THE Art of Longevity, OR, A Diaeteticall INSTITUTION.  
Written by Edmund Gayton, Bachelor in physic, of St. John Bapt. Coll. OXFORD.  
LONDON, Printed for the Author. 1659.   

TO THE Most virtuous, accomplished & Ingenious LADY, THE LADY ELIZABETH ROUS, The meriting Wife of the most Munificent John rous Esq Of Henham Hall in Suffolk.  
SINGULAR MADAM,  
UNto none more properly doth the Dedication of this Book belong, than to your excelling Self, who (being by Birth first, than Accomplishments, than Marriage, the unenvied Paragon of two great Counties, that of Norfolk by your Originals, this of Suffolk by your Nuptials, in honour to those Counties that are proud of you, and the rest that contend for you) should be continued to as much duration, as the Art of physic is able to contrive. It ought to be the labour of a college of physicians (not of one pitiful Pretender) to advance the preservation of such a person, which if lost, the following age must faintly hope to re-example. In the want therefore, or failings of Physical Counsels be your own Lessius, be to yourself a Cornara, since it hath so providentially fallen out, all other outward embellishments being abundantly bestowed upon you, that you need not spend any time to adorn, or trick up yourself, but only to express your thankfulness to the gracious Opificer of so rare a piece, & employ some hours (as is your practice) that your country, Family, and Friends may be happy in the long possession of you. For really your own practice (Madam) will outdo all my Precepts, your Gardens and Parks outvie the Physick-Gardens; your Closet is as considerable as the Countess of Kent's with her Powder in it. At Henham-Hall (the Seat of your Noble husband's Ancestors) what is wanting to Satiety? yet your Deer outlive the ages of their Neighbour-commoners, and their Parks too; 'tis possible to find a Stag as ancient as that of Caesar's: nor is this done by the diet of your Keeper, or your keeping your Deer from being your Diet, but by a successive spending of your Park, not destroying it, by letting us eat Venison, but not to such excess, as if your Guests were to feed themselves into Elkes. Your Deer fall (as our Colledge-copices should do) at so many years growth, that so the succeeding scholars may have wood of their own, & not expect Coals from Newcastle. Your Table is Mezentian in this respect; for alive Deer look in at your windows, and see their dead Brother in a Coffin. So rare is your Cookery, it makes slaughter amiable, and the Heard desire to be wounded, that they may be so dressed. I have seen your Table furnished with more Dishes than my Book hath Chapters in it, and yet the Temperance did exceed the Dishes, so that if ever Abstinence was paramount, and in its Zenith it was at Henham, where self-denial (so much spoke of) was truly visible, even in the fullness of the Creature, and your Guests dined Philosophically, at a City Feast. This is true Temperance (Madam) to refrain where there is variety of temptation to excess; to stint the stomach, in full view of the game of Luxury, otherwise it is Penance, not Abstinence, and the Mind and Appetite not commanded, but a string tied about the throat, which is Cormorant sobriety, for which the Fowl wishes him hanged that throttled him.  
Having thus commended (Madam) your Diet, 'tis not with any Stratagem to get Applause to my own, which is too course for your Palate, and scarce fit for your Servants. But as you sometimes are pleased to leave the Rarities of your own Table and caress in a Cottage, where the Earthen Platter, the Barley Pudding, the Fool, and the plain country housewife, are both Meat and Sport, and delight and nourish beyond the wisdom of multiplied Cookery. So let it fare (best Lady) with this slender treatment of your Servant, which is not a Present, but a Debt of a long Promise, and not in that kind paid that it was promised. I did intend you a Grace, some Divine Poems, but present you with all manner of Diet, for fear being without Grace, it might be supposed all of Oysters, or Melons. The Book is a hieroglyphic salt, not that with the head of Mortification on it, which is melancholy, or a Charing-cross-trencher salt, which is impious; but this is a pillar of Salt, or rather of Temperance, which is healthful (and at least in wish) Festivous, the Motto as it may be translated, 
Poets should always write,  
To profit, and delight.  And calls to mind the ancient frugality of our predecessors, which were wise, valiant, and abstemious, three habits much advanced, if not begot by Diaetetick Rules. To the moderate observance whereof, in the pursuance of your Honoured Husbands, and your ladyships and Families health, this Rythmicall Tract invites you, until I can face to face, and viuâ voce wish your double healths (as a physician ought to do) in your celebrious Goblet at Henham-Hall. Till then, and ever, I am  
(MADAM) Your most grateful Servant, Edmund Gayton.   

TO THE Candid LADY-READERS.  
Madams,  
THis Book, entitled The Art of Longevity, or, A dietetical Institute, may very well seem unnecessary and superfluous, after so many Tracts of the same subject, by the long-lived Lessius, Cornarus, and others, who have engrossed all that can be said, and left Posterity nothing but to practise. But as i● Divinity (that of the Times, called Preaching) repetition is not uncommendable; so in physic, a round Recapitulation, or trim Compendium and Abridgement, may help the memory, though not the understanding; wherefore the succinct and ingenious Salernitan Precepts fasten more than Hypocrates profounder Aphorisms, or Galen's Comments upon its Auditors, and Sandersons Verses, are oftener and easier remembered than their rugged Prose, Feet and Rythm sweetening the sourness of the moral letter. Verses indeed have the fate to be both slighted and condemned, and yet, like other faults, retained. And though Poetry and Oratory both (if looked upon in the art and respect) are but the lowest of endowments; yet as their subjects may be, they both raise them and themselves. I confess my Subject is above my Dress, and I have depressed the Argument by the mould I cast it in, yet a plain Suit by the Fancies may be made conspicuous, and attract more for the mode than the stuff. So here serious matter in a fantastical or light Dress, may one with another perchance find a liking, sometimes applause. I know, Ladies, that you are all of a neat extraction, choice and sifted earth, and so resolve to keep yourselves, being by self-affection principled too▪ a spare Diet, whereby your own mirrors reflect you pleasing and lovely to yourselves, and admirable to others. Wherefore in all Physical practice there are no such observant Patients as yourselves, whether the business concern your health or your ornament, your being or your well-being. Now a book of Diet presented to you is like to be of most happy events, who if you are told the quality of your food, will not err in the quantity. The first of these is my care at present, the second is your constant use: for neither to your noble sex, nor any of the nobler, will I prescribe any measure in meat, though there ought to be one in all things: the Beasts themselves (even all but Horses, Dogs, and Swine) have attained to such a natural stint. Rare is the temperance of the Elephants, Apes, Birds, as may be read in Aelians Varia Historia, nay Dogs themselves (a voracious animal) though they will eat to surfeit, cure themselves by abstinence, and swine-physic is grown into a Proverb. If your Ladyships inquire at what demensum or exactness I live myself, with a Medice, ostend teipsum, that is, show me thy Diet by thy practice; I answer, Madams, Truly I find it the best rule, as to my particular, to keep no ●ule at all, for the Times have been more than Lessius to me, and brought me to less than twelve ounces in two days, which is a most slender proportion; they have taken care that I shall never have the worst of surfeits, that of bread: yet sometimes I offend in poculentis, in the excess, oftener in esculentis, in the defect; in Fastings often, in Prayers less, yet still in some, enough Religion for a physician. And beside the Coloquintida of the Times, in frequent morning's doses of the leaves of Wormwood, scurvygrass, and watercresses, which makes me look at the present Mastigation like Vespasian, Clodius, or John Whis●ler, the sometime good-fac●d Recorder of Oxford (as if I were going to sacrifice to the Lady Cloacina.) Such severe Discipline is not fit for your tender Architecture, that may ruin plaster of Paris, which will scarce smooth the rougher Lime and Sand. In short, I know it is a Latin Proverb, Misere vivit qui vivit Medice, that is, Madams, 
They are most miserable Fools  
That always live by physic-rules.  And so Misere vivit, qui immodice vivit, 
They're slaves unto their ap●etite  
Which golden moderation slight.   
In a word of exhortation then, Ladies, be neither Hermits nor Carthu●ians, Ca●uchins nor Mon●●nists, that is, not of too severe a Regulation; yet a nun's diet for your sex, and the Collegi●t for ours, will make you Mother-Pyrrha's for Age, Penelope's for Beauty, Cassandra's for wisdom. In short, it will keep your Spirits active, your Skins clear, your Limbs vigorous, your souls and bodies apt for all Divine and Natural actions, whereby you may be (as you wish yourselves, and I too cordially) both beloved of God and men. And thus I humbly submit these Conceits following to your ladyship's view, under correction; unto which (especially from such hands) I were unkind to myself if I should not most willingly lie down, and subscribe myself  
(LADIES) Your most Obedient and Corrigible Servant, EDMUND GAYTON.   

