180 SEA-SIDE STUDIES. 



MeanAvhile it was the tonnent of intellectual hunger ; and I 

 make it a rule always to satisfy hunger — on philosopliical 

 principles. If you don't content it, it will torment you ; 

 it obtrudes on work and duty, perplexing the one, and 

 obstructing the other : it can't be starved into silence. 

 When pastry-cooks hii-e new boys, they wisely permit an 

 unrestricted glut of tarts. The young gluttons fall on, tooth 

 and nail, and in a week are surfeited ; whereas a stealthy 

 and restricted appetite would have lasted them for years, 

 much to the damage of the j^astry-cook. In this philosophic 

 forethought I resolved to give myself a glut of zoology, to 

 let loose the reins of desire, and afterwards, if the fates so 

 willed it, settle once more into a student of books, and 

 writer thereof It was really time. For seven long months I 

 had been separated from the coast ; and like the Cyclops of 

 Euripides, I had grown weary of feeding on daily butcher's 

 meat and game, just like other stray mortals in the Strand ; 

 and smacked my lips at the prospect of man-beef. With 

 the Cyclops I exclaimed : 



"I am quite sick of the wild mountain-game ; 

 Of stags and lions I have gorged enough, 

 And I grow hungry for the flesh of men." * 



March was already come, the equinoctial gales were near, 

 and the Isles of Scilly beckoned like syrens from their 



* This is Shelley's translation. The reader who has not quite forgotten his 

 Greek may Uko to have the original : — 



'O; ix^Muf yi ixirtf I'ifj,' cfirxoct/- 



