Crotchet Castle

o: nothing

rning you pr

who is for doing all the world's business as well as his own, and is equally well qualified to handle every branch of human knowledge. I have a great abomination of this learned friend; as author, lawyer, and politician, he is triformis, like Hecate; and in every one of his three forms he is bifrons, like Janus; the true Mr. Facing-both-ways of Vanity Fair. My cook must read his rubbi

mpany, consisting of young Crotchet, and some visitors whom he had brought from London. The Reverend Doctor Folliott was introduced to Mr. Mac Quedy, the economist;

se his spirits by the gentle sedative of a large cup of tea, the de

αυγ??. The breakfast is the πρ??ωπον of the great work of the day. Chocolate, coffee, tea, cream, eggs, ham, tongue, cold fowl, all these are good, and bespeak good knowledge in him who sets them forth: but the touchstone is fish: anchovy is the first step, prawns an

sh trout, hot and dry, in a napkin? or a herring out of

virtue; and your country is pre-eminent in the glory of fish for

onomy, the way to make the most of all the modifications of smoke; steam, gas, and paper currency; y

val the Boeotians, whose redeeming virtue was in fish, touching which point you may consult Aristophanes and his scholiast in the passage of Lysis

u set no value on the right principles

can get, and pay no more than I can help. These are every man's principles, whether

nd consumption are independent of the will of any individual as

Sir, I will thank you f

your footman to be going into your cook's ro

d ask no questions. I suppose he was going to study hydrostatics,

you seem to make ve

ll, law for all, physic for all, words for all, and sense for none. I say, sir, law for lawyers, and cookery for cooks: and I wish the learned friend, f

t would be too severe: my coo

given with sandwiches. Horresco referens. An elegant supper. D? meliora piis. No Ude for me. Conviviality went out with punch and suppers. I cherish their memory. I sup when I can,

r than that. A literary supper in sweet Edinbro' would c

ho among you has written a comedy? where is your Attic salt? which of you can tell who was Jupiter's great-grandfather? or what metres will successively remain, if you take off the three first syllables, one by one, from a pur

thology, they may e'en wait a wee. For your comedy the

tle Shepherd"! It is just as mu

e that it is any such great matter, any more than I can conjecture what bu

t worth knowing, and dare not show your noses before the civilised world in the practice of any one art in which they were excellent. M

here we are at home. The Athenians only sought the way, and we have found i

d have borne. Premises assumed without evidence, or in spite of it; and concl

found the true road of metaphysics, which the Athenians only sought

t, sir, with an anxious desire to understa

e wants the two great re

ns; truths which are inherent in the organisation of mind, which cannot be obliterated, though they m

, I have no notion of lo

y the one true philosophy, which is also the transcendental. The logic of your Modern Athens c

l against the useful, the intense against the tranquil, the romantic against the classical; these are

r there is water, there is malaria, and wherever there is malaria, there are the elements of death. The great object of a wise man should be to live on a gravelly hill, without so much as a duck-pond withi

vegetable) who or what sucks up either the water or the infection. I think the proximity of wine a matter of much more importance than the longinquity of water. You are here within a quarter of a

every part of my system. Nothing but my great friendship for Mr. C

e armed for the strife. You may fight like Hercules against Achelous, but I shall flourish the Bacchic t

d a good cellar, to carry a choice philosophical party up the Thames and Severn, into the Ellesmere canal, where we shall be among the mountains of North Wales; which we may climb or not, as we

p for you, I will certainly go; but I d

eroas. I will be of the party, though I must hire an officiating curate, and depr

be of the party, our ship is not

are one of the party, sir, it

ay sir, what do y

.-Precisely, sir, wha

l to mirth. No man should ask another why he laughs, or at what, seeing that he does not always know, and that, if he does, he is not a responsible

at. Give him Modern Athens, the "learned friend," and th