Note 73 — Chapter VII · IN THE NORTH.

The late Mr. Robert Langton, author of “The Childhood and Youth of Charles Dickens,” states that Dickens, in “Hard Times,” is unsuccessful in his attempt to render the Lancashire dialect—that the utterances put into the mouths of Stephen Blackpool and others in the book “are very far from being correct,” a matter upon which, from his long residence in Manchester, that critic is qualified to speak. Mr. Langton points out that the inscription on the sign of the Pegasus’ Arms, at which inn Sleary’s circus company put up, “Good malt makes good beer,” etc., was taken from an old sign, the Malt Shovel, existing until 1882 at the foot of Cheetham Hill.