eabouts
by no other designation than that of the 'Wandering Minstrel.'"

"It is in the capacity of minstrel that I address you. If it be not an
impertinent question, do you know any songs which take the other side of
the case?"

"What case? I don't understand you, sir."

"The song I heard seemed in praise of that sham called love. Don't you
think you could say something more new and more true, treating that
aberration from reason with the contempt it deserves?"

"Not if I am to get my travelling expenses paid."

"What! the folly is so popular?"

"Does not your own heart tell you so?"

"Not a bit of it,--rather the contrary. Your audience at present
seem folks who live by work, and can have little time for such idle
phantasies; for, as it is well observed by Ovid, a poet who wrote much
on that subject, and professed the most intimate acquaintance with it,
'Idleness is the parent of love.' Can't you sing something in praise of
a good dinner? Everybody who works hard has an appetite for food."

The singer again fixed on Kenelm his inquiring eye, but not detecting a
vestige of humour in the grave face he contemplated, was rather puzzled
how to reply, and therefore remained silent.

"I perceive," resumed Kenelm, "that my observations surprise you: the
surprise will vanish on reflection. It has been said by another poet,
more reflective than Ovid, that 'the world is governed by love and
hunger.' But hunger certainly has the lion's share of the government;
and if a poet is really to do what he pretends to do,--namely, represent
nature,--the greater part of his lays should be addressed to the
stomach." Here, warming with his subject, Kenelm familiarly laid his
band on the musician's shoulder, and his voice took a tone bordering on
enthusiasm. "You will allow that a man in the normal condition of health
does not fall in love every day. But in the normal condition of health
he is hungry every day. Nay, in those early years when you poets say he
is most prone to love, he is so especially disposed to hunger that
less than three meals a day can scarcely satisfy his appetite. You may
imprison a man for months, for years, nay, for his whole life,--from
infancy to any age which Sir Cornewall Lewis may allow him to
attain,--without letting him be in love at all. But if you shut him up
for a week without putting something into his stomach, you will find him
at the end of it as dead as a door-nail."

Here the singer, who had g