tly what the
genius to whom she owes her existence did, when he called her into life,
to the foul original she was taken from. That which enduringly stamped
upon his page its most mirth-moving figure, had stamped out of English
life for ever one of its disgraces. The mortal Mrs. Gamp was handsomely
put into her grave, and only the immortal Mrs. Gamp survived. Age will
not wither this one, nor custom stale her variety. In the latter point
she has an advantage over even Mr. Pecksniff. She has a friend, an alter
ego, whose kind of service to her is expressed by her first utterance in
the story; and with this, which introduces her, we may leave her most
fitly. "'Mrs. Harris,' I says, at the very last case as ever I acted in,
which it was but a young person, 'Mrs. Harris,' I says, 'leave the
bottle on the chimley-piece, and don't ask me to take none, but let me
put my lips to it when I am so dispoged.' 'Mrs. Gamp,' she says in
answer, 'if ever there was a sober creetur to be got at eighteen pence a
day for working people, and three and six for gentlefolks--night
watching,' said Mrs. Gamp with emphasis, 'being a extra charge--you are
that inwallable person.' 'Mrs. Harris,' I says to her, 'don't name the
charge, for if I could afford to lay all my fellow-creeturs out for
nothink, I would gladly do it, sich is the love I bears 'em.'" To this
there is nothing to be added, except that in the person of that
astonishing friend every phase of fun and comedy in the character is
repeated, under fresh conditions of increased appreciation and
enjoyment. By the exuberance of comic invention which gives his
distinction to Mr. Pecksniff, Mrs. Gamp profits quite as much; the same
wealth of laughable incident which surrounds that worthy man is upon her
heaped to overflowing; but over and above this, by the additional
invention of Mrs. Harris, it is all reproduced, acted over with renewed
spirit, and doubled and quadrupled in her favour. This on the whole is
the happiest stroke of humorous art in all the writings of Dickens.

* * * * *

But this is a chapter of disappointments, and I have now to state, that
as _Martin Chuzzlewit's_ success was to seem to him at first only
distant and problematical, so even the prodigious immediate success of
the _Christmas Carol_ itself was not to be an unmitigated pleasure.
Never had a little book an outset so full of brilliancy of promise.
Published but a few days before Chri