l Sir!--The mounting flames of my ambition have long
aspired to the honour of holding a small conversation with you; but
being sensible of the almost insuperable difficulty of getting at
you, I bethought me a paper kite might best reach you, and soar to
your apartment, though seated in the highest clouds, for all the
world knows I can top you, fly as high as you will."

But we may consider his best piece to be "A Learned Dissertation on
Dumpling."

"The Romans, tho' our conquerors, found themselves much outdone in
dumplings by our forefathers; the Roman dumplings being no more to
compare to those made by the Britons, than a stone dumpling is to a
marrow pudding; though indeed the British dumpling at that time was
little better than what we call a stone dumpling, nothing else but
flour and water. But every generation growing wiser and wiser the
project was improved, and dumpling grew to be pudding. One
projector found milk better than water; another introduced butter;
some added marrow, others plums; and some found out the use of
sugar; so that to speak truth, we know not where to fix the
genealogy or chronology of any of these pudding projectors to the
reproach of our historians, who eat so much pudding, yet have been
so ungrateful to the first professor of the noble science as not to
find them a place in history.

"The invention of eggs was merely accidental. Two or three having
casually rolled from off a shelf into a pudding, which a good wife
was making, she found herself under the necessity either of
throwing away her pudding or letting the eggs remain; but
concluding that the innocent quality of the eggs would do no hurt,
if they did no good, she merely jumbled them all together after
having carefully picked out the shells; the consequence is easily
imagined, the pudding became a pudding of puddings, and the use of
eggs from thence took its date. The woman was sent for to Court to
make puddings for King John, who then swayed the sceptre; and
gained such favour that she was the making of the whole family.

"From this time the English became so famous for puddings, that
they are called pudding-eaters all over the world to this day.

"At her demise her son was taken into favour, and made the King's
chief cook; and so great was his fame for pudding