The Expedition of Humphry Clinker

THE EXPEDITION OF HUMPHRY CLINKER 121
nourishment, and savour, that a man might dine as comfortably
on a white fricasee of kid-skin gloves, or chip hats from Leghorn.
As they have discharged the natural colour from their bread,
their butcher’s-meat, and poultry, their cutlets, ragouts, fricasees,
and sauces of all kinds; so they insist upon having the complexion
of their pot-herbs mended, even at the hazard of their lives.
Perhaps, you will hardly believe they can be so mad as to boil their
greens with brass half-pence, in order to improve their colour; and
yet nothing is more true—Indeed, without this improvement in
the colour, they have no personal merit. They are produced in an
artificial soil, and taste of nothing but the dunghills, from whence
they spring. My cabbage, cauliflower, and ’sparagus in the country,
are as much superior in flavour to those that are sold in Covent-
garden, as my heath-mutton is to that of St. James’s market; which,
in fact, is neither lamb nor mutton, but something betwixt the two,
gorged in the rank fens of Lincoln and Essex, pale, coarse, and
frowzy—As for the pork, it is an abominable carnivorous animal,
fed with horse-flesh and distillers’ grains; and the poultry is all
rotten, in consequence of a fever, occasioned by the infamous
practice of sewing up the gut, that they may be the sooner fattened
in coops, in consequence of this cruel retention.
Of the fish, I need say nothing in this hot weather, but that it
comes sixty, seventy, fourscore, and a hundred miles by land-
carriage; a circumstance sufficient, without any comment, to turn
a Dutchman’s stomach, even if his nose was not saluted in every
alley with the sweet flavour of fresh mackarel, selling by retail—
This is not the season for oysters; nevertheless, it may not be amiss
to mention, that the right Colchester are kept in slime-pits, occa-
sionally overflowed by the sea; and that the green colour, so much
admired by the voluptuaries of this metropolis, is occasioned by
the vitriolic scum, which rises on the surface of the stagnant and
stinking water—Our rabbits are bred and fed in the poulterer’s
cellar, where they have neither air nor exercise, consequently they
must be firm in flesh, and delicious in flavour; and there is no game
to be had for love or money.
It must be owned, that Covent-garden affords some good fruit;
which, however, is always engrossed by a few individuals of over-
grown fortune, at an exorbitant price; so that little else than the
refuse of the market falls to the share of the community; and that
is distributed by such filthy hands, as I cannot look at without