Freiburger historische Bestände - digital

I. Dickens' Bekanntschaft mit Fielding und Smollett
und einige Betrachtungen allgemeiner Art.

Um die Beweiskraft der Aufstellungen in dieser Abhandlung
zu erhöhen, ist es notwendig, auf die innige Vertrautheit
Dickens' mit den Werken Fieldings und Smolletts hinzuweisen
, die aus zahlreichen Anspielungen auf diese Schriftsteller
in seinen Briefen und Schriften hervorgeht.

Entschieden autobiographich zu nehmen ist, was uns von
dem jungen Copperfield erzählt wird (D. C. Kap. IV):

„My father had left a small collection of books in a little
room up-stairs, to which I had access and which nobody eise
in our house ever troubled. From that blessed little room
Roderick Random, Peregrine Pickle, Huinphry Clinker, Tom
Jones......came out a glorious host, to keep nie Company
. . . ." Mit welchem Interesse der Knabe diese Werke
las, ersehen wir daraus, dass es weiter unten heisst: „I have
been Tom Jones (a Childs' Tom Tones, a harmless creature)
for a week together. I have sustained my own idea of

Roderick Random for a month at a Stretch, I verily believe____

Every barn in the neighbourhood, every stone in the church, and
every foot of the churchyard, had some association of its own, in
my mind, connected with these books, and stood for some locality
made famous in them. I have seen Tom Pipes go climbing ub the
church-steeple; I have watched Strap, with the knapsack on Iiis
back, stopping forest himself upon the wicket-gate; and I know
that Commodore Trunnion held that club with Mr. Pickle, in the
parlour of our little village ale-house." Forster sagt über
diese Stelle (F. I. K. 1, S. 31): „It is one of the many passages