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Coppee, Henry

"English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History Designed as a Manual of Instruction"

Richard Swiveller; and also the compound of
will and hideousness in Quilp.
He affected to find in the receptacle of Master Humphrey's clock, his
_Barnaby Rudge_, a very dramatic picture of the great riot incited by Lord
George Gordon in 1780, which, in its gathering, its fury, and its easy
dispersion, was not unlike that of Wat Tyler. Dickens's delineations are
eminently historic, and present a better notion of the period than the
general history itself.

AMERICAN NOTES.--In 1841 Dickens visited America, where he was received by
the public with great enthusiasm, and annoyed, as the author of his
biography says, by many individuals. On his return to England, he produced
his _American Notes for General Circulation_. They were sarcastic,
superficial, and depreciatory, and astonished many whose hospitalities he
had received. But, in 1843, he published _Martin Chuzzlewit_, in which
American peculiarities are treated with the broadest caricature. The
_Notes_ might have been forgiven; but the novel excited a great and just
anger in America.


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