seems to us distinctly valuable in this place), he was extremely angry at the introduction into the plot of the "Stroller's Tale," and we may therefore fancy the spirit in which he would receive Charles Dickens' intimation, conveyed to him in the same manner that he afterwards communicated to Cruikshank his disapproval of the last etching in "Oliver Twist," that he objected to that etching "as not quite his [Dickens'] idea; "that he wished" to have it as complete as possible, and would feel personally obliged if he would make another drawing." The letter (on the whole a kindly one) has been set out elsewhere,[1] and there is no occasion to repeat it here. What other causes of irritation existed will never be known. All that is still known is, that he executed a fresh design and handed it over to Dickens at the time appointed; that he went home and destroyed nearly all the correspondence relating to the subject of "Pickwick"; that he executed a drawing for a wood-engraver named John Jackson,[2] and delivered it himself on the evening of the, 20th of April, 1836; that he then returned to his house in King Street, Islington, and committed self-destruction. He left behind him an unfinished drawing for "Figaro in London," which afterwards appeared (in the state in which it was found) in the pages of that periodical.
Various reasons have been assigned for this rash act, all more or less contradictory. According to some he was a man of equable temperament; while others, who knew him personally, have told us that he was nervous and subject to terrible fits of depression. Some would trace the act to his quarrel with À Beckett; but this is simply absurd, seeing that it had occurred some two years before. We need not, as it seems to us, travel out of our course to seek the real cause, which was probably due to over-work. His energies had been tasked to the utmost to keep pace with the supply which his
- ↑ See Forster's "Life of Dickens."
- ↑ In one account of Seymour's death the name of the engraver is given as Starling. This is a mistake. The engraving (probably one of the best the unfortunate artist ever executed) represents a sailor captain of Charles the First's time, showing a casket of pearls to a lady of remarkable beauty.
