[ 13C ] [F E R. 



A DISSERTATION UPON DINNERS. 



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Alderman, Bravo, bravo, master Mayor, there was a mouthful for you ; w!iy, man, it would have 

 done justice to a shark. Grumercy I but" I would give my best, jerkin to swallow the like. 

 Lord Mayor. Aye, aye, master Fatsides, see what it is to have a genius. 

 Alderman. By Saint Magnus! but this is :i rare dinner. The Guildhall Festival: an old Play. 



THIS we clearly perceive will be an excellent article. The subject is 

 mixed up witii such social and savoury associations, is so redolent of per- 

 fume (like Gray's " Spring 11 ), and so intimitately linked in the " mind's 

 eye " with all the leading political topics which have stirred England, 

 and consequently Europe, within the memory of the present generation, 

 that it must quicken even stupidity itself. A Dissertation upon Dinners! 

 inspiring theme ! Other subjects appeal each to its particular class ; but 

 this, like the air we breathe, is universal. It has been said, peradventure 

 correctly, that England is the land of dulness : a fact which, however 

 true, is yet neutralized by the saving circumstance of its being also the 

 land of dinners. Nothing can be -here done without a dinner. It is 

 John Bull's Utopia, or Fairy Land ; his " Paradise of dainty devices," 

 where his fancy, feeling, wit, and good-humour keep pace with his appe- 

 tite, and are, by a logical consequence, exhaustless. Is he low-spirited? 

 hefl ies instinctively to a consolatory sirloin, or to the first aboriginal cut of a 

 fillet of veal (weighing, say eight pounds, exclusive of the skewer and 

 stuffing).* Is he rapt, like master Stephen, in a graceful melancholy? he 

 bids it evaporate during the process of carving. Is he uninformed on any 

 particular topic ? he applies for information to a joint of meat, or a bottle 

 of elderly port, by whose joint assistance he contrives to obtain the requi- 

 site edification. In public life, a good dinner that is to say, a jollification 

 made up of what Justice Greedy, with appropriate felicity, would call 

 " the substantials," is still more immediately serviceable, inspiring alike 

 the poet and the philanthropist, the peer and the peasant, *he divine and 

 the diplomatist. It is a sort of 'vantage-ground on which all parties stand 

 sit, we should say with equal advantage to themselves and satisfaction 

 to the universe. The exultation of Toryism, the bile of Whiggism, the 

 vulgarity of Radicalism, the prejudice of Deism, the bigotry of Method- 

 ism, and the agony of Rheumatism, subside under its resistless influence ; 

 factions, stripped of reality, become fictions, and all because, as a modern 

 minstrel characteristically observes, 



" The road through the stomach's the way to the heart." 



For ourselves, never never shall we forget the first time that we at- 

 tended, what is called, a public dinner, The very recollection of that 

 delectable epoch is, like Gibbon's love, a shrine a Mecca a Jerusalem 

 which none but our purest and holiest sensibilities dare approach. Poets 

 remember the first kindling of their embryo genius, politicians their first 

 speech, divines their first tythe, lawyers their first cause, warriors their 

 first battle, young ladies their first love but we, with deeper reverence, 

 recal our first dinner. Let us describe the blissful ovation ; and forgive us, 

 my Public, if, while conjuring up its manifold addittaments, a tear bedews 

 our optics. Mortality is weak very weak and God knows we are but 

 man. It took place this dulcet symposium at Reading, in the Town- 

 hall, just behind St. Laurence's church, A. D. 1818, arid was given by the 

 Mayor a cheesemonger, of superb dimensions to those young gentlemen 



* It should weigh ten pounds at least. Ed. 



