(To the Editor of the Mirror.)
Having occasionally (during my lucubrations) marked out sundry choice excerpts, quips, and quiddities, from a variety of authors, I shall, with your permission, submit to the reader an occasional chapter, with a few original remarks, &c., which I hope will prove agreeable.
Jacobus.
POSTURE MASTERS.
It is now a-days extremely common to style the tumble-down-dick exploits or posture masters, balancers, conjurers, &c. an art. To ridicule such an abuse of the term by applying it to mere adroitness, skill in trifles, and labour-in-vain performances, Quinctilian gives us this merry instance—"Qualis illius fuit, qui grana ciceris ex spatio distante missa, in acum continue, et sine frustratione inserebat; quem cum spectasset Alexander, donasse eum dicitur leguminis modio—quod quidem praemium fuit illo opere dignissimum." Translation—Of this kind of art, was his, who, standing at a certain distance, could continually, without missing, stick a small pea upon the point of a needle; which when Alexander had witnessed, he ordered him a bushel of that grain for his trouble, a reward quite adequate to such an exploit. We have a similar story related, I think, of Charles II.: a posture master climbed up Grantham steeple, and then stood on his head upon the weathercock. The facetious monarch, after witnessing his ascent, told him he might forthwith have a patent that none should do the like but himself.
TO MAKE BUBBLE AND SQUEAK.
Published by request of the gentlemen of both Universities.
First—Take of beef, or mutton, or lamb, or veal, or any other meat, two pounds and a half, or any other quantity; be sure to keep it in salt till the saline particles have locked up all the animal juices, and rendered the fibres hard of digestion; then boil it over a turf or peat fire, in a brass kettle, covered with a copper lid, until it is over much done.
Second—Take a large turned cabbage, and boil it in a bell metal pot until it is done enough, or (if you think proper) too much.