Note 264 — Chapter XIV

The distinction I then pointed out was remarked by Sara Coleridge (Memoirs and Letters, ii. 169) in writing of her children. "They like to talk to me . . . above all about the productions of Dickens, the never-to-be-exhausted fun of Pickwick, and the capital new strokes of Martin Chuzzlewit. This last work contains, besides all the fun, some very marked and available morals. I scarce know any book in which the evil and odiousness of selfishness are more forcibly brought out, or in a greater variety of exhibitions. In the midst of the merry quotations, or at least on any fair opportunity, I draw the boys' attention to these points."