Let each determine to make one convert, himself that one. On
Christmas day, let each dine off, or at least have on his table, the
good old English fare, roast beef and plum-pudding! and does such beef
as our island produces need recommendation? What more nutritive and
delicious? and, for a genuine healthy Englishman, what more proper than
this good old national English dish? Let him whose stomach will not bear
it, look about and insure his life--I would not give much for it. It
ought, above all other places, to be duly honoured in our officers'
mess-rooms. As Prior says,
"If I take Dan Congreve right,
Pudding and beef make Britons fight."
So, then, if beef be indeed so excellent,
we shall not much wonder that Shakspeare
should say,
--"A pound of man's flesh
Is not so estimable or profitable.
As flesh of mutton, beeves, or goats!"
The French have christened us (and I think it no disreputable
_sobriquet_) Jack Roastbeef, from a notion we cannot live without
roast-beef, any more than without plum-pudding, porter, and punch;
however, the notion is palpably erroneous.
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