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At Table with the Clergy: Sydney

The last communication from the Rev. Sydney Smith to Canon Barham, better known as Thomas Ingoldsby, related to gastronomy, with the ethics of which he was so conversant, the canon having just sent him a pannier of pheasants. "Many thanks, my dear sir, for your kind present of game," wrote the appreciative recipient. "If there is a pure and elevated pleasure in this world, it is that of roast pheasant and bread-sauce; barn-door fowls for dissenters, but for the real churchman, the thirtynine times articled clerk, the pheasant! the pheasant!" Why the witty rector of Combe-Florey declared that when he found himself seated next to a bishop at a dinner-party he became so nervous that he could do nothing but crumble his bread, and when his place adjoined that of an archbishop he crumbled it with both hands, seems inexplicable, unless it had been his mischance to encounter among his superiors in office more accomplished epularians than himself. Besides his celebrated poetical recipes for a salad, which are presented in a following chapter, his less familiar "Receipt to Roast Mutton" may not be omitted from references to ecclesiastic good cheer: "Gently stir and blow the fire, Lay the mutton down to roast, Dress it quickly, I desire, In the dripping put a toast, That I hunger may remove- Mutton is the meat I love. "On the dresser see it lie; Oh! the charming white and red; Finer meat ne'er met the eye, On the sweetest grass it fed:

Let the jack go swiftly round, Let me have it nicely brown'd. "On the table spread the cloth, Let the knives be sharp and clean, Pickles get and salad both, Let them each be fresh and green.

With small beer, good ale, and wine, O ye gods! how I shall dine!"