And cry'd, dismay'd, "What dost thou in my house?"
She, with a laugh, "Good landlord, have no fear,
'Tis not for board, but lodging, I came here."'

And since then the flood of banter has rolled on. Herrick complains of
an unknown person that he invited him home to eat, and showed him there
much plate but little meat. Garrick (who had evidently again forgotten
the mote and the beam) wrote of a certain nobleman who had built a big
mansion:

'A little house would best accord
With you, my very little lord!
And then exactly matched would be
Your house and hospitality!'

Much in the same way, Richard Graves wrote of the master of a house
which was well kept but not open to company:

'If one may judge by rooms so neat,
It costs you more in mops than meat!'

Note, again, Egerton Warburton's versification of a remark attributed to
Lord Alvanley. A gentleman had drawn attention to the fact that his
house was furnished _a la_ Louis Quatorze:

'"Then I wish," said a guest, "when you ask us to eat,
You would furnish your board _a la_ Louis Dixhuit.
The eye, can it feast when the stomach is starving?
Pray less of your gilding and more of your carving."'

John Headley, describing dinner at one Lady Anne's, tells us that

'A silver service loads the board,
Of eatables a slender hoard;'

and the sarcasm reminds one of the address with which Theodore Hook once
bore himself under somewhat similar circumstances. Invited to dine with
an old lady, he was horrified when the servant, lifting the cover,
displayed a couple of chops. 'Mr. Hook,' said the hostess, 'you see your
dinner.' 'Thank you, ma'am,' observed Hook; 'but where's yours?'

The niggardliness which displays itself in smaller subscriptions to
public or private objects than the donor's means will justify has
naturally met with keen reproach. Herrick has a quatrain directed
against the failing; and everyone remembers the lines about the man who
declared that at the sound of woe his hand was always open:

'Your hand is open, to be sure,
But there is nothing in it.'

Perhaps the happiest satire on meanness of this sort is contained in the
anonymous couplet 'On Close-fist's Subscription':

'The charity of Close-fist, give to fame:
He has at last subscribed--how much?--his name.'

DIALOGUES OF THE DEAD.

A leading Review lately contained a contribution entitled 'The Old
School of Classics and the New.' It was, as r