"Diet _the chief_!"--by which we are to understand that this promising muster-roll merely includes the names of some of the principal viands,--the high-commissioned dishes of the feast,--leaving the subalterns, and the entire rank and file which complete the goodly array, unmentioned. It must have been a very ingenious or a very strong-minded mouse which could contrive to be starved under such circumstances. The ballad is long, and we can only afford to give our readers "tastings" of its good things. It is everywhere full of most gracious promise:-- "The cooks shall be busied, by day and by night, In roasting and boiling, for taste and delight, Their senses in liquor that's nappy they'll steep, Though they be afforded to have little sleep; They still are employed for to dress us, in brief, Plum-pudding, goose, capon, minc'd-pies, and roast beef. "Although the cold weather doth hunger provoke, 'T is a comfort to see how the chimneys do smoke; Provision is making for beer, ale, and wine, For _all that are willing or ready to dine_: Then haste to the kitchen for diet the chief, Plum-pudding, goose, capon, minc'd-pies, and roast beef. "All travellers, as they do pass on their way, At gentlemen's halls are invited to stay, Themselves to refresh and their horses to rest, Since that he must be old Christmas's guest; Nay, the poor shall not want, but have for relief Plum-pudding, goose, capon, minc'd-pies, and roast beef." And so on, through a variety of joyous and substantial anticipations, from which the writer draws an inference, which we think is most satisfactorily made out:-- "Then _well may we welcome_ old Christmas to town, Who brings us good cheer, and good liquor so brown; To pass the cold winter away with delight, We feast it all day, and we frolick all night." In Ellis's edition of Brand's "Popular Antiquities" an old Christmas song is quoted from "Poor Robin's Almanack" for 1695, which gives a similar enumeration of Christmas dainties, but throws them into a form calculated for more rapid enunciation, as if with a due regard to the value of those moments at which it was probably usual to sing it. The measure is not such a mouthful as that of the former one which we have quoted. It comes trippingly off the tongue; and it is not impossible that, in those days of skilful gastronomy, it might have been sung eating. We will quote a couple of the verses, though they include the same commissariat truths as that from which we have already extracted; and our readers will observe, from the ill-omened wish which concludes the second of these stanzas, in what horror the mere idea of _fasting_ had come to be held, since it is the heaviest curse which suggested itself to be launched against those who refused to do homage to the spirit of the times:--