ries will save your
mutton, but there you're wrong--they only give time to take breath; so
bring in the sirloin and the saddle of mutton, waiter; and when
we've done dinner I'll tell you an anecdote of old Tattersall and his
beef-eater, which occurred at this house in a former landlord's time.
Come, Mr. Blackmantle, let me send you a slice of the sirloin, and tell
us what you think of good eating."

"That the wit of modern times directs all its rage _ad gulam_; and the
only inducement to study is _erudito luxu_, to please the palate, and
satisfy the stomach. Even my friend Ebony, the northern light, has cast
off the anchorite, and sings thus jollily:

'The science of eating is old,
Its antiquity no man can doubt:
Though Adam was squeamish, we're told,
Eve soon found a _dainty bit_ out.'

"We talk of the degeneracy of the moderns, as if men now-a-days were
in every respect inferior to their ~99~~ancestors; but I maintain, and
challenge contradiction, that there are many stout rubicund gentlemen
in this metropolis that might be backed for eating or drinking with
any Bacchanalian or masticator since the days of Adam himself. What was
_Offellius Bibulus_, the Roman parasite, or _Silenus Ebrius_, or _Milo_,
who could knock down an ox, and eat him up directly afterwards, compared
to Tom Cornish, or Richardson the oyster eater?{3} or what are all these
opposed to the Oxonian, who, a short time since, went to the Swan at
Bedford, and ordered dinner? a goose being brought, he hacked it in a
style at which Mrs. Glass would have fainted; indeed so wretched was
the mutilated anatomy, in appearance, from bad carving, that, being
perfectly ashamed of it, he seized the moment when some poor mendicant
implored his charity at the window, deposited the remains of the goose
in his apron, rang the bell, and asked for his bill: the waiter gazed a
moment at the empty dish, and then rushing to the landlord, exclaimed,
'Oh! measter, measter, the gentleman eat the goose, bones and all!' and
the worthies of Bedford believe the wondrous tale to this day."

To return to Tom Cornish, our host informed us his extraordinary powers
of mastication were well known, and dreaded by all the tavern-keeping
fraternity who had Sunday ordinaries within ten miles round London, with
some of whom he was a regular annuitant, receiving a trifle once a
year, in lieu of giving them a _benefit_, as he terms the filling of
h