"Oh, that this too too solid flesh would melt! A COMPLAINT AGAINST GREATNESS. AM an unfortunate creature, the most wretched of all that groan under the burden of the flesh. I am fainting, as they say of kings, under my oppressive greatness. A miserable Atlas, I sink under the world of-myself. But the curious will here ask me for my name. I am, then, or they say I am, "The Reverend Mr Farmer, a four-years' old Durham Ox, fed by himself, upon oil-cake and mangelwurzel" but I resemble that worthy agricultural Vicar only in my fat living. In plain truth, I am an unhappy candidate for the show at Sadler's, not "the Wells," but the Repository. They tell me I am to bear the bell, (as if I had not enough to bear already!) by my surpassing tonnage-and, doubtless, the prize-emblem will be proportioned to my uneasy merits. With a great Tom of Lincoln about my neck-alas! what will it comfort me to have been "commended by the judges"? Wearisome and painful was my pilgrim-like progress to this place, by short and tremulous steppings, like the digit's march upon a dial. My owner, jealous of my fat, procured a crippled drover, with a withered limb, for my conductor; but even he hurried me beyond my breath. The drawling hearse left me labouring behind; the ponderous fly-waggon passed me like a bird upon the road, so tediously slow is my pace. It just sufficeth, O ye thrice-happy Oysters! that have no locomotive faculty at all, to distinguish that I am not at rest. Wherever the grass grew by the way-side, how it tempted my natural. longings-the cool brook flowed at my very foot, but this short thick neck forbade me to eat or drink: nothing but my redundant dewlap is likely ever to graze on the ground! If stalls and troughs were not extant, I must perish. Nature has given to the Elephant a long flexible tube, or trunk, so that he can feed his mouth, as it were, by his nose; but is man able to furnish me with such an implement? Or would he not still withhold it, lest I should prefer the green herb, my natural delicious diet, and reject his rank, unsavoury condiments? What beast, with free will, but would repair to the sweet meadow for its pasture; and yet how grossly is he labelled and libelled? Your bovine servant,-in the cataloguo, is a "Durham Ox, fed by himself, (as if he had any election,) upon oil-cake.” I wonder what rapacious Cook, with an eye to her insatiable grease-pot and kitchen perquisites, gave the hint of this system of stall-feeding! What unctuous Hull Merchant, or candleloving Muscovite, made this grossness a desideratum ? If mine were, indeed, like the fat of the tender sucking pig, that delicate gluten ! there would be reason for its unbounded promotion; but to see the prize steak, loaded with that rank yellow abomination, (the lamplighters know its relish,) might wean a man from carnivorous habits for ever. Verily, it is an abuse of the Christmas holly, the emblem of Old English and wholesome cheer, to plant it upon such blubber, gentlemanly entrail must be driven to extreme straits, indeed, (Davis's Straits,) to feel any yearnings for such a meal; and yet I am told that an assembly of gentry, with all the celebrations of full bumpers and a blazing chimney-pot, have honoured the broiled slices of a prize bullock, a dishful of stringy fibres, an animal cabbage-net, and that rank even hath been satisfied with its rankness. Will the honourable club, whose aim it is thus to make the beastly nature more beastly, consider of this matter? Will the humane, when they provide against the torments of cats A and dogs, take no notice of our condition! Nature, to the whales, and creatures of their corpulence, has assigned the cool deeps; but we have no such refuge in our meltings. At least, let the stall-feeder confine his system to the uncleanly swine which chews not the cud; for let the worthy members conceive on the palate of imagination, the abominable returns of the refuse-linseed in our after ruminations. Oh, let us not suffer in vain! It may seem presumption in a brute, to question the human wisdom; but, truly, I can perceive no beneficial ends, worthy to be set off against our sufferings. There must be, methinks, a nearer way of augmenting the perquisites of the kitchen-wench and the fire-man,-of killing frogs,than by exciting them, at the expense of us poor blown-up Oxen, to a mortal inflation. |