Kitchener rooted up all my prejudices, and overturned the whole system
of my theory by practical illustrations.
"Thus he that's wealthy, if he's wise,
Commands an earthly paradise;
That happy station nowhere found,
But where the glass goes freely round.
Then give us wine, to drown the cares
Of life in our declining years,
That we may gain, if Heav'n think fitting,
By drinking, what was lost by eating:
For though mankind for that offence
Were doom'd to labour ever since,
Yet Mercy has the grape impower'd
To sweeten what the apple sour'd."
To this good-humoured sally of Pendragon succeeded a long dissertation
on meats, which it is not _meet_ I should relate, being for the most
part idle conceits of Mr. Galen Cornaro, who carried about him a long
list of those prescribed eatables, which engender bile, breed the
_incubus_, and produce spleen, until, according to his bill of fare, he
had left himself nothing to subsist upon in this land of plenty but a
mutton-chop, or a beef-steak. What pleased me most was, that with every
fresh bottle the two disciples of Pythagoras and Abernethy became still
more vehement in maintaining the necessity for a strict adherence to
the theory of water and vegetable economy; while their zeal had so far
blinded their recollection, that when the ladies returned from their
walk to join us at tea, they were both "_bacchi plenis_," as Colman has
it, something inclining from ~109~~a right line, and approaching in its
motion to serpentine sinuosities.
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