As reported by Three Hands.
It is a miserable thing to quarrel or even differ over a dinner, although the whole affair be but a matter of taste. It is likewise a miserable thing to differ after dinner, since it lamentably disturbs the digestion of the food, as in this case it may the temper of the feeders. Yet respecting the dinner to celebrate the Birthday of Burns in Freemasons' Hall, there is a remarkable difference among the critical craft; which difference, by the way, no shades of opinion can reconcile. As we were not of the party, (and we congratulate ourselves on the escape from a Scottish half-dinner,) it may be well to quote from three of the reports that have appeared, rather than let the affair pass unnoticed in our pages. We do so from a wish to preserve certain traits and anecdotes which the occasion drew forth,—to give the pleasant rather than the "untoward" events of the day: though we must own the whole appears to have been a very droll business, always excepting the semi-pransus.
We start with an extract from Dr. Granville's Catechism of Health:—
Q. What should a dinner consist of?
A. Of any wholesome food that is in season, plainly dressed.
Q. Should the dinner be composed of many dishes?
A. The most wholesome dinner is that which consists of a single dish of meat, with a proper quantity of vegetables.
Whether the Scottish dinner was as aforesaid, we know not. Call the evidence.
Court Journal.—A public dinner at a public-house (this is a court sneer)—provided by Scotch booksellers, presided at by a Scotch baronet, accompanied by Scotch bagpipes, and prepared for two hundred Scotch appetites, there being four hundred of the said appetites admitted to partake of it.
Athenaeum.—Nearly five hundred persons were present at a dinner ordered for two hundred and fifty.