, is not a popular opinion.  But I confess I am unable to agree with those critics who, from their remarks on the recent jubilee edition of “Pickwick,” seem to think his illustrations so pre-eminently fine that they should be permanently associated with Dickens’ stories.  The editor of that edition was, in my view, quite right in treating Browne’s illustrations as practically obsolete.  The value of Dickens’ works is perennial, and Browne’s illustrations represent the art fashion of a time only.  So, too, I am unable to see any great cause to regret that Cruikshank’s artistic connection with Dickens came to an end so soon.[29] For both Browne and Cruikshank were pre-eminently caricaturists, and caricaturists of an old school.  The latter had no idea of beauty.  His art, very great art in its way, was that of grotesqueness and exaggeration.  He never drew a lady or gentleman in his life.  And though Browne, in my view much the lesser artist, was superior in these respects to Cruikshank, yet he too drew the most hideous Pecksniffs, and Tom Pinches, and Joey B.’s, and a whole host of characters quite unreal and absurd.  The mischief of it is, too, that Dickens’ humour will not bear caricaturing.  The defect of his own art as a writer is that it verges itself too often on caricature.  Exaggeration is its bane.  When, for instance, he makes the rich alderman in “The Chimes” eat up poor Trotty Veck’s little last tit-bit of tripe, we are clearly in the region of broad farce.  When Mr. Pancks, in “Little Dorrit,” so far abandons the ordinary ways of