he pampered and the luxurious they become of dissonant mood, less
timed and tuned to the occasion, methinks, than the noise of those
better befitting organs would be, which children hear tales of, at
Hog's Norton. We sit too long at our meals, or are too curious in
the study of them, or too disordered in our application to them, or
engross too great a portion of those good things (which should be
common) to our share, to be able with any grace to say grace. To
be thankful for what we grasp exceeding our proportion is to add
hypocrisy to injustice. A lurking sense of this truth is what makes
the performance of this duty so cold and spiritless a service at most
tables. In houses where the grace is as indispensable as the napkin,
who has not seen that never settled question arise, as to _who shall
say it_; while the good man of the house and the visitor clergyman, or
some other guest belike of next authority from years or gravity, shall
be bandying about the office between them as a matter of compliment,
each of them not unwilling to shift the awkward burthen of an
equivocal duty from his own shoulders?

I once drank tea in company with two Methodist divines of different
persuasions, whom it was my fortune to introduce to each other for the
first time that evening. Before the first cup was handed round, one of
these reverend gentlemen put it to the other, with all due solemnity,
whether he chose to _say any thing_. It seems it is the custom with
some sectaries to put up a short prayer before this meal also. His
reverend brother did not at first quite apprehend him, but upon an
explanation, with little less importance he made answer, that it was
not a custom known in his church: in which courteous evasion the other
acquiescing for good manner's sake, or in compliance with a weak
brother, the supplementary or tea-grace was waived altogether. With
what spirit might not Lucian have painted two priests, of _his_
religion, playing into each other's hands the compliment of performing
or omitting a sacrifice,--the hungry God meantime, doubtful of his
incense, with expectant nostrils hovering over the two flamens, and
(as between two stools) going away in the end without his supper.

A short form upon these occasions is felt to want reverence; a long
one, I am afraid, cannot escape the charge of impertinence. I do
not quite approve of the epigrammatic conciseness with which that
equivocal wag (but my pleasant school-fellow) C.V.L.