

"Christopher Worth" 185 



Maga-,DL\ and were regarded as the most brilliant 

 efflorescence of Wilson's genius. There is nothing 

 like them in literature for their grotesque mixture of 

 eloquent rhapsody and boisterous fooling, of sport, 

 philosophy, criticism, conviviality, and buffoonery. 

 Wilson let himself go with a vengeance in the 

 " Noctes," even to the verge of ribaldry. The fun is 

 for the most part of the coarsest and broadest pure 

 farce, most of it. The men of that generation who 

 laughed over Christopher's jests must have been very 

 easily entertained. 



There are in the " Noctes " passages of real eloquence, 

 flashes of fine critical insight, gems of thought and 

 expression that sparkle with the lustre of diamonds of 

 the purest water ; but the boozing and buffoonery are 

 a sore trial to the patience of the modern reader who 

 knew not Christopher and his confreres in the flesh. 

 And one has the less patience with them because all 

 that Gargantuan guzzling was a fiction. Those 

 groaning tables laden with fish, flesh, and fowl, those 

 heroic potations of toddy, had no existence but in 

 Christopher's imagination. We know now that whilst 

 Christopher North was penning those graphic pictures 

 of gluttony and whisky-drinking, he was really dining 

 on boiled fowl and potatoes, washed down with cold 

 water, sitting in a bare, fireless room, scribbling by the 

 light of a big tallow candle in a tin kitchen candlestick. 

 As I think of that ghastly simulacrum of conviviality, 

 of those forlorn Barmecide feasts, I feel that the " Noctes " 

 are a fraud, and I could wish that Kit North had really 

 been the glorious gourmand and toddy-drinker that he 



