r
themselves and gout for their descendants. Thackeray, in a truly
pathetic passage, partly draws the veil from their sufferings. Almost
all the wits of Queen Anne's reign, he observes, were fat: 'Swift was
fat; Addison was fat; Gay and Thomson were preposterously fat; all that
fuddling and punch-drinking, that club and coffee-house boosing,
shortened the lives and enlarged the waistcoats of men of that age.'
Think of the dinner described, though with intentional exaggeration, in
Swift's 'Polite Conversation,' and compare the bill of fare with the
_menu_ of a modern London dinner. The very report of such
conviviality--before which Christopher North's performances in the
'Noctes Ambrosianae' sink into insignificance--is enough to produce
nightmares in the men of our degenerate times, and may help us to
understand the peevishness of feeble invalids such as Pope and Lord
Hervey in the elder generation, or Walpole in that which was rising.
Amongst these Gargantuan consumers, who combined in one the attributes
of 'gorging Jack and guzzling Jemmy,' Sir Robert Walpole was celebrated
for his powers, and seems to have owed to them no small share of his
popularity. Horace writes piteously from the paternal mansion, to which
he had returned in 1743, not long after his tour in Italy, to one of his
artistic friends: 'Only imagine,' he exclaims, 'that I here every day
see men who are mountains of roast beef, and only seem just roughly
hewn out into outlines of human form, like the giant rock at Pratolino!
I shudder when I see them brandish their knives in act to carve, and
look on them as savages that devour one another. I should not stare at
all more than I do if yonder alderman at the lower end of the table were
to stick his fork into his neighbour's jolly cheek, and cut a brave
slice of brown and fat. Why, I'll swear I see no difference between a
country gentleman and a sirloin; whenever the first laughs or the second
is cut, there run out just the same streams of gravy! Indeed, the
sirloin does not ask quite so many questions.' What was the style of
conversation at these tremendous entertainments had better be left to
the imagination. Sir R. Walpole's theory on that subject is upon record;
and we can dimly guess at the feelings of a delicate young gentleman who
had just learnt to talk about Domenichinos and Guidos, and to buy
ancient bronzes, when plunged into the coarse society of these mountains
of roast beef. As he grew up mann