boast of their spungy intemperance, an interminable intestine war ; for and be proud of their brotherhood every article of sustenance took, as it with the drunkard. Even opium-eat- were, a peculiar and perpendicular ing, like snuff-taking, may come into growth, but never turned into those vogue, and find unblushing prose- lateral folds of flesh, which produce lytes--but who will profess himself a the comfortable clothing of men's ribs slave to gluttony—the commonest fail- in general. At fourteen years of age ing of all ! Nevertheless, with all the I was five feet ten inches high, coverchances of public odium and private ed almost entirely with the long hair reprobation impending over me, I that boys come home with at the hasten to the performance of my duty, Christmas holidays from a Yorkshire and I am proud to consider myself a cheap academy-my bones forcing their kind of literary Curtius, leaping will way through my skin-and my whole ingly into the gulf, to save my fellow- appearance the fac-simile of farine citizens by my own sacrifice.

and disease-yet I never had a comThe earliest date which I am able plaint except not getting enough to to affix to the developement of my eat. propensity is the month of August I am thus particular as to my ap1764, at which period, being then pre- pearance at this period, in the hope, cisely two years and two months old, that by this exposure of an unvarnishI remember well my aunt Griselda ed portrait, I may excite some com

I having surprised ine in an infantine miseration for sufferings, which did but desperate excess, for which she not proceed from my own wicked will. punished me with a very laudable se. I was constitutionally a glutton : naverity. This circumstance made a ture had stamped the impress of greedgreat impression on me; and without iness upon me at my birth, or before at all lessening my propensity, added it. In the sucking tenderness of inconsiderably to my prudence. My vo- fancy, and the upshooting of boyhood, racity was infinite, and my cunning it was the preponderating characterisran quite in a parallel line. I was tic of my nature—no self-begot habit, “ Fox in stealth, wolf in greediness.”

growing on by little and little, fostered

by indulgence, and swelled out, until I certainly eat more than any six it became too large for the constituchildren, yet I was the very picture of tion that enshrined it, like those geesestarvation. Lank, sallow, and sorrow- livers which are expanded by a partistricken, I seemed the butt against cular preparation, until they become, which stinginess had been shooting as a body might say, bigger than the its shafts. I attacked every one I met unhappy animals to which they belong. with the most clamorous cries for cakes Will you not then, reader, grant me or bread. I watched for visitors, and your compassion for my inadvertent thrust my hands into their pockets enormities? Must I look in vain for with most piteous solicitings, while the sympathising tear of sensibility aunt Griselda bit her lips for anger, falling to wash out the scorching erand my poor mother, who was a dif- rors of invincible appetite-as forcible ferent sort of person, used to blush to at least as the invincible ignorance of the eyes for shame, or sit silently heresy, for which even there is hope weeping, asshe contemplated the symp- in the semi-benignant bosom of the toms of my disgraceful and incurable church? To you I appeal, ye cooks disease. In the mean time every thing by profession--ye gormandizers by priwas essayed, every effort had recourse vilege to the whole board of Alderto, to soften down the savageness of men to the shade of Mrs Glass,-to my rage for food, or at least to turn Mrs Rundell, Doctor Kitchener, and what I eat to good account. I was the rest of the list of gastronomical lipampered and crammed, with my in- terati, who, in teaching the world the creasing years, like a Norfolk turkey- science of good living, must have some I had an unlimited credit at the pastry- yearnings, one would think, for those cook's shop, and the run of the kitchen victims whom ye lead into the way of at home, but in vain. The machinery temptation. of my stomach refused to perform its But lest this unsupported appeal to functions. I think I must have swal- the melting charities of mankind might lowed every thing the wrong way, or be ineffectual in its naked exhibition, have been unconsciously the prey of I shall proceed to cover it with a short

detail of some of the particular hor- bore at all upon my pursuit. Appetite, rors to which I have been a prey for mental as well as bodily, grew by what upwards of half a century, and I think it fed on; and I continually chewed, it must be a hard heart that will then as it were, the cud of my culinary refuse me its pity, and a ravenous maw knowledge. I rummaged Aristophanes that will not involuntarily close, to for the Grecian repasts, and thumbed shut out the possibility of sufferings over Macrobius and Martial for the like mine.

Roman. While seizing on every deUp to the age of fifteen, when I pre- licacy within my reach, I feasted my sented the appearance faintly sketched imagination with dainties not to be above, I may be considered to have got at,—the Phrygian attigan, Ambragone on mechanically gormandizing, cian kid, and Melian crane. Í revered with nothing to distinguish my way the memory of Sergius Arata, who, we of doing so from that common animal are told by Pliny, was the inventor of appetite which is given, in different oyster-beds; of Hortensius the orator, proportions, to all that creep, or walk, who first used peacock at supper; of or swim, or fly. Those vulgar glut- Vitellius, Apicius, and other illustritonies, thus eating for eating-sake, un- ous Romans, connected with mental associations, have no interest and no dignity. A