Upon his Friend, Mr. Edmund Gayton's Book of Diet.  

WIt without wine, mirth without any meat?  
Then let the dead that neither drink nor ea●,  
Read thee for me; I am not so d●v●ne,  
That I can live, and neither sup nor dine.  
For though man liveth not By bread alone,  
Yet there is no man ever lived with none.  
Devouring Wood of Kent (who at one bait  
Could eat as much as Noah's World of Eight)  
Being dead, may be thy guest; for thou dost give  
Something so near to nothing, none can live.  
Thou hast forgot how freely thou didst laugh,  
Being told thou hadst eat up thy beadle's staff;  
Yet wouldst persuade us temperance; O no,  
Live by thy Book (if thou'dst have me do so)  
Experiment thyself, first dine one week  
With bread two ounces just, and ana Leek,  
Sup with the learned Worm: that eats thy book,  
And let thy Readers see how thou wouldst look,  
Printing thy bare-bone picture on thy sheet,  
And then consider whether it be meet,  
All mankind to persuade to starve themselves,  
Because thou hast no victuals on thy shelves.  
As the long Graces that in fashion be,  
Suit with thy minute meal, so both with me,  
Thu● for the glut●on and good fellow now  
Thy Friend speaks truth, and freely doth allow  
Thy temperate presc●iptions; for our life  
Is less in danger of the 
** Plures occidit gula, quam gladius.  Sword than 
** Plures occidit gula, quam gladius.  Knife;  
And would we keep thy Rules (for no one can  
Say that he cannot, if he be a man.)  
Doctors (as do Divines) might change their trade,  
The Sexton burn hi● Ma●tock and his Spade▪  
The elder World might die first, you and I  
Might live till we were changed, and so ne'er die.   

Nominibus multis notus sine nomine prodis  
Optime amico●um, non te sed memet honoras,  
At quo●am proprios titulos (perdure) negasti  
Hos cape. Vir auri es, virtutum dignior h●res.    

To Mr. Gayton on his Art of LONGEVITY.  
FOr Surfeits some pay dear, even all their wealth,  
Others far dearer, their more precious health.  
Yet heavier punishment, we see, or ●ead,  
Poor Copenhagen feels it from the Swede,  
Whose Sword, with Famine sharper than its edge,  
Now sadly gives the Danish Healths a Pledge.  
Could now one cure this feasting evil, give  
Sick appetite the great Restorative;  
Teach us to feed like burghers, yet to rise  
Like Doctors, less mercy, and more wise,  
To such a Gale●, Cities that abound  
In Riches, noble Pen●●ons might pro●ound:  
I wish they would, facetious Gayton, then  
Shouldst thou have Fees due to thy learned Pen;  
That from th' Arabians hath to us transferred  
The Secret, that prese●ves that long-lived Bird,  
Which thou prescribed, not in hard words, that make  
The Bill as nauseous as the Drugs we take.  
‛ So clearly and so well thy Book is writ,  
That we have here choice Diet, and choice Wit▪  
Robert Stapylton Knight.   

To his quondam Fellow Oxonian EDMUND GAYTON.  
THese Dietetick Laws thou dost here give,  
Do teach us how, but make thyself to live,  
And so they shall, industrious Mun, till time  
Do once restore thee unto Prose from rhyme:  
Sometimes in Latin verse, in English now  
You do, (God bless it) drive poetic plough.  
Whence are these Institutes, and whence these Rules?  
Not from th' Apothecary Shops, or Schools?  
Thou talk'st Arabian Authors, but thy pains  
Speak loudly, thou hast no Library but brains.  
Longevity thou giv'st us from Jove's Bower,  
And temperance from Friar Bacon's 
* The S●and where the Author was first placed a sentry  Tower.  
Who'd think a Man should fall so mightily,  
Who had his Rudiments of war so high?  
Who'd think that thou, a sentry in the air,  
Shouldst e'er come down to teach us grosser Fare?  
A Parac●l●●an then (without disgrace)  
I'll call thee, instructed by the Prince o'th' Place.  
Bred in the Air, and war, what Powders may  
Not come from thee? my Lady Kent's give way.  
Both Monk and soldier owns thee, for I know,  
Both Presses thou dost stoutly undergo.  
And now to please the Ladies thou hast brought,  
Not things far fetched, nor yet too dearly bought:  
Thou mak'st their kitchen-gardens give them more  
Than Egypt and both th' Indies did before.  
Thus common things, not vulgar, are made nice,  
And cheapness sometimes may enhance the price.  
What thou hast done with staff of place and wealth  
We know not, but I'm sure the staff of health  
Thou carriest still before us, and our part  
Is but to follow well, and praise thy Art:  
Great Art, that doth not only save but cure,  
Preventive too, as well as make t' endure.  
Wherefore I shall no more of thee rehearse,  
Who giv'st us Mirth, and physic, in a verse:  
And those that will not for thy dose give Fee,  
Let them want verses, and their health for me.  
Philogeiton. H. I. Dr. L. L.   

To the honoured Author upon his Diaetetical Institute.  
WEre the world but one Giant-thing that lived,  
And had a soul, (as the old Sage believed)  
But could it eat too, for one meal I'd swear,  
Thou meantest thy Book its general Bill of fare;  
Great Clerk of nature's kitchen! we ne'er knew  
She was so good an housekeeper till now.  
Some Naturalists served up a course, or so,  
Garnished to boot with their own fictions too;  
But thou in this great Oleo hast co●bin'd,  
What e'er her want or luxury could find.  
If in her dining-room thou serve so well,  
I'th' drawing-room sure thou must needs excel.  
I. Heath.   

