My poor Lirriper was a handsome figure of a man,
with a beaming eye and a voice as mellow as a musical
instrument made of honey and steel.

What a vivid imagination the good woman had! Her descriptive
powers remind us of those possessed by Mrs. Gamp in speaking
of the father of the mysterious Mrs. Harris.

As pleasant a singer, Mr. Chuzzlewit, as ever you heerd,
with a voice like a Jew's-harp in the bass notes.

There are many humorous references to remarkable performances on
various instruments more or less musical in their nature. During
the election at Eatanswill the crier performed two concertos
on his bell, and shortly afterwards followed them up with a
fantasia on the same instrument. Dickens suffered much from
church bells, and gives vent to his feelings about them in
_Little Dorrit_, where he says that

Maddening church bells of all degrees of dissonance,
sharp and flat, cracked and clear, fast and slow,
made the brick-and-mortar echoes hideous.

In his _Pictures from Italy_ he wrote thus:

At Genoa the bells of the church ring incessantly,
not in peals, or any known form of sound, but in
horrible, irregular, jerking dingle, dingle, dingle;
with a sudden stop at every fifteenth dingle or so,