Note 13 to Chapter 9 of the author's Dickens and the Rhetoric of Laughter which Clarendon Press published in 1972. It has been included in the Victorian Web with the kind permission of the author and of the Clarendon Press, which retains copyright.
The particular passage often referred to comes at the end of Book III, ch. XIV, where Dickens says Boffin, alone in the streets, looked "very cunning and suspicious".
Last modified: 3 May 2001