The Expedition of Humphry Clinker

122 TOBIAS SMOLLETT
loathing. It was but yesterday that I saw a dirty barrow-bunter in
the street, cleaning her dusty fruit with her own spittle; and, who
knows but some fine lady of St. James’s parish might admit into
her delicate mouth those very cherries, which had been rolled and
moistened between the filthy, and, perhaps, ulcerated chops of a
St. Giles’s huckster—I need not dwell upon the pallid, con-
taminated mash, which they call strawberries; soiled and tossed
by greasy paws through twenty baskets crusted with dirt; and then
presented with the worst milk, thickened with the worst flour, into
a bad likeness of cream: but the milk itself should not pass un-
analysed, the produce of faded cabbage-leaves and sour draff,
lowered with hot water, frothed with bruised snails, carried
through the streets in open pails, exposed to foul rinsings, dis-
charged from doors and windows, spittle, snot, and tobacco-quids
from foot-passengers, overflowings from mud-carts, spatterings
from coach-wheels, dirt and trash chucked into it by roguish boys
for the joke’s sake, the spewings of infants, who have slabbered in
the tin-measure, which is thrown back in that condition among the
milk, for the benefit of the next customer; and, finally, the vermin
that drops from the rags of the nasty drab that vends this precious
mixture, under the respectable denomination of milk-maid.
I shall conclude this catalogue of London dainties, with that
table-beer, guiltless of hops and malt, vapid and nauseous; much
fitter to facilitate the operation of a vomit, than to quench thirst
and promote digestion; the tallowy rancid mass, called butter,
manufactured with candle-grease and kitchen-stuff; and their
fresh eggs, imported from France and Scotland.—Now, all these
enormities might be remedied with a very little attention to the
article of police, or civil regulation; but the wise patriots of London
have taken it into their heads, that all regulation is inconsistent with
liberty; and that every man ought to live in his own way, without
restraint—Nay, as there is not sense enough left among them, to
be discomposed by the nuisances I have mentioned, they may, for
aught I care, wallow in the mire of their own pollution.
A companionable man will, undoubtedly, put up with many
inconveniencies for the sake of enjoying agreeable society. A
facetious friend of mine used to say, the wine could not be bad,
where the company was agreeable; a maxim which, however,
ought to be taken cum grano salis: but what is the society of London,
that I should be tempted, for its sake, to mortify my senses, and