David Copperfield's dinner in his Buckingham Street chambers was an event with a disastrous termination. "It was a remarkable want of forethought on the part of the ironmonger who had made Mrs. Crupp's kitchen fireplace, that it was capable of cooking nothing but chops and mashed potatoes. As to a fish-kettle, Mrs. Crupp said 'Well! would I only come and look at the range? She couldn't say fairer than that. Would I come and look at it?' As I should not have been much the wiser if I _had_ looked at it I said never mind fish. But Mrs. Crupp said, 'Don't say that; oysters was in, and why not them?' So _that_ was settled. Mrs. Crupp then said 'What she would recommend would be this. A pair of hot roast fowls--from the pastry cook's; a dish of stewed beef, with vegetables--from the pastry cook's; two little corner things, as a raised pie and a dish of kidneys--from the pastry cook's; a tart, and (if I liked) a shape of jelly--from the pastry cook's. This,' Mrs. Crupp said, 'would leave her at full liberty to concentrate her mind on the potatoes, and to serve up the cheese and celery as she could wish to see it done.'" Then blessings on thee, Micawber, most charming of characters in fiction, mightiest of punch-brewers! The only fault I have to find with the novel of _David Copperfield_ is that we don't get enough of Micawber. The same fault, however, could hardly be said to lie in the play; for if ever there was a "fat" part, it is Wilkins Micawber. _Martin Chuzzlewit_ bubbles over with eating and drinking; and "Todgers" has become as proverbial as Hamlet. In _Nicholas Nickleby_, too, we find plenty of mention of solids and liquids; and as a poor stroller myself at one time, it has always struck me that "business" could not have been so very bad, after all, in the Crummles Combination; for the manager, at all events, seems to have fared particularly well. Last on the list comes _The Old Curiosity Shop_, with the celebrated stew at the "Jolly Sandboys," the ingredients in which have already been quoted by the present writer. With regard to this stew all that I have to remark is that I should have substituted an ox-kidney for the tripe, and left out the "sparrowgrass," the flavour of which would be quite lost in the crowd of ingredients. But there! who can cavil at such a feast? "Fetch me a pint of warm ale, and don't let nobody bring into the room even so much as a biscuit till the time arrives." Codlin may not have been "the friend"; but he was certainly the judge of the "Punch" party.