“The ‘American Notes’ are weak, and unworthy of their author; but the American sketches in ‘Martin Chuzzlewit’ are among the cleverest and truest things he has ever written. The satire was richly deserved, well applied, and has done a great deal of good. To claim that it was mere burlesque and exaggeration, is sheer nonsense, and it is highly disingenuous to deny the existence of the absurdities upon which it was founded. Moreover, the popular implication that there is really nothing now in the country justly to provoke a smile—to urge with so much complacency that we have changed all that—argues the continued existence of not a little of the same thin-skinned tetchiness, the same inability ‘to see ourselves as others see us,’ which made us so legitimate a target before.” “As for certain American portraits painted in Martin Chuzzlewit,” says an American lady, {24} “I should as soon think of objecting to them as I should think of objecting to any other discovery in natural history. To deny the existence of Elijah Pogram, Jefferson Brick, Colonel Diver, Mrs. Hominy, and Miss Codger, is to deny facts somewhat exaggerated, that are patent to any keen observer who has ever travelled through the United States. The character of Elijah Pogram is so well known as to constantly figure in the world of illustration; and we can well afford to laugh at foibles of native growth when Mr. Dickens devotes the greater part of this same novel to the exposition of English vice and selfishness.” The following letter, referring to Martin Chuzzlewit, which was then in course of publication, was addressed by Mr. Dickens to a friend in January, 1844:— “Devonshire Terrace, “_January_ 2_d_, 1844. MY DEAR SIR, “THAT is a very horrible case you tell me of. I would to God I could get at the parental heart of —, in which event I would so scarify it, that he should writhe again. But if I were to put such a father as he into a book, all the fathers going (and especially the bad ones) would hold up their hands and protest against the unnatural caricature. I find that a great many people (particularly those who might have sat for the character) consider even Mr. Pecksniff a grotesque impossibility, and Mrs. Nickleby herself, sitting bodily before me in a solid chair, once asked me whether I really believed there ever was such a woman. “So — reviewing his own case, would not believe in Jonas Chuzzlewit. ‘I like Oliver Twist,’ says —, ‘for I am fond of children. But the book is unnatural, for who would think of being cruel to poor little Oliver Twist!’