Quand un bon vin meuble mon estomac Je suis plus savant que Balzac— Plus sage que Pibrac; Mon bras seul faisant l’attaque De la nation Cossaque, La mettroit au sac; De Charon je passerois le lac, En dormant dans son bac; J’irois au fier Eac, Sans que mon cœur fit tic ni tac, Presenter du tabac.
That Pierre Bon-Bon was a restaurateur of uncommon qualifications, no man who, during the reign of ⸻, frequented the little café in the cul-de-sac Le Febre at Rouen, will, I imagine, feel himself at liberty to dispute. That Pierre Bon-Bon was, in an equal degree, skilled in the philosophy of that period is, I presume, still more especially undeniable. His pâtés à la fois were beyond doubt immaculate; but what pen can do justice to his essays sur la Nature —his thoughts sur l’Ame —his observations sur l’Esprit ? If his omelettes—if his fricandeaux were inestimable, what littérateur of that day would not have given twice as much for an “ Idée de Bon-Bon ” as for all the trash of “ Idées ” of all the rest of the savants? Bon-Bon had ransacked libraries which no other man had ransacked—had more than any other would have entertained a notion of reading—had understood more than any other would have conceived the possibility of understanding; and although, while he flourished, there were not wanting some authors at Rouen to assert “that his dicta evinced neither the purity of the Academy, nor the depth of the Lyceum”—although, mark me, his doctrines were by no means very generally comprehended, still it did not follow that they were difficult of comprehension. It was, I think, on account of their self-evidency that many persons were led to consider them abstruse. It is to Bon-Bon—but let this go no farther—it is to Bon-Bon that Kant himself is mainly indebted for his metaphysics. The former was indeed not a Platonist, nor