(_For the Mirror_.)
A correspondent in a late number asks for a solution of the expression,
"eating mutton cold." If the following one is worth printing, it is much
at your service and that of the readers of the MIRROR.
I consider then that it has simply the same meaning as that of "coming a
day after the fair." To come at the end of a feast when the various
viands (always including mutton as being easy of digestion for dyspeptic
people) were still warm, though cut pretty near to the bone, would, by
most persons, particularly aldermanic "bodies," be considered
sufficiently vexatious; how doubly annoying then must it be to come so
late as to find the meats more than half cold, and, perhaps, but little
of them left even in that anti-epicurean state! Whoever has been
unfortunate enough to miss a fine fat haunch either of venison or
mutton, which, smoking on the board, even Dr. Kitchiner would have
pronounced fit for an emperor, cannot but enter deeply and feelingly
into the disappointment of that guest who, arriving, through some
misdate of the invitation card, on the day subsequent to the feast,
finds but, _horribile dictu_, cold lean ham, cold pea-soup, cold
potatoes, and finally, _cold mutton_. Goldsmith's idea certainly was
that Burke was never able to say, in the words of the Roman adage, _in
tempore veni quod rerum omnium est primum_; but rather in plain English,
"confound my ill luck, I never yet was invited to a feast but I either
missed it in toto, or came so late as to be obliged to eat my mutton
cold, a thing, which of all others, I most abhor." HEN. B.
* * * * *