To his Friend the Author.  
WHat is't is writ? It is a noble Diet:  
Oh! for a soldier's stomach to be quiet,  
And not conceive such Dainties placed upon  
Some Lady's Board; then let the Gods look on,  
With all their Goddesses, and tell me where  
They met with wholesome diet and such cheer;  
But their immortal diet's only known  
And rarely fancied to us, than were shown  
By power of poets' wits: I would not wish  
This my good friend present us such a dish:  
What he hath done 'tis all substantial good,  
Not only Babes, but Lords and Lady's food;  
Such as may make our youth old Nestor's grow,  
And then confess their age to him they owe:  
Yet if our stomachs want a dish to bait on,  
No wit like thine, i'th' second Course, dear Gayton.  
E. ALDRICH, Tribunus militum.   

To his honoured Friend Mr. Edmund Gayton on his Art of Longevity.  
WHy how now fellow soldier! what you write?  
It must be sure to get what you by sight  
Have lost; in troth we had ill luck by th' Sword;  
Those were By-blows, thou better art at word:  
And why of Diet prithee, when we know  
All Cavaliers are forced to live too low  
Under the Rule of Lessius, small provant  
Will serve those men o'th' Gar●ison of Gaunt:  
So oft r●form'd (that's squeezed) they't brought alas:  
Tothth' Mum, and Diet of Pythagoras.  
Platonic love we new may justify,  
Since meats Platonic make sobriety;  
And what i'th' fullness of the Court was Fable  
Romance all, is true from thy spare Table,  
And yet the sheet abounds in services,  
The worst of service, only of the eyes.  
He that doth feed on thee poetic Mun,  
Must change himself to a chameleon:  
For all thy Diet,, and choice Bill of Fare,  
Is only words, and that's but wind and air.  
FRANCISCUS ASTON Capt, Militiae Puerilis.   

A Diaeteticall INSTITUTION.  

CHAP. I.  
Whilst I intend a wholesome Diet-Rule,  
And write of Meats and Drinks from physic-school,  
It ought to be presumed our state is good,  
And that we have to buy our daily Food:  
For what hath he to do to vex his thought  
How he should eat, that hath no victuals bought?  
Wherefore we do amand Duke Humphrey's Guest▪  
For their Provision truly is o'th' least.  
A Dog doth fare much better with his bones,  
Than those whose table meat and drink are stones:  
But that great Duke is out of house and home,  
And his grand Palace is a Den become;  
But not so good as is the lion's den,  
Or fox's holes, there's scraps for many men;  
There is no Ordinary of News and Talk,  
No not so much is left as Weymarks Walk,  
No not so much (if you will please to go in)  
Doth th' head remain of Welsh cousin Owen;  
Who for this violence done unto his name  
Will rise and pay her with an Epigram:  
He was set up with such a peaking Face,  
As if to th' Humphreyans h' had been saying Grace;  
That word doth hint our business, doth as well  
As if I'd heard the college Buttry-bell.  
Then first we shall rehearse in humble rhymes  
What time and hour we mount our Belly-chimes;  
For it doth stand with excellent reason  
To have for meats, as other things, a Season.  
For so it was ordained by our Creator,  
(And still performed by naturated nature)  
The Earth, the Air, the Sea, (would y' have more  
Than such an able triple Providore?)  
With tempestivous delicacies strive,  
To please us in a various nutritive:  
And with successive courses interchanging,  
They have for every time a several ranging;  
No Aulicus, Culman, no nor Clerk,  
Show such a bill of Fare as was i'th' Ark:  
And as by Couples they to Noah came  
To be preserved, they do the very same  
To us to be destroyed; for Master venture  
Consumeth all that into it doth enter:  
It is for this luxurious Anthony,  
And puired vice, our Cleopatry,  
The ransacked Elements do not afford  
Enough Provision for the Bed and board.  
Would it not prove thy whole arithmetic  
To cast in ciphers what is spent by th' week?  
(Friend Noah) in this great Metropolis,  
Without the Tavern style, of Bread and Cheese,  
What droves of Higlers post in from the Fens  
With Fowls most epicoene, both Cocks and Hens?  
Of all which company I don●t enjoy  
One Duck, and yet related to a Coy.  
But oh the heads we see of greater beards!  
Not I● was so fair when Jove afeard,  
(That Juno did suspect herself cornute)  
Had turned his delicate Lady to a Brute:  
Nor when himself was pleased a Bull to low,  
Could he our two late Fausen Beeves out-show?  
The ways on every road are all blocked up  
With the whole family of those that Tup:  
Who all like other innocents come  
Unto these Shambles, to receive their doom.  
St. Luke's is past, and Rumford rode doth whine,  
As if that Circe were alive with Swine:)  
‛ Pigs have their Tide too, and there is a Fare  
‛ For those, who in their lives most filthy are.  
How many Babies on S. Margret's Hill  
(If all that name to her continue still)  
Lie piled in Tray (as they were wont in Trough)  
And yet (as if there were not pig enough)  
Old Bartholomew with Purgatory Fire  
Destroys the Babe of many a doubtful Sire:  
Nor doth the Sea deny his vast supplies,  
In greater Fishes and the lesser Fries,  
As to our cost, the street o'th' name can tell,  
How cheap soe'er the Fish, the dressing's fell.  
The very King of Fish his season knows,  
And in vast shoals his just obedience shows;  
So all the rest of that blue Monarchy  
Follow their leader, all resolved to die.  
How do the painted Mack'rell load our Shallops▪  
And lest they smell, do put the winds to th' gallop.  
Lord, what a din the Sluts at Billingsgate  
Do make about the tother cast of Sprats!  
And open more their monstrous mouths in vain,  
Than do their Oysters against tide or rain:  
Nor may we pass the place where Chimney-sweep  
Doth now instead o'th' Cross his station keep:  

* In Cheapside where the Herb-market was, but now without a Writ removed into S. Paul's Ch. yard.  There is a Cornucopia walk but thorough,  
(Where is the like, except at Edenburough?)  
Oh had our Sister Burrough such a fate,  
T' have had her double stalls of Flesh and Plate,  
Her name might then have Eden been, whereas  
For want of both she came e'en where it was;  
And so retains unto this Nations sorrow,  
From our lost gewds, the last part of it borrow.  
But I believe the salads of the place,  
And physical Herbage, for a twelvemonth's space  
Would be too great a freight and sum to try  
The bank o'th' Caledonick Pedlary.  
And now I think 'tis time the Bill of Fare,  
Given in and read, for Dinner to prepare.   

Chap. II. Question I.  
WHat time and hour is best to eat at? Answer,  

(a) An Ara●ian Phy●●t●an.  As Rasis doth advise in his 
(b) A 〈◊〉 Directory so called.  Almansor,  
(Now Rasis was in physic a sage Solon)  
After our former meats have passed grand 
(c) The great 〈◊〉.  Colon,  
And the Saburra of the place unloaded,  
No longer meat, no longer drink be avoided:  
A little exercise, but not to sweat,  
Excites the duller appetite to eat:  
Soon as the eager Gentleman is raised  
Fall on a God's name (that's with God be praised:)  
Do not defraud him, nay, we can't, I fear,  
Hope to dissuade, where there is ne'er an ear.  
But as it happens at a Lord Mayors show  
(For greater Festivals we do not know)  
It is so long before the hundredth dish  
Is placed, and the Sword-bearer to his wish,  
Hath changed the Sword o'th' City for a Knife  
(Sharp as the Carver) so did tew to th' life,  
And laid about most powerfully (his heat  
And the sharp humour laid) doth no defeat:  
‛ Than or with vinegar or violets syrup,  
‛ You may this lazy couchant Lion stir up;  
But if you have not any of those at hand,  
(I hope hot water may be at command)  
Not Aqua vitae (though a dram for crude  
And pituitous stomachs may be good:)  
But here 'tis Aesop's heated water meant,  
Which once ta'en down, the stomach upward sent:  
After relouncing, if the stomach bray  
(Like a sharp Ass, for thistles or for nay)  
Give its demensum, let it feed pro more  
On any meat that is set down before ye;  
And for the quoties, let it as it wont  
(Unless some vicious custom's paramount)  
Then by degrees relinquish that, not sudden,  
‛ No hasty thing is good, scarce hasty pudding,  
Twice in a day, or what's more temperate,  
Thrice in two days, or as 'tis forced of late,  
(Once in a day) for squeezed & drained Revenue  
Is good to feed the bellies lank Retinue;  
Take't from a prudent Prince, who'll tell ye,  
By no means make a cloak-bag of your belly. 
(d) That is, to carry double provision for two meals.    

