Although it is the fashion of the day to belittle, if not sneer at, the works of “Boz,” he has still sufficient admirers to justify a chapter on what is, I hope, a congenial subject to my readers. The characters may be unduly elaborated, and the incidents too much spun-out for these slap-dash, go-ahead times; but it is to the simple, homely, hospitality so often referred to in the novels of Charles Dickens that most of them owed that popularity which may, or may {212} not, be on the wane. The close student of these novels will discover that all which is good, and honest, and upright, and charitable is honoured in their pages, whilst meanness, deceit, hypocrisy, and cant are lashed with no uncertain hand. “The greatest of all gifts is Charity,” is the lesson taught by Charles Dickens, who shewed at the same time that it is quite possible to enjoy the good things of life without making a beast of oneself. And he it was who clothed Christmas in that warm, sumptuous robe of joviality and hospitality which makes all who keep that festival in the proper spirit forget for the time that a quarter’s rent falls due on the same day. Dickens’s drunkards are few and far between—and in this category I do not include such as Sydney Carton, the members of the Pickwick Club, and David Copperfield, on the occasion of his first dinner-party. Nobody has a right to call the man who makes merry with his friends, now and then, a sot; and a careful study of Dickens shows that the real inebriates, the “habituals” described in his works, had all more or less rascality in their composition—not even excepting Dick Swiveller, who, however, became a reformed character towards the close of the book. As for the drinks themselves, it is especially worthy of note that there is no mention whatever made of whisky in these works; a fact which justifies everything which I have written in a former chapter as to the neglect with which this undoubtedly estimable and wholesome fortifier was treated by society, until within the last few {213} decades. A brandy-and-soda was an unknown fact during the Dickens period; simply because, although there was plenty of brandy, the true virtues of soda-water had not been discovered. Moreover, nobody was known to call for a gin-and-bitters, or a sherry-and-angostura; whilst cocktails and cobblers are mentioned only in the American chapters of _Martin Chuzzlewit_. Ales and beers were known by various fantastic names during the first half of the present century, when men knew not “four-’alf” nor “bitter-six”; thus we have little David Copperfield gravely asking for a glass of the “Genuine Stunning,” whilst Mrs. Gamp was unable to fulfil her arduous duties satisfactorily without a generous allowance of “the Brighton old Tipper.”