Ever since the days of Burns, the "chiel amang ye takin' notes" has been an unpopular character, and not without reason, as the following extract shows. Mr. John Evelyn Denison (afterwards Lord Eversley) was Speaker of the House of Commons in 1865, and on the eve of the opening of the Session he dined, according to custom, with Lord Palmerston, then Prime Minister and Leader of the House. Lord Palmerston was in his eighty-first year and gouty. Political issues of the gravest importance hung on his life. The Speaker, like a _rusé_ old politician as he was, kept a cold grey eye on Palmerston's performance at dinner, regarding it, rightly, as an index to his state of health; and this was what he reported about his host's capacities: "His dinner consisted of turtle soup, fish, patties, fricandeau, a third _entrée_, a slice of roast mutton, a second slice, a slice of hard-looking ham. In the second course, pheasant, pudding, jelly. At dessert, dressed oranges and half a large pear. He drank seltzer water only, but late in the dinner one glass of sweet champagne, and, I think, a glass of sherry at dessert." This was one of the "decisive" dinners, for Palmerston died in the following October. The only wonder is that he lived so long. The dinner which killed the Duke of Wellington was a cold pie and a salad. "I am not one who much or oft delight" to mingle the serious work of Dinner with the frivolities of Literature; but other people, more prone to levity, are fond of constructing Bills of Fare out of Shakespeare; and our National Bard is so copious in good eating and drinking that a dozen _Menus_ might be bodied forth from his immortal page. The most elaborate of these attempts took place in New York on the 23rd of April 1860. The Bill of Fare lies before me as I write. It contains twenty-four items, and an appropriate quotation is annexed to each. The principal joint was Roast Lamb, and to this is attached the tag-- "Innocent As is the sucking lamb." When the late Professor Thorold Rogers, an excellent Shakespearean, saw this citation, he exclaimed, "That was an opportunity missed. They should have put-- 'So young, and so untender!'" XXIII LUNCHEON "Munch on, crunch on, take your nuncheon, Breakfast, dinner, supper, luncheon!"