Read it through once

Among the letters of the year is one to Miss Jephson on the subject of _Pickwick Papers_. This friend had acknowledged that she had not, as yet, even heard of this successful work, then being published in paper-covered monthly parts. “So you never heard of the _Pickwick Papers_! Well! They publish a number once a month and print 25,000. The bookseller has made about £10,000 by the speculation. It is fun—but without anything unpleasant: _a lady might read it all aloud_; and it is so graphic, so individual, and so true, that you could curtsey to all the people as you met them in the streets. I did not think there had been a place where English was spoken to which _Boz_ had not penetrated. All the boys and girls talk his fun—the boys in the streets; and yet they who are of the highest taste like it the most. Sir Benjamin Brodie takes it to read in his carriage between patient and patient; and Lord Denman studies _Pickwick_ on the bench whilst the jury are deliberating. _Do_ take some means to borrow it.”