a voracity of appetite, or a propensity to gormandizing.

There is a morbid sort of gluttony, called fames canina, "dog-like appetite," which sometimes occurs, and renders the person seized with it an object of pity and of cure as in other diseases: (see Bulimy).—But professed habitual gluttons may be reckoned amongst the monsters of nature, and deemed in a manner punishable for endeavouring to bring a death or famine into the places where they live. For which reason, people think King James I. was in the right, when a man being presented to him who could eat a whole sheep at one meal, he asked "What he could do more than another man?" and being answered "He could not do so much," said "Hang him then; for it is unfit a man should live that eats so much as 20 men, and cannot do so much as one."

The emperor Clodius Albinus would devour more apples at once than a bochel would hold. He would eat 500 figs to his breakfast, 100 peaches, 10 melons, 20 pound weight of grapes, 100 gnat-snappers, and 400 oysters. "Fye upon him (saith Lipsius); God keep such a curse from the earth."

One of our Danish kings named Hardiknute was so great a glutton, that a historian calls him Bocca de Porco, "Swine's mouth." His tables were covered four times a-day with the most costly viands that either the air, sea, or land, could furnish; and as he lived he died; for, revelling and carousing at a wedding banquet at Lambeth, he fell down dead. His death was so welcome to his subjects, that they celebrated the day with sports and pastimes, calling it Hock tide, which signifies scorn and contempt. With this king ended the reign of the Danes in England.

One Phagon, under the reign of the emperor Aurelianus, at one meal, ate a whole boar, 100 loaves of bread, a sheep, a pig, and drank above three gallons of wine.

We are told by Fuller*, that one Nicholas Wood, of Harrison in Kent, ate a whole sheep of 16s. price £6. at one meal, raw; at another time 30 dozen of pigeons. At Sir William Sidney's in the same county, he ate as much victuals as would have sufficed 30 men. At Lord Wotton's mansion house in Kent, he devoured at one dinner 8½ rabbits; which, by computation, at half a rabbit a man, would have served 168 men. He ate to his breakfast 18 yards of black pudding. He devoured a whole hog at one sitting down; and after it, being accommodated with fruit, he ate three pecks of damsons.

A counsellor at law, whose name was Mallet, well known in the reign of Charles I. ate at one time an ordinary provided in Westminster for 30 men at 12d. a-piece. His practice not being sufficient to supply him with better sort of meat, he fed generally on offals, ox livers, hearts, &c. He lived to almost 65 years of age, and for the seven last years of his life ate as moderately as other men. A narrative of his life was published.