John Leech and other papers

John Leech. 3 1
gone. What flavour in his ' dear prisoned spirit of
the impassioned grape ! ' What a bouquet ! Why is
not everything that hand ever wrote, reproduced ?
shall we ever again be regaled with such cenanthic
acid and ether ? — the volatile essences by which a
wine is itself and none other — its flower and bloom ;
the reason why Chambertin is not sherry, and
Sauterne neither. Our scientific friends will remem-
ber that these same delicate acids and oils are com-
pounds of the lightest of all bodies, hydrogen, and
the brightest when concentrated in the diamond,
carbon ; and these in the same proportion as sugar !
Moreover, this ethereal oil and acid of wine, what we
may call its genius, never exceeds a forty-thousandth
part of the wine ! the elevating powers of the fragrant
Burgundies are supposed to be more due to this
essence than to its amount of alcohol. Thackeray,
Jeremy Taylor, Charles Lamb, old Fuller, Sydney
Smith, Ruskin, each have the felicity of a specific
cenanthic acid and oil — a bouquet of his own ;
others' wines are fruity or dry or brandied, or ' from
the Cape,' or from the gooseberry, as the case may
be. For common household use commend us to
the stout home-brewed ale from the Swift, Defoe,
Cobbett, and Southey taps.
Much has been said about the annoyance which
organ-grinding caused to Leech, but there were other
things which also gave him great annoyance, and