Their sumptuous gluttonies and gorgeous

feasts. man who supplies instinctively bis want of food, without choice or taste, is These classical associations refined truly Epicuri de grege porcus, or may my taste, and seemed to impart a more be compared rather to the Porcus Tro- acute and accurate power to my palate. janus of the ancients, a wild boar stuf- As I began to feel their influence, I fed with the flesh of other animals--a blushed for the former grossness of savoury, punning parody upon the my nature, and shrunk from the comTrojan horse. Such a man is no bet- mon gratification to which I had been ter than a digesting automaton—a li- addicted. I felt an involuntary loaving mass of forced meat-an anima- thing towards edibles of a mean and

low-lived nature. I turned with disI was sent home from six successive gust from the common casualties of schools, on various pretences; but the a family dinner, and began to view true reason was, that inordinate cra- with unutterable abhorrence shoulving which no indulgence could satis- ders of mutton, beef, and cabbage, and fy. I eat out of all proportion; and the like. A feeling, I should rather my father was obliged to take me en- say a passion, (the technical phrase at tirely to himself. My mother was present for every sensation a little miserable, but of inexhaustible gene- stronger than ordinary,) a passion seemrosity; my aunt Griselda was dead, ed to have taken possession of my and I had no check upon me. Doc- mind for culinary refineıņents, dietetors from all parts were consulted on tic dainties—the delicata fercula, fit my case. Innumerable councils and only for superior tastes, but incomconsultations were held, ineffectually, prehensible to the profane. A new light to ascertain whether that refrigeration seemed breaking on me; a new sense, of stomach, which they all agreed was or at least a considerable improvement the primal cause of my malady, was on my old sense of tasting, seemed imjoined with dryness, contraction, vel- parted to me by miracle. My notions lication, or abstersion. They tried every of the dignity of appetite became exremedy and every regimen, without panded ; I no longer looked on man as success. The fact was, I wanted no- a mere masticating machine-the butthing but food, for which they would cher and sepulchre of the

animal world. have substituted physic. So that be- I took a more elevated view of his tween my mother and my physicians, powers and properties, and I felt as I had both in abundance and for the though imbued with an essence of mind as well as the body. The Yuxens pure and ethereal epicurism, if I may latee.com was plentifully supplied me by so express myself—and why may I my father, for I had natural parts, and not ?-my contemporaries would not loved reading. But the whole turn flinch from the phrase. of my studies was bent towards descrip- My father was a plain sort of mantions of feasts and festivals. I devour- liked plain speaking, plain feeding, and ed all authors, ancient or modern, who so on. But he had his antipathies,

ted sausage.

and among them was roast-pig. Had nomy or method, my inanimate viche lived to our times, he might proba- tim. It was one of my boyish extravably have been won over by a popular gancies to conform myself in these my essay on the subject, wbich describes, solitary feasts to the strict regulations in pathetic phrase, the manifold de- of Roman custom. I began with an lights attending on that dish—the fat, egg, and ended with an apple, and which is no fat—the lean which is not flung into the fire-place (as there was lean—the eyes melting from their soc- no fire, it being the summer season) kets, and other tender touches of de- a little morsel, as an offering to the scription. Be this as it may, my un- dii patellarii. On this occasion, howenlightened parent would never suffer ever, I forgot myself and my habitsroast-pig upon his table, and so it I rushed, as it were, upon my prey.happened, that, at sixteen years of age, slashed right and left, through crackI had never seen one. But on the ar- ling, stuffing, body, and bones. I rival of that anniversary, I was indul- flung aside the knife and fork-seized ged by my mother with a most exqui- in my hands the passive animal with site and tender two-months porker, in indiscriminate voracity-thrust whole all its sucking innocence, and succu- ribs and limbs at once into my mouth lent delight, as the prime dish in that crammed the delicious ruin by annual birth-day feast, to which I was wholesale down my throat, until at accustomed, in my own apartment— last my head began to swim-my eyes all doors closed—no ingress allowed— seemed starting from their sockets-a no intruding domestics—no greedy suffocating thickness seemed gathercompanions to divide my indulgencies ing (no wonder) in my throat-a full-no eyes to stare at me, or rob me of ness of brain seemed bursting through a portion of the pleasure with which I my skull-my veins seemed swelled eat in, as it were, in vision, the spirit into gigantic magnitude—I lost all of every anticipated preparation, while reason and remembrance, and fell, in savoury fragrance was wafted to my that state, fairly under the table. brain, and seemed to float over my This, reader, is what we call, in comimagination in clouds of incense, at mon phrase, a surfeit. But what lanonce voluptuous and invigorating. Ah, guage may describe its consequences, this is the true enjoyment of a feast ! or give a just expression to the sufferOn the present occasion, I sat in the ings it leaves behind? The first awakenfull glory of my solitude--sublimely ing from the apoplectic trance, as the individual, as the Grand Lama of lancet of the surgeon gives you a hint Thibet, or the Brother of the Sun and that you are alive, when the only taste Moon. The door was fastened—the upon the tongue-the only object in servant evaporated ; a fair proportion the eye—the only flavour in the nose of preparatory foundation-soup, fish, tril, is the once-loved, but now deep&c.—had been laid in, secundum ar- loathed dish! The deadly sickening tem—the mensa prima, in short, was with which one turns, and twists, and just dispatched, when I gently raised closes one's lids, and holds one's nose, the cover from the dish, where the and smacks one's lips—to shut out, and beautiful porker lay smoking in his stifle, and shake off the detested sight, rich brown symmetry of form and hue, and smell, and taste :--but in vain, in enveloped in a vapour of such delicious- vain, in vain! But let me not press ness, and floating in a gravy of inde- the point. Forty-two years have passscribable perfection! After those de- ed since that memorable day-forty lightful moments of dalliance (almost thousand recollections of that infernal dearer to the epicure than the very pig have flashed across my brain, and fullness of actual indulgence) were fastened on my palate, and fumigated well over-after my palate was pre- my olfactories; and there they are, pared by preliminary inhalements of every one, as fresh-What do I say? the odorous essence - I seized my knife. a million times more fresh and more and fork, and plunged in medias res. intolerable than ever. Faugh !-It Never shall I forget the flavour of the comes again. first morsel-it was sublime ! But oh ! But if such were some of the local it was, as I may say, the last ; for lo- and particular waking miseries of my sing, in the excess of over-enjoyment, excess, what, oh what tongue may give all presence of mind and management. utterance to, what pen pourtray, the of mouth, I attacked, without eco-, intolerable terrors of my dreaming

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