the meanest dinner (of beef, shoulder and umbles of venison

[Dr. Johnson was puzzled by the following passage in "The Merry
Wives of Windsor," act v., sc. 3: "Divide me like a bribe-buck, each
a haunch. I will keep the sides to myself; my shoulders for the
fellow of this walk." If he could have read the account of Sir
William Hickes's dinner, he would at once have understood the
allusion to the keeper's perquisites of the shoulders of all deer
killed in his walk.--B.]

which he takes away from the keeper of the Forest, and a few pigeons, and
all in the meanest manner) that ever I did see, to the basest degree.
After dinner we officers of the Navy stepped aside to read some letters
and consider some business, and so in again. I was only pleased at a very
fine picture of the Queene-Mother, when she was young, by Van-Dike; a very
good picture, and a lovely sweet face. Thence in the afternoon home, and
landing at Greenwich I saw Mr. Pen walking my way, so we walked together,
and for discourse I put him into talk of France, when he took delight to
tell me of his observations, some good, some impertinent, and all ill
told, but it served for want of better, and so to my house, where I find
my wife abroad, and hath been all this day, nobody knows where, which
troubled me, it being late and a cold evening. So being invited to his
mother's to supper, we took Mrs. Barbara, who was mighty finely dressed,
and in my Lady's coach, which we met going for my wife, we thither, and
there after some discourse went to supper. By and by comes my wife and
Mercer, and had been with Captain Cocke all day, he coming and taking her
out to go see his boy at school at Brumly [Bromley], and brought her home
again with great respect. Here pretty merry, only I had no stomach,
having dined late, to eat. After supper Mr. Pen and I fell to discourse
about some words in a French song my wife was saying, "D'un air tout