CHAP. III. upon the Appetite, and custom of eating.  
AS we have used for custom (as a second  
Nature, is by learned 
(a) Another Arabian physician and grand Philosopher, called for his expositions of Aristotle the Commentator.  Averro reckoned)  
So still persist, for it is good for men  
To eat what they are wont, saith Avicen;  
For total change of diet cannot be  
Commended, nor from hence hath warranty.  
Nor we mean here, like Henry of Narar,  
(The happy Thunderbolt of the French war)  
(Who angry with his chiding Confessor,  

(c) A jerfe is an animal, that eats so much until it is forced to get betwixt two cleft parts of a tree for exenteration, that is, unloading, vid. my uncle Pliny, & Alien de vari● historiâ.  'Cause he enjoined frequent penance for  
His often Peccadilloes, 'gainst the breach  
Of the seventh Precrept, and did Doctrines teach  
Of conjugal charity) this Prince wroth,  
Confined the Priest to Capon and white Broth  
For constant diet, 'twas a dish he lov▪ d,  
But for so long continuance not approved.  
The Story's known, apply but meat to wives,  
But does not hold in things we treat with knives.  
More than one dish may be by us accosted,  
Whether the fare be baked, sodden, or roasted:  
The cramb of one dish a Greek 'twould kill,  
If he's enforced to feed upon it still:  
Nor 
(b) Epicurrs, another Philosopher.  Epicurus like, or like his drove,  
To gourmandize and Jerfe it do we prove,  
And wish to find the lechery of Provant,  
Philoxenus his neck, or Cormorant.  
This were to be a Wood or Maxriot,  
Two English Helluas for his daily pot,  
The heads of Beasts, with their appertinance,  
Entrails and all, would not a meal advance,  
Such throats (as Cormorants are used in game)  
Should be string-throtled, or the poor will blame;  
No, rather do, as we in sundry places  
In his Almanzor are advised by Rasis,  
Make an election of your food (and where  
There●s choice, one dish is not presumed the cheer)  
Nor have at all, for than we eat a Musse,  
That is not manly, Swine do only thus.  
Then let our meats themselves be simply good,  
Yet one man's poison is another's food:  
And what our palate takes and custom likes,  
Though not so nourishing, will pass the pikes,  
I mean the Palisadoes of the face,  
Which have, in point of eating, the first place;  
For manduration and our thorough chewing  
Prepares what is into the stomach going,  
And doth facilitate the work o'th' place,  
(Which doth not gobbets like, nor gubbins base)  
For as it goes it pays a certain toll  
To th' palate, doth that Avenue control;  
There it receives an introductive change,  
Before it come into the stomachs range:  
And therefore Brawn, thouh a most lusty meat,  
Is no ways for a toothless Dame to eat,  
Beside the hazard, which way ere 't should slip,  
(Or down the throat, or back to the dish skip;)  
W●thout good chewing it would lie to heavy  
For th' Aqua vitae bottles used Replevy:  
Yet unto such, whose constitution,  
Like Cato's, needs no contribution  
Of Counsels, nor of dose from Medicil Art,  
(Who for his proper safety had a part  
Of pitiful physic, in moroser adage,  
Teaching all cures by vomit and by cabbage,  
So did preserve unto a wondrous length  
His Iron sides, and almost Ostrich strength.)  
(Pardon the space of this Parenthasis)  
To such we say, athletic bulks as his;  
Diet that's simply bade you may not give,  
He might with cabbage, not with Hemlock live:  
Let us I pray be rightly understood,  
You may eat bad, but not your basest food;  
Nor bad at all, if it disgust, but naughty  
And pleasing meat does well, as hath been taught ye.   

CHAP. IV. Of the order of Refection.  
LEt not your chequered Table crack with dishes,  
Piled like a structure with Land-Beasts and Fishes;  
‛ For multitude of meats, as well as books,  
‛ Distracts the brain, and belly likewise looks  
For a digestion, t' eat at all, or read  
Without it, shows rather haste than good speed:  
The brain or stomach, if o'er-cloyed  
By superfluities, are both dostroyed:  
Nature hath but one Cook, then send not in  
The studied work of ten Cooks managing;  
It would be thought a wonder amongst men,  
If one Esurient Cook should eat up ten.  
Thence comes corruption, when that Cook is tired,  
Gives o'er the work, and in the kitchen mired:  
Oh how he fumes! all Cooks are choleric,  
And sends his vapours crude and phlegmatic  
About the house (makes a foul house with all)  
Diseases spring is Cacochimicall.  
Next, let your lighter meats, and the subtler  
Be fallen upon before the gross and viler.  
Wherefore my Don, not Don Quixot, I mean,  
(For such provision seldom there was seen)  
At second course begins, and to be brief,  
Eats (if he have it) at the last his beef.  
Take heed, good Simon, how you sup your broth,  
Much mischief comes through the accustomed sloth  
And negligence of Cooks, both he and she,  
Of all such Cooks, clean●y come thou to me:  
Not sifting Oatmeal, and the ingredients,  
Which make your matin-cawdle liquaments,  
Is cause, that frequently most dirty atoms  
In silver Cup go toward the Lady's bottoms:  
‛ Now, though that blind men use to swallow flies,  
‛ They would not surely, if they had their eyes.  
This may be helped yet, by a wholesome drainer,  
(If that you think the caution's not the vainer.)  
To things more pertinent we will proceed,  
(' Yet a good Poet died by a 
* An Acreo●.  Grapes seed)  
No man will therefore (I do mean that wise is)  
Contemn us for our mean, but true advices:  
But as our various dinner is a fault,  
So is our stay, and long remove o'th' Salt;  
It is not good (like Dutch) I can't Dutch spreaken,  
To sit at Table till our bellies breaken:  
Feed until midnight, and charess all comers,  
And think all physic is in crowned Rummers.  
A dangerous custom, and doth cause the stivers  
To march apace into their intrail-drivers.  
Oh how our Farriers thrive by fitting drenches  
For many a Hogen Mogen, Men and Wenches!  
But shall we eat at all? or what? you'll say  
Yes, yes, you shall, and shall no longer stay.  
Since that in Winter 'twas my hap to write,  
actual hot meats are best for th' appetite:  
And when the summer's pleasing heat is come,  
Let actual cold meats be i'th' others' room:  
Think not all hots are of the Po●tage-pot,  
Nor nothing cold but what its dressing got  
The night before, but what by nature is,  
Or hot or cold, are so with emphasis:  
Wherefore those things, whose quality's so cold,  
As if made so by snow, from them withhold;  
Or whose intensive heats (without the fire)  
Do warm, to eat have not too much desire:  
Lubric, that's glibery, and the meat that's moist  
And juicy, before drier fare accost;  
Sweet meats, and sauce that's sour (though an old Saw)  
Is a good Rule in Avicenna's Law;  
So mix your cold and hot, your moist and dry,  
That neither have a grand predominancy:  
And with these four precautions you may dine,  
For contraries do their own selves refine:  
And while they strive each to be Master,  
The broken Elements are safest posture;  
So they do rarely temperate become;  
Such Wars produce a Peace, 'tis Pipe and Drum;  
Wherefore let fat and unctions Swines-flesh swim  
In sharp and sauces tart up to the brim:  
Methinks it is a Dish highly abhorrens  
To see a Pig bemeasled all in currants.  
D' you ask what place is best to take repast in?  
(Not such as mine, for that's a place to fast in:)  
But you that have your residence for food,  
The coolest place, except the Cellar, 's good;  
And sometimes I have known that hath been used,  
And for its coolness ought not be refused:  
But for its heat, as from a noli me  
Tangere, fly, for there the Bottles lie:  
And ever since Erasmus called it Hell,  
You might in one as well as th'other dwell,  
In that with liquid fire they're hard put to't,  
In this God Bacchus is drunk up in boot:  
Certes this custom is in memory,  
The pretty Bulchins Cradie was a Thigh.  
But in the Summer your cool umbrages,  
And hid Recesses be your Diet-stages,  
Provided that no intervemient wind  
Through doors or crevices nor strained air find  
Access unto the place, for 'tis debated,  
And found, the worst of air is preco-lated;  
But chiefly choose a ventilated place,  
When that the Sun is in his highest race:  
For native heat's by that extracted much,  
Just as the fires, if sunbeams do it touch;  
But interpose a Screen, or else the Maid  
Your fire's preserved, your stomach by the shade.  
But if you have no such sycamore places,  
Eat at an hour that's cool then (saith my Rasis)  
After meat taken, rest, or sleep, saith he,  
Sleep not, say some, The Doctors disagree:  
Revive Mayerne, and he will bid you sleep,  
Old Paddy bid you smoke, your eyes open keep:  
I'm for the later Knight, my patron, who  
Gave me his college, shall give Counsel too.   

