But Montaigne's
cook may follow his first master, the late Cardinal Caraffa, to that
place where there will always be fire for his saucepans! The epicures
of Old Tom's would deal very crisply with that spit-bearing Italian, or
his shade, should it appear to them. We are not very polished, but most
of us could give hints to men richer than we can hope to be of a wiser
use of money than the world is in any danger of witnessing. There is
Old Sanders, the proof-reader,--"Illegitimate S." we call him,--who
knows where there is an exquisite black-letter Chaucer which he pants
to possess, and which he would possess, were it not for a fear of Mrs.
Sanders and a tender love of the little Sanderses. There is young
Smooch,--he who smashed the Fly-Gallery in "The Mahlstick" newspaper,
and was not for a moment taken in by the new Titian. There is
Crosshatch, who has the marvellous etching by Rembrandt, of which there
are only three copies in the world, and which he will not sell,--no,
Sir,--not to the British Museum. There is Mr. Brevier Lead, who has in
my time successively and successfully smitten and smashed all the
potentates, big and little, of Europe, and who has in his museum a
wooden model of the Alsop bomb.
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