"Would not John Dory's name have died with him, and so been long ago dead as a door-nail, if a grotesque likeness for him had not been found in the fish, which being called after him, has immortalized him and his ugliness? But if John Dory could have anticipated this sort of immortality when he saw his own face in the glass, he might very well have 'blushed to find it fame.'"
He is fond of introducing quaint old legends—
"There are certain Rabbis who affirm that Eve was not taken out of Adam's side, but that Adam had originally been created with a tail, and that among the various experiments and improvements which were made in form and organization before he was finished, the tail was removed as an inconvenient appendage, and of the excrescence or superfluous part, which was then lopped off, the woman was formed."
While on this subject he says that Lady Jekyll once asked William Wiston "Why woman was formed out of man's rib rather than out of any other part of his body?" Wiston scratched his head and replied, "Indeed, Madam, I do not know, unless it be that the rib is the most crooked part of the body."
Southey gives a playbill of the Drolls of Bartholomew Fair in the time of Queen Anne—
"At Crawley's booth over against the Crown Tavern in Smithfield, during the time of the Bartholomew Fair, will be presented a little opera, called the 'Old Creation of the World,' yet newly revived, with the addition of 'Noah's Flood.' Also several fountains playing water during the time of the play. The last scene does represent Noah and his family coming out of the Ark, with all the beasts two and two, and all the fowls of the air seen in a prospect sitting upon trees. Likewise over the Ark is seen the sun rising in a most glorious manner. Moreover, a multitude of angels will be seen in a double rank, which represents a double prospect, one for the sun, the other for a palace, where will be seen six angels ringing of bells. Likewise machines descend from above, double and treble, with Dives rising out of Hell, and Lazarus seen in Abraham's bosom; besides several figures, dancing jigs, sarabands, and country dances to the admiration of the spectators, with the merry conceits of Squire Punch and Sir John Spendall."
"So recently as the year 1816 the sacrifice of Isaac was represented on the stage at Paris. Samson was the subject of the ballet; the unshorn son of Manoah delighted the spectators by dancing a solo with the gates of Gaza on his back; Delilah clipt him during the intervals of a jig, and the Philistines surrounded and captured him in a country-dance."
Sometimes Southey indulges his fancy on very trifling subjects as,
"The Doves, father as well as son, were blest with a hearty intellectual appetite, and a strong digestion, but the son had the more Catholic taste. He would have relished caviare, would have ventured on laver, undeterred by its appearance, and would have liked it. He would have eaten sausages for breakfast at Norwich, sally-luns at Bath, sweet butter in Cumberland, orange marmalade at Edinburgh, Findon haddocks at Aberdeen, and drunk punch with beef-steaks to oblige the French, if they insisted upon obliging him with a déjeuner à l'Anglaise."
'A good digestion turneth all to health.'