CHAP. V. Of Meats in general.  
THe first considerable food is Bread,  
Which He in Sacred Prayer hallowed,  
Who in that Prayer {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} (which bears  
Its high-sprung maker's name, and to all years,  
Must stand Matrix of holy Liturgies,  
And be both Form and Part o'th' Services,  
Better than all the whole) the platform lead,  
▪ Of whom to ask, and wherewith to be fed.  
Our daily bread includes, as in a word,  
The All-abundance of our fullest beard:  
And he whose belly's full with bread alone,  
(And blessing 'fore and after) were't a stone,  
Shall find a satisfaction in his fare,  
As great as if h' had dined with my Lord mayor:  
There is a taste of his Religion,  
Who dares not write so large as Dr. Brown.  
Now to our Phisical design, we treat,  
Therefore the civilised part o'th' world with Wheat,  
The Bread compacted, and most stoutly kneaded,  
Sifted most clean from bran, and as it needed,  
Salted and leavened by your Barm and Quick'ning,  
And throughly baked, will keep you best from sick'ning;  
'Tis light and tart, as your good housewives say,  
And makes i'th' body a convenient stay:  
For cleansed from its Bran, which makes it swift  
Of passage, and is only good for drift,  
Or scouring hands or pewter, or the hair,  
(But for the rich Jessimy Butters rare,  
And Mr. cutbeards' Powder) it will fix,  
And till a due egestion moves it, sticks:  
And oven-baked is best, the hearth is poor,  
And only fit for Caledonian Boor;  
Except their Oat-cakes, nothing doth me please,  
Nor Solan Geese, Bannock, nor Barnacles:  
And spongy let it rise by its quick leaven,  
For bread unleavened is not easily driven  
Out of the stomach, but doth stay too long,  
And by its pains doth do the belly wrong:  
It makes obstruction in the Liver, and  
Who would imagine Bread should turn to Sand?  
Or to a Stone? its evil quality  
Doth slime the reins, and there doth petrify.  
The Bread of Barley, the tough ploughman's food,  
Is colder nutriment, and not so good:  
But those who sweat, and swink, and thwack, like sten●ors,  
will digest stones, if on them they adventure;  
But otherwise that Bread doth little nourish;  
'tis windy too, and makes the colic flourish,  
‛ And causeth cold diseases, binds the belly,  
And lies quiescent like a costive jelly.  
As other grains are in their natures, so  
Is the Bread is made of any Dough:  
Bean-bread is flatulent and course,  
But good for those have stomachs like a horse;  
So Turnip-bread, a new and late devise,  
To fatten Hogs and Horses in a trice▪  
The curse of all corn-chandlers', who, by that  
Project, do keep their grain for the old Rat.  
Lastly, your Bread, when hot, by no means eat,  
Nor buttered loaves, they're clungy clogging meat,  
And bung the entrails up, you cannot make  
A passage, though you down long confects take;  
Yet 'tis Scholars breakfast of the Times,  
Which makes them of such pregnancy in rhymes.  
Yet if hot loaves you do account so dear,  
You may for worms apply 'em to your ear.   

