that is, half-and-half, chops, or cheese, which the penny aforesaid
would purchase; so that the penny saved is no better than pebbles which
you may gather by the bushel upon any shore,)--if I like to haunt Old
Tom's, and talk of politics and poetry with the dear shabby set who
nightly gather there, and are so fraternally blind to the holes in each
other's coats,--why it is all a matter between myself and Mrs. Potter,
and perhaps the clock. We have a good, stout, manly supper,--no Apician
kickshaws, the triumphs of palate-science,--no nightingales' tongues,
no peacocks' brains, no French follies,--but just a rasher or so, in
its naked and elegant simplicity. Montaigne's cook, who treated of his
art with a settled countenance and magisterial gravity, would have
turned his nose skyward at our humble repast; and he would have cast
like scorn upon that to which Milton with such charming grace invited
his friend, in one of those matchless sonnets which make us weep to
think that the author did not write a hundred of them. But Montaigne's
cook may follow his first master, the late Cardinal Caraffa, to that
place where there will always be fire for his saucepans! The epicures
of Old Tom's would deal very crisply with that spit-bearing Italian, or
his shade, should it appear to them. We are not very polished, but most
of us could give hints to men richer than we can hope to be of a wiser
use of money than the world is in any danger of witnessing. There is
Old Sanders, the proof-reader,--"Illegitimate S." we call him,--who
knows where there is an exquisite black-letter Chaucer which he pants
to possess, and which he would possess, were it not for a fear of Mrs.
Sanders and a tender love of the little Sanderses. There is young
Smooch,--he who smashed the Fly-Gallery in "The Mahlstick" newspaper,
and was not for a moment taken in by the new Titian. There is
Crosshatch, who has the marvellous etching by Rembrandt, of which there
are only three copies in the world, and which he will not sell,--no,
Sir,--not to the British Museum. There is Mr. Brevier Lead, who has in