A “Recipe for Civilisation,” in Hudibrastic lines, is waggishly ascribed to the “pen of Dr. Kitchiner—as if, in the ingredients of versification, he had been assisted by his Butler.” It is accompanied by a whimsical whole length of “the Cook’s Oracle,” adjusting musical notes on the bars of a gridiron, a ludicrous allusion to the good-humoured Doctor’s diversified attainments in science and popularity.
From an odd poem, attributed to an odd personage, “The Last Man,” two verses are selected, as an example of feelings which the punning on the title-page seemed to have proscribed:—
I’ve buried my babies one by one,
And dug the deep hole for Joan,
And cover’d the faces of kith and kin,
And felt the old church-yard stone
Go cold to my heart, full many a time,
But I never felt so lone.
For the lion and Adam were company,
And the tiger him beguiled;
But the simple kine are foes to my life,
And the household brutes are wild.
If the veriest cur would lick my hand
I could love it like a child!
Mr. Hood’s pen essays “Walton Redivivus: A New River Eclogue.”
“[Piscator is fishing—near the sir Hugh Middleton’s Head, without either basket or can. Viator cometh up to him, with an angling-rod and a bottle.]”
It is prefaced by a citation “From a Letter of C. Lamb,” in these words:—“My old New River has presented no extraordinary novelties lately. But there Hope sits, day after day, speculating on traditionary gudgeons. I think she hath taken the fisheries. I now know the reasons why our forefathers were denominated East and West Angles. Yet is there no lack of spawn, for I wash my hands in fishets that come through the pump, every morning, thick as motelings—little things that perish untimely, and never taste the brook.”
To face this “Eclogue” there is a motto, “My banks they are furnished,” beneath a whole length figure, so like “poor Jemmy Whittle!”—only not looking so good natured.