CHAP. VI. Of Drinks, and first of Wine  
Whilst I do write thy profits, and the good  
Thou dost confer (plump Grapes most noble blood)  
In either have nor call for helps from thee,  
Thou vouched infuser of high Poetry;  
It is enough for those who write thy praise,  
Such as my Father Ben, whose head with bays,  
Scarce yet inherited, thou justly crown'dst,  
To be Silenus' like, well soused and plounced  
In essences of Sack, whence spirits follow,  
Richer and higher than his own Apollo.  
Let those thy brave and warm contagions boast,  
Who do recite th' profit of their host  
And club-delight, whate'er th' hesternall fire,  
(Not at next meeting quenched) did fore-inspire:  
A long forgetfulness hath seized my soul,  
Nor have I felt thy flames since Henham Bowl;  
The cooler Hippocrene is spurn enough,  
And the clear liquour headed from the hoof  
Of the winged Courser, serves for such poor stuff,  
As humbly now comes forth his muse's Cell,  
Is suitable, and hath its name from Well; 
well-hall in K●nt▪ the Manou●of M●Roper, of he descent o● the lear- Sir 〈◊〉 Mo●r, L. Ch. of Engl.   
Yet we will yield thee a just elegy,  
Far from a strained and wracked Hyperbole,  
Whereby it shall appear thy fotive fire,  
Was present in our wish; and full desire  
We say, and prove, thou art that nutritive  
That keeps the spirits and the soul alive:  
And thy known pregnant operations joins  
Those cognate pairs, as to thine elms, are Vines,  
Supporting those most rare Auxiliaries 
(b) The Spirits   
By thine allied and subtle offices:  
So that ●ame 
(c) The Soul.  Psyche doth no servant more  
(Being absent long) than thine own self-deplore:  
At thy returns (for Queens do love and keep  
Their State too) though in sorrows plunged peep,  
She is revived, and her quick actions prove,  
Her altered instruments and her close love.  
‛ For thy affini●y is such, so like  
‛ With natural heat, that as the flint doth strike  
‛ Sparkles and fire, the ready tinder takes  
‛ The darted Stars, and a glad union makes:  
So when thy vigorous cherishing gleams  
Reflect upon our blue and purple streams,  
They all receive an influence from Thee,  
And their alliance forthwith gratify:  
Then as a loyal kinsman would, thou dost  
Nourish and heal, and dost expel the frost,  
Both natural and Christian away flies,  
At thy approaches cold, and crudities:  
And in the Christian Frost thou art as brief,  
‛ Making th' afflicted to forget his grief;  
The grosser blood thou straight dost clarify,  
No Scavenger in all the world like Thee,  
Who by no tricks of Dung-carts new or old  
Cleansest the purple 
* The Veins.  channel when 'tis fouled.  
Then to the common shore of blood thou goest,  
And all obstruction from the liver throwest;  
And thy new bush, not broom, sweeps clean,  
And mundifies the sink of All, the Spleen.  
What misty vapour, or opacous fume  
Dare stay, when that thy excellence is come?  
‛ As if some unthought Prince had fallen from high,  
‛ (Lost in opinion, and to th' common eye)  
‛ His half incredulous friends, twixt joy and fear,  
‛ Dare not believe, nor dare not doubt him there;  
‛ But settled in a view instead of bells  
‛ And bonfires, the heart flames, the pulse beats peals.  
So at reception of this Prince of Drinks,  
The exalted hearrt itself in Paradise thinks,  
And every member of its warmed Trunk  
Shoots out, and leaps, though once 'twere sinew-shrunk.  
Joy is dispersed, and the relieved soul  
Doth all her ransomed Ministers control;  
A noble boldness doth possess the mind,  
To suffer injuries of any kind,  
Not to commit the least, and she dares do  
What in her shrivelled state she feared to show.  
Magnanimous indeed, and prone to seek,  
Adventures, and herself t' express and speak,  
Not as the overheated valiant Swine  
(Pot-pertinacious sometimes, but not Wine.)  
But these are sober Animosities,  
Which raise our wisdoms, as our Fantasies,  
Which coupled friendly in a social heat,  
They can the tract of any business beat.  
‛ Wherefore let Proclamation forthwith be,  
‛ That every Sex and Age have liberty  
‛ At any time, to taste this precious juice,  
‛ Whose virtues are so high, so good his use.  
And for the Quantum? or how much we may,  
(Methinks the Vintnes cry, tells that I pray,  
That the last Impost by a general draught  
May be forgot, and the sunk price out-quaft;)  
And truly, so it will make friends, we may  
Drink what our natures well can bear away,  
And the firm habits of unspoiled brains  
‛ (Some drink not freely, but are in wine-chains)  
Can gallantly discharge, without a spoil  
Unto our purse, or to our souls a soil.  
Now Wine is wondrous like Theriaca, 
(a) Trea●●e.   
So strange his various numerous virtues play;  
Cold humours it doth heat, infrigidates hot▪  
Moistens the dry, and where tough moisture's got,  
Extenuates; such Protean qualities  
Hath the rare Plant, that smoke▪ before our eyes:  
Of both which excellent creatures, Wine and Smoke,  
I dare affirm, that were you like to choke  
With thirst, the one or tother shall your drought  
Assuage, before the coolest water down your mouth.  
Now take what Rasis saith, Wine doth retard  
Old age, and all its lazy phlegmatic guard:  
Unto the stomach 'tis the sworn Ephaestion,  
Corroborates, and ministers digestion.  
But after all these panegyric shows,  
There is, beware, a Serpent in the close;  
I mean not that is drank with Vipers in't,  
But in every Butt that passeth by the pint.  
‛; If you abuse it to undecencies,  
‛ And murder it in superfluities,  
‛ The virtue's lost, and in the vacant place  
‛ Your own Diseases come, and Wine's disgrace:  
‛ The dried up Liver, and the trembling Nerves,  
‛ caused from the moistened brains, returned reserves:  
Contracting Spasma, and cold apoplexy,  
Abused Grapes, conspired friends will vex ye.   

CHAP. VII. Of Meath or Metheglin.  
THe Bee, that subtle and industrious creature,  
Of pains incredulous, but little feature,  
Doth from the profits of his balmy thighs,  
For lazier men, hive up his sweet supplies:  
If from the eater honey came, the be  
Both emblem is and child of industry.  
Madam, yourself is an unwinged Bee,  
Disdain not (Lady) this mean simile,  
When the grand Plato, learned, grave and wise,  
Described a man by these two differences,  
Unfeathered and two-legged, so in a mock,  
They sent him home his own man, a plucked cock:  
When that I saw more than Hyblean skill,  
And Bees to have but one art▪ you what you will;  
The Ants and grasshoppers submit to you;  
And think themselves but drones when you're in view;  
Your various artifices your sex disgrace,  
(Even unto painting skilled, all but the face)  
It put me to an Emulation then,  
(Oh that there were no other strifes 'mongst men)  
To see a Lady of such diligences,  
Of more Professions Mistress then of Senses▪  
And I that paid for dearly what they call,  
Howe'er the seven endowments liber●ll,  
(But foolish purchaser took but small w●●e  
For money and time, the which was 〈◊〉 more rare)  
Could not for all my seven years' penniwo●th,  
Show so good a●ts as you did then hold forth;  
Nay I profess it, were expe●ience made,  
(Excepting in this scribbling quibbling taade)  
The exigent put, you would your fortunes carve,  
In any part o'th' world, and I might starve;  
Nay in my very subject, if you please,  
You could outvie me too in recipes,  
And teach the meddling fool to be more quiet.  
And come to Henham-hall to study diet;  
Where Metheglin every winter morn,  
With toast and tankard to our lips are born:  
For honey is exceeding hot (saith Rasis)  
And is high food for bodies cold, and places:  
The pea●l o'th' morning genders blood and choler,  
So one way good, and th' other nought for scholar:  
B●t for complexions sanguine, such as mine,  
It is less wholesome, than a little wine;  
But to cold persons, and of sinews weak,  
And phlegmatic▪ and Ladies stomach-sick,  
It is a high and sure corroborator,  
As saith our Avacena's commentator:  
The ways to make it are so many, I  
Had rather drink a cup of't, then descry.   

