He did this
with much humour; but I have not preserved the particulars. He then
indulged a playful fancy, in making a _Meditation on a Pudding_[943], of
which I hastily wrote down, in his presence, the following note; which,
though imperfect, may serve to give my readers some idea of it.
MEDITATION ON A PUDDING.
'Let us seriously reflect of what a pudding is composed. It is composed
of flour that once waved in the golden grain, and drank the dews of the
morning; of milk pressed from the swelling udder by the gentle hand of
the beauteous milk-maid, whose beauty and innocence might have
recommended a worse draught; who, while she stroked the udder, indulged
no ambitious thoughts of wandering in palaces, formed no plans for the
destruction of her fellow-creatures: milk, which is drawn from the cow,
that useful animal, that eats the grass of the field, and supplies us
with that which made the greatest part of the food of mankind in the age
which the poets have agreed to call golden. It is made with an egg, that
miracle of nature, which the theoretical Burnet[944] has compared to
creation. An egg contains water within its beautiful smooth surface; and
an unformed mass, by the incubation of the parent, becomes a regular
animal, furnished with bones and sinews, and covered with feathers. Let
us consider; can there be more wanting to complete the Meditation on a
Pudding? If more is wanting, more may be found.
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