rre,' each person had L5, 14s. to pay."
Some illustrious strangers appear to have been occasionally invited to
attend the symposium. If the luxurious table spread for them may have
occasioned them some surprise, they must have experienced still more in
the tenor of the invitation to be present, which, coming in the name of
certain "Lions of Literature," as their historian and the author of the
invitation calls them, was expressed in these terms--"The honour of your
company is requested to dine with the Roxburghe dinner, on Wednesday the
17th instant." One might be tempted to offer the reader a fuller
specimen of the historian's style; but unfortunately its
characteristics, grotesque as they are, cannot be exemplified in their
full breadth without being also given at full length. The accounts of
the several dinners read like photographs of a mind wandering in the
mazes of indigestion-begotten nightmare.[70]

[Footnote 70: It is but fair, however, to a reputation which was
considerable within its own special circle, to let the reader judge for
himself; so, if he think the opportunity worth the trouble of wading
through small print, he may read the following specimen of Mr
Hazlewood's style. He would certainly himself not have objected to its
being taken as a criterion of the whole, since he was evidently proud of
it.

"Consider, in the bird's-eye view of the banquet, the trencher cuts,
foh! nankeen displays: as intersticed with many a brilliant drop to
friendly beck and clubbish hail, to moisten the viands or cool the
incipient cayenne. No unfamished livery-man would desire better dishes,
or high-tasted courtier better wines. With men that meet to commune,
that can converse, and each willing to give and receive information,
more could not be wanting to promote well-tempered conviviality--a
social compound of mirth, wit, and wisdom; combining all that Anacreon
was famed for, tempered with the reason of Demosthenes, and intersected
with the archness of Scaliger. It is true we had not any Greek verses in
praise of the grape; but we had, as a tolerable substitute, the ballad
of the 'Bishop of Hereford and Robin Hood,' sung by Mr Dodd, and it was
of his own composing. It is true, we had not any long oration denouncing
the absentees, the cabinet council, or any other set of men; but there
was not a man present that at one hour and seventeen minutes after the
cloth was removed but could have made a Demosthenic speech far superi