I could never wade through _Our Mutual Friend_, and _Little Dorrit_ is not one of my favourite books. It was ruthlessly mauled by the _Saturday Review_ soon after its appearance, and Thackeray’s openly expressed opinion of the work was “_Little D._ is Deed stupid.” I have {219} heard another great man express the same opinion of it, in more elegant language. There is not much revelry in _Little D._ until we get to the second volume; and with the exception of Blandois the strangler and the romantic Flora nobody appears to have a really good thirst. In the Marshalsea the “collegians” were evidently worse provided with alcoholic comfort than in the Fleet; and this is all which can be written in this chapter about _Little Dorrit_. _Nicholas Nickleby_, on the other hand, is full of allusions to the flowing bowl. Most of the characters—Smike being a notable exception—moisten their clay in some way or other, from dear old Crummles, who is introduced to our notice with a rummer of hot brandy-and-water in one hand, to the ruffian Squeers. Newman Noggs owed his fall in life to the bold, bad, bottle, and Mantalini presumably took to gin together with the washer-woman, in his declining years. The Brothers Cheeryble were evidently the right sort of people to dine with—although their dinner-hour would hardly suit the present generation—especially if they had many magnums of that famed “Double Diamond.” Sir Mulberry Hawk and his lordly victim drank deep, after the fashion of the day; whilst the keeper of the “rooge-a-nore from Paris” booth on Hampton race-course stimulates the energies of his patrons with excellent champagne, port, sherry, and (most likely) British brandy. Old Gride keeps a bottle of “golden water”—presumably the Dantzic liqueur, “Acqua d’Oro,” mentioned in my chapter on that form of fluid—in his cupboard, {220} and doles out on one occasion a minute glass thereof to Newman Noggs, who would evidently, like the farmer at the audit dinner, prefer it “in a moog.” Mr. Lillyvick, the collector of water-rates, was especially partial to punch—which was “cut off” so unexpectedly for the benefit of Nicholas, after his walk from Yorkshire to the metropolis; and the whole of Mr. Crummles’s company, ladies included, liked a taste of the same beverage. Finally, John Browdie, the good genius of the book, was a fellow of infinite swallow, always ready for his meals, and never behindhand when there was a full jug or bottle handy. And it is recorded that upon being knocked up by Nicholas, on the visit of the last-named to Yorkshire, with the news of Squeers’s trial and sentence, “forced him down upon a huge settle beside a blazing fire, poured out from an enormous bottle about a quarter of a pint of spirits, thrust it into his hand, opened his mouth, and threw back his head as a sign to him to drink it.” And before breakfast, too!