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
his voracious paunch.
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