The English Rogue: Described in the Life of Meriton Latroon, a Witty ExtravagantHead, Richard
General
The English Rogue: Described in the Life of Meriton Latroon, a Witty Extravagant
Head, Richard
Rogues and vagabonds -- England -- Fiction
_Sir _Richard Strang-bow_ keeps an house where Wine
And Bread some sup on, but few seldom dine.
Ask yet an hungry Rambler, and he’ll say,
(Though not one bit came near his mouth that day)
He plentifully din’d with him, so let him still
Till he hath found his empty belly fill,
Where I ne’re could, which made me hate in fine
Sir _Richard Strang-bows_ Feasts, St. _Patrick’s_ Wine._
I fasted so long, I had now almost forgot how to eat: for if casually I
came where meat was, I often made a proffer to convey something to my
mouth, but my lips understood not my meaning; for having been so long
unaccustomed to their duty, knew not how to perform their _gaping_
office. It was impossible at this time for the greatest fright to have
made me foul my breeches, because I seldom used any thing that might
cause excrements. And therefore I wondred to hear any enquire for an
house of Office, since I had now left off going to stool. Once in five
days I thought I stood in need of evacuating; but I was mistaken, for by
discharging a blast of wind (whose fury scattered small stones
underneath me) I found it only a fit of the Cholick. I shall deal
plainly, shoud I have found a propensity, I would have been very
unwilling to let any thing go out, since so little past into my belly.
Some _Moveables_ I had left, which I was forced to dispose of, to keep
the passage of my guts open, which would frequently grumble against my
stomach for detaining too long what was received, challenging a
propriety therein. I thought it good policy not to buy any Belly-timber
of a quick concoction, because it should stay the longer within me. To
this purpose I lookt on old Cheese to be food convenient; knowing that
though it will disgest any thing else, yet it cannot disgest it self;
and as it closeth up the mouth of the stomack, so by its respective
quality it locks up fast the Poststern of the Micro-cosm. Flesh again
(if I got any) I would swallow by whole-sale, fearing lest by chewing
it, my stomach would too suddenly give it a passport to my
_Hypo-gastrium_; by which means it would be immediately ready again, nay
restless in the craving more. I seldom slept for the gnawing of my
stomack, and the anguish of my guts, and for want of those fumes which
proceeding from Meat ascended into the head, and so the causers of
sleep. If I chanced to nod at any time, I dreamed of nothing but eating,
my fancy feeding that while as voraciously as an hunger-starved hound on
a shoulder of Mutton. I was driven to that pass, I could not justly tell
whether I was alive or not. Sometimes I was of the opinion that I dyed
in our Ship-wrack on the Isle of _Man_, and that I was now a Soul in
Purgatory.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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