would advise me to take, a farrago of good things almost rivalling
"Oberon's Feast," spread out so daintily in Herrick's "Hesperides." He
thought, at first, if I could bear a few roc's eggs beaten up by a
mermaid on a dolphin's back, I might be benefited. He decided that a
gruel made from a sheaf of Robin Hood's arrows would be strengthening.
When suffering pain, "a right gude willie-waught," or a stiff cup of
hemlock of the Socrates brand, before retiring, he considered very good.
He said he had heard recommended a dose of salts distilled from the
tears of Niobe, but he didn't approve of that remedy. He observed that
he had a high opinion of hearty food, such as potted owl with Minerva
sauce, airy tongues of sirens, stewed ibis, livers of Roman Capitol
geese, the wings of a Phoenix not too much done, love-lorn nightingales
cooked briskly over Aladdin's lamp, chicken-pies made of fowls raised by
Mrs. Carey, Nautilus chowder, and the like. Fruit, by all means, should
always be taken by an uneasy victim at sea, especially Atalanta pippins
and purple grapes raised by Bacchus & Co. Examining my garments one day
as I lay on deck, he thought I was not warmly enough clad, and he
recommended, before I took another voyage, that I should fit myself out
in Liverpool with a good warm shirt from the shop of Nessus & Co. in
Bold Street, where I could also find stout seven-league boots to keep
out the damp. He knew another shop, he said, where I could buy
raven-down stockings, and sable clouds with a silver lining, most warm
and comfortable for a sea voyage.

His own appetite was excellent, and day after day he used to come on
deck after dinner and describe to me what he had eaten. Of course his
accounts were always exaggerations, for my amusement. I remember one
night he gave me a running catalogue of what food he had partaken during
the day, and the sum total was convulsing from its absurdity. Among the
viands he had consumed, I remember he stated there were "several yards