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LONDON LYRICS.—­TABLE TALK.

  To weave a culinary clue,
  Whom to eschew, and what to chew,
    Where shun, and where take rations,
  I sing.  Attend, ye diners-out,
  And, if my numbers please you, shout
    “Hear, hear!” in acclamations.

  There are who treat you, once a year,
  To the same stupid set; Good cheer
    Such hardship cannot soften. 
  To listen to the self-same dunce,
  At the same leaden table, once
    Per annum’s once too often.

  Rather than that, mix on my plate
  With men I like the meat I hate—­
    Colman with pig and treacle;
  Luttrell with ven’son-pasty join,
  Lord Normanby with orange-wine,
    And rabbit-pie with Jekyll.

  Add to George Lambe a sable snipe,
  Conjoin with Captain Morris tripe,
    By parsley roots made denser;
  Mix Macintosh with mack’rel, with
  Calves-head and bacon Sydney Smith,
    And mutton-broth with Spencer.

  Shun sitting next the wight, whose drone
  Bores, sotto voce, you alone
    With flat colloquial pressure: 
  Debarr’d from general talk, you droop
  Beneath his buzz, from orient soup,
    To occidental Cheshire.

  He who can only talk with one,
  Should stay at home, and talk with none—­
    At all events, to strangers,
  Like village epitaphs of yore,
  He ought to cry, “Long time I bore,”
    To warn them of their dangers.

  There are whose kind inquiries scan
  Your total kindred, man by man,
    Son, brother, cousin joining. 
  They ask about your wife, who’s dead,
  And eulogize your uncle Ned,
    Who died last week for coining.

  When join’d to such a son of prate,
  His queries I anticipate,
    And thus my lee-way fetch up—­
  “Sir, all my relatives, I vow,
  Are perfectly in health—­and now
   I’d thank you for the ketchup!”

  Others there are who but retail
  Their breakfast journal, now grown stale,
    In print ere day was dawning;
  When folks like these sit next to me,
  They send me dinnerless to tea;
    One cannot chew while yawning.

  Seat not good talkers one next one,
  As Jacquier beards the Clarendon;
    Thus shrouded you undo ’em;
  Rather confront them, face to face,
  Like Holles-street and Harewood-place,
    And let the town run through ’em.

  Poets are dangerous to sit nigh—­
  You waft their praises to the sky,
    And when you think you’re stirring
  Their gratitude, they bite you. (That’s
  The reason I object to cats—­
    They scratch amid their purring.)

  For those who ask you if you “malt,”
  Who “beg your pardon” for the salt,
    And ape our upper grandees,
  By wondering folks can touch Port-wine;
  That, reader’s your affair, not mine—­
    I never mess with dandies.