The next toast was—­“The sublime epoch of Burkism and Harism!”

This was drunk with enthusiasm; and one of the members, who spoke to the question, made a very curious communication to the company:—­“Gentlemen, we fancy Burkism to be a pure invention of our own times:  and in fact no Pancirollus has ever enumerated this branch of art when writing de rebus deperditis.  Still I have ascertained that the essential principle of the art was known to the ancients, although like the art of painting upon glass, of making the myrrhine cups, &c., it was lost in the dark ages for want of encouragement.  In the famous collection of Greek epigrams made by Planudes is one upon a very charming little case of Burkism:  it is a perfect little gem of art.  The epigram itself I cannot lay my hand upon at this moment, but the following is an abstract of it by Salmasius, as I find it in his notes on Vopiscus:  ’Est et elegans epigramma Lucilii, (well he might call it “elegans!”) ubi medicus et pollinctor de compacto sic egerunt, ut medicus aegros omnes curae suae commissos occideret:’  this was the basis of the contract, you see, that on the one part the doctor, for himself and his assigns, doth undertake and contract duly and truly to murder all the patients committed to his charge:  but why?  There lies the beauty of the case—­’Et ut pollinctori amico suo traderet pollingendos.’  The pollinctor, you are aware, was a person whose business it was to dress and prepare dead bodies for burial.  The original ground of the transaction appears to have been sentimental:  ‘He was my friend,’ says the murderous doctor; ‘he was dear to me,’ in speaking of the pollinctor.  But the law, gentlemen, is stern and harsh:  the law will not hear of these tender motives:  to sustain a contract of this nature in law, it is essential that a ‘consideration’ should be given.  Now what was the consideration?  For thus far all is on the side of the pollinctor:  he will be well paid for his services; but, meantime, the generous, the noble-minded doctor gets nothing.  What was the little consideration again, I ask, which the law would insist on the doctor’s taking?  You shall hear:  ’Et ut pollinctor vicissim [Greek:  telamonas] quos furabatur de pollinctione mortuorum medico mitteret doni ad alliganda vulnera eorurn quos curabat.’  Now, the case is clear:  the whole went on a principle of reciprocity which would have kept up the trade for ever.  The doctor was also a surgeon:  he could not murder all his patients:  some of the surgical patients must be retained intact; re infecta.  For these he wanted linen bandages.  But, unhappily, the Romans wore woollen, on which account they bathed so often.  Meantime, there was linen to be had in Rome; but it was monstrously dear; and the [Greek:  telamones] or linen swathing bandages, in which superstition obliged them to bind up corpses, would answer capitally for the surgeon.  The doctor, therefore, contracts