CHAP. VIII. Of Ale.  
DRnk famous, infamous, praised and dispraised,  
From stygian lakes, that's muddy harbours raised  
From common shores and father Ben's adventures,  
How dar'st thou boiled bog or muzzles enter?  
But when the keen cheroketh blows sat Bumpkin,  
Who will refuse to drink thee in a Rumpkin?  
Enough is written for thee, pro and con,  
Yet since hops came thy name is almost gone:  
But that the Alderman hath cleansed thy tide,  
And makes us wish thee yet amongst us Bide▪  
And Huff of famous memory, that Huff,  
Who to his ale had no sign but his ruff;  
That, and his ale most smooth, did so well work,  
The house was full of Christian and of Turk;  
And in demulsing lubric morning's drafts,  
A good estate into old Huff was quaffed,  
What is ale good for? look against his doors,  
And you shall see them rotted with ale-showrs:  
It hath this special commendation,  
To cleanse the ureter, and break the Stone:  
Just as a featherbed the flint doth break,  
So th' other stone your North-down-ale alike:  
Thy mother Ba●ly is an enemy  
To th' nerves, that makes men stagger after thee,  
Drunk beyond Huffs demensum, who did stint  
In's regular ruff, his guests unto a pint.  
(But at one session) yet go forth, and face  
About, and then you might take t'other glass:  
Windy thou art, wheth● in bottles close  
Corked up a prisoner, and as bad let loose;  
Yet foul and gravelled reins thou dost make terse,  
Not made too strong, and by good store, disperse:  
'Tis weight, as much as virtue, does that feat,  
Tunbridge and Barnet, of opinion great,  
Are no more sovereign than the wholesome spring,  
To which sir Thomas gave a covering,  
And bowls in chains, the aged man can tell,  
When Barnet fails, those waters sell as well  
To cozened citizens, yet we can't deny.  
Ta many baths specific quality:  
But chiefly (as by parentage I'm bound)  
I like the wells in Wellingborrough-ground;  
Whose spring's renowned for virtue uterine,  
And still is famous for our pregnant queen.  
But to our ale (and there is humming stuff  
As good as any tinker did ere cuff.)  
Those who indulge themselves to too much wines,  
Allay that heat by thee, and cool their chines:  
Only like nitty sack it leaves a tail,  
And lies in the clunged throat most roapy ale,  
But daughter of the t'other mother, wheat,  
And mixed with mint or smallage, thou art neat;  
And sage or wormwood in a small degree,  
Do clear thy fog, and grossness clarify:  
But now these later knowing days have made  
Thee fit infusion for our physic-trade:  
The lettuces of ale-compounded shops  
Are now as numerous as those of hops:  
There's scarce a street in which out worships go in,  
But that thy name in some new mode doth crow in;  
A proper word, since everywhere they drape on,  
In live ale or mortified Cock or Capon;  
The physic of the Spring and Fall is ale,  
And bags of drugs and Simples by sea sail,  
As they were returning from the Indies,  
To be ingredients for this wort so windy  
Had Culpeper but strained his faculties,  
And stead of what he did translated this  
Into some foreign country, and not Tongue,  
He had the nation been the prime among:  
But now Riverus and the Staple-book  
Of Compositions, on him scuru'ly look,  
For prostituting the art; for no Bawd,  
Moral or civil, can our Verse applaud;  
Vehiculum of every drug, I may  
Call thee most aptly by the name of Dray,  
Nay to the very arts of Schools thou'rt come,  
By sad exchange of rods for lotium,  
And made most swinging ale for butts,  
I mean the place econtrae to the guts:  
Tradition pleads for thee (for ale is old)  
And since thy sad disuse, the world is bold  
To charge the Stone i'th' body, and the Church,  
Upon thy vale Doctors make a search,  
And try if Heresy, and that sharp pain  
From ale's desertion, did not footing gain.   

CHAP. ix.. Of beer.  
Beer is a hop removed from ale, the hop  
from a damned weed is a common crop:  
‛ So things condemned and censured, are retained,  
‛ Because forbidden, it more credit gained:  
Yet if maturely rotted, where no fault  
Is in the beer by foul and wively malt,  
Well kept and lodged, and purged by the sea,  
Or Marches two, it may probatum be:  
But in digested hops and unboiled beer  
Make Doctors jubilee every year:  
Some anti-hoppists are for b●oom, and make  
The blessed Carduus, that infusion l●ke.  
This last is physic-drink, and your broom-beer  
Is bitter, and to wood-dried malt is near;  
But gentle pearl is good, and bottled best;  
And Twist is good, so sings Will Hoopers' guest.   

CHAP. X. Of Flesh-meats in general.  
IT is an an axiom in Philosophy,  
That every like its like is nourished by:  
Wherefore considering that we're flesh and blood,  
And flesh and blood is our most proper food;  
But general rules have their exception,  
Grammar and Nature in like orders run,  
For whom all things were made; Man paramount,  
Lord of the creature, may the creature count,  
His diet and his staves, he may eat all,  
Except himself, he is no cannibal:  
And though unto a proverb it is true,  
Man is a wolf to man; 't should not be so:  
For the most ravenous of creatures do forbear,  
And don't themselves a dire provision ●ear;  
That sows unfed will their dead babies eat,  
And hounds do make the noble horse their meat,  
Is not enough to make a precedent, no,  
But what is always, or plerumque, so;  
The princely Eagle, and the Buzzard base,  
Feed not on birds when offal's in the place;  
So at the Samaria's siege, the King did give  
A sentence for that child that was alive,  
Not of the dead, for grand necessity,  
And famine's nurse to anthropophagy.  
This doth not hinder then, but still Thesis  
Holds Flesh is food general, and pl●●●es;  
Nothing so fattens▪ so corroborates,  
Nothing the body's lifeguard so creates.  
(The red coat blood, in blue coat veins of State)  
The yellow coat's of choler, phlegmatic,  
Of white and black coats that i'th' rear doth stick;  
Of earthly melancholy, who'd suppose  
His body did four Regiments enclose?  
Wherefore the persons that do feed so high,  
Have often need of good Phlebotomy:  
For flesh provision of all sorts doth heat,  
Wherefore in fevers we prescribe small meat,  
Or none at all, unless the Patient please,  
Spite of advice, to feed his own disease;  
The fleshy substance stripped off't, the sat  
Doth nourish best, and lesser harms create:  
Strengthens the stomach, and doth kindly lie  
For coction, Suns much supefluity.  
Herculean bodies and Pyracmon sides  
Can digest garlic, and the Onion fried;  
Butter and bacon may devour and swallow,  
Yea, and put over too a beeu's whole tallow;  
Athletic bodies we provide nor for,  
Nor yet for Wood, nor the sharp counsellor;  
But sedentary men of little pains  
Must not with such gross stuff anoint their veins:  
A lighter diet, and a modicum,  
Little and often food their states become▪   

CHAP. XI. Of Wood-Animalls.  
NOw we are in a Wood, yet no such Wood,  
As girts your palace, nor the Deer so good;  
Where in some summer walks with early thought,  
The velvet drove I to acquaintance brought;  
As known to them almost as were your keepers,  
(Scholars and foresters are little sleepers)  
I had my walks, my Hamadryades,  
But his shrill Syrinx did out ec●ho these  
Oaten and slender pipes, though not so vocal,  
Which have their forest too but 'tis not local:  
Poets have all things in their fancy, good,  
So the poetic man is always Wood;  
And as old writings were on barks of trees,  
Without a Figure Books are Copices,  
And such a Rus, and in Fenestra too  
Is mine, Beasts subject, Trees a Book or two;  
And I your sable forester, yet John a Green  
In heart▪ am frequent in my night-walks seen,  
Where if I like a Fawn o'th' nobler head,  
With all haste (Madam) to yourself 'tis ●ed.  
Creatures o'th' Wood are wooden Animals,  
That is, are dry, compared to Beeves of stalls;  
The household creatures, which by ease do fat,  
And nothing of their flesh evaporate,  
Yield a more jucy nutriment, than Deer,  
Cutting half knife in fat, meat for a Peer;  
The active tenants of the in loosed Wood,  
By constant motion cleanse their chafed blood,  
And ratify their spirits by Levaltos,  
Like the rare Turk, in all your pleasant Saltus;  
Besides their situation, hot and dry,  
Doth always much obesity deny.  
Who ever saw a Spaniard over fat?  
Their countryman (the SUN) prohibits that,  
Who by extensive heats exhals their moist,  
Unless perchance some Spaniard the Seas crossed,  
And leaguer lay in England than he might  
Return a show, and the Madrids delight:  
Of all that wild and noble Caravan,  
The skipping Kid is soundest meat for man;  
Who by his frequent exercise doth cure  
The coldness of his temper, and dispute▪  
The tincture of his coat and fulsome skin  
Into Rufillus 
(a) A perfumed Roman Courtier.  perfumed sweet-balling.  
Quick of digestion is this nimble bruit,  
And passeth Presto, and doth blood recruit;  
And if the stomach were his park, he plays  
His usual tricks and makes no tedious stays;  
Domestic Brutes o'th' Pasture or o'th' Down,  
Of other air, and seldom motion,  
Are of a nourishing meat, but grosser fare,  
And threfore harder of digestion are;  
'Mongst which the males have the precedency,  
Hotter and moister concoct presently,  
Before their females, of less heat and juice,  
And therefore are not of so praised a use:  
The gelded crew of middle temperature,  
Colder than males (whose fire doth yet endure)  
Yet hotter than their females, (who despise,  
Since their exection, their shab companies)  
Do make a middle food; thus Eunuchs may,  
When they are dead, serve for a wedding-day.  
But Kid is temperate without the least  
Mixture of malice, a most innocent beast:  
The blood which that creates is middle sized,  
Neither too gross, nor too much subtilised;  
Neither too cold nor hot (a temper nought  
●n our Religion, but in physic sought)  
●ood for an errant Knight, or any thing,  
Whose body's lightness would be on the wing;  
For the Repletions are gentile, yet not  
So slender, that no nutriment is got:  
Whence it appears Kid hath the Lady's love,  
'Tis delicate diet, and 'tis smooth-skinned gloves.  
But above all, the Infant-kids are best,  
As we say, taken from the mother's breast,  
So full of sappy nutriment, and smart,  
That without sauces sweet, alid, and tart,  
You may fall on; what would we more than taste,  
And good blood breed, when just digestion's past?   

CHAP. XII: Of the flesh of Lambs, rams weathers and Calves. Of LAMBS.  
EMblem of Innocence! and yet not good▪  
Is Lamb a Shynx, not to be understood?  
Some Butcher Oaedipus with knife drawn out  
O'th' scabbard of thy mouth, resolve this doubt,  
(As did Macedo to the Gordian Knot)  
And in Aenigma's dubious leave us not.  
For your sake (Madam) who a little claim,  
And stand hard for the hieroglyphic name  
Of spotless Innocence, even against all  
Lambs, but that one, that you your pattern call,  
(Slain from before all worlds) I shall untack  
This knot, by th' help of Rabbi Isaak,  
Not Idumaean Isaak, Abraham's son,  
Who by parental hand had like t'have gone  
To sacrifice, but that the angel's grace  
Disposed a bleating proxy in his place;  
The heir o'th' flock yeaned on the coldest Lease,  
Is then worse meat, when nu●s'd upon his knees:  
(Some may obedience from that posture learn,  
Nothing so dutiful as the yews' barn)  
Yet as if now we were Herodians all,  
Nothing then Lamb comes oftener to the stall;  
The flesh is viscous, and engenders phlegm,  
So 'tis a bad dish, a good Apothegm:  
Yet when in flesh a fair foundation's laid,  
And on a dish or two invasions made,  
Then from your Lambkin (Madam) ne'er withhold,  
But let it have its course, be't hot or cold:  
In hotter countries, such as Spain, the Lamb  
Gets hotter temper from his curled Dam.   

DHAP. XIII. Of rams.  
THis goodly ●uffle-head with winding horns,  
Though he looks scurvy, and th' whole flock scorns,  
Yet is the grossest meat; this surly sir  
Is good, if he exceed not his first year;  
If well digested, it doth generate  
Good blood, and much; but if it had the fate  
To fall i'th' hands of cursed Armenian Libbers, 
(a) Cutters of Lambs.   
After exection he is much the glibber;  
And though he be a lost ram, as we say,  
To th' Yews, he's good howe'er the other way;  
His flesh is tempered by his deprived fire,  
And having lost his own, gets our desire:  
It hath a winning and delicious gust,  
Though Father Galen, whom we credit must,  
Condemns all Mutton, but he wrote in towns  
Where little was, and ne'er saw Cotsall Downs,  
Nor this same land of Sheep, whose noble wool  
Clothes the Muscovian, and the great mogul;  
The English Fleece doth proudly pass the gulf,  
And fears no hazard but its native Wolf;  
How many Nations Fleets empty the fraughts,  
And do return this Fleeces Argonauts?  
Then for the Back it's good, and in keen hunger,  
Were Galen here he'd be a muttonmonger:  
But ram from Wether-mutton you may know,  
That's yellow, this 
(a) Because an Eunuch.  no cause hath to be so.   

CHAP. XIV. Of Calves.  
Welcome thou Increment of Bully 'bove,  
(Or when a Bull, why not as well of Jove?)  
A calf, saith Averaoes', is brave food,  
Of temperate blood, not viscous, cold, but good,  
And hath a flavour and odorous gust,  
And therefore before Kid, his praise is just:  
For though the Kid we did extol but now,  
'Twas 'mongst his Montaneirs, so we allow:  
But for calf's frag●an●ies, we're none of those,  
That for our diet will be led by th' nose,  
Although it is confessed by all (forsooth)  
The calf's head's ne'er without its own sweet tooth;  
To make no long tail of it then, it breeds  
Humours most fine, and therefore cleanlier feeds.  
But flesh of Bulls and Oxen, those Calfe's sire,  
These Uncles (better by their loss of fire)  
Breed black, and much, and melancholy blood,  
Our veins of blue are made a sable flood;  
And as alive we Bulls do stiff-necks call,  
So are they too Knock-downed in the stall:  
'Tis a most rebellious nutriment, dead,  
And lies i'th' stomach heavy, as is lead:  
It's slowly altered, turns to chyle as slow,  
As slow dissolved does to the members go:  
It wants a goad when it is drove alive,  
A claret goad may't through the stomach drive;  
The lazy Surloin, glory of the roast,  
And Knighted, and yet was never Knight o'th' Post;  
Unless when thou (brave 
(a) Alderman Robinson, Coss. Lond.  Sheriff) dost refine  
His duller blood with thy for bon French Wine:  
If by complexion men adust (that's sad)  
Or splenatick, do like this beveridge bad.  
‛ Beware Quartan Agues, Dropsies, and the Itch,  
The leprosy, or Tetter, choose you which,  
Dandry and surfie heads, this blood o'th' Ox  
Bestows all these, and yet the Butcher knocks:  
Wherefore most wisely have our Masters stated,  
That Bulls, before they die, shall all be baited.   

CHAP. XV. Of the Flesh of Swine, Deer, Hares and Bears.  
First, of Swine.  
MY Father (a) Ben, discoursing of this Grunter,  
In that so famous Play, where old Sir Punter  
Being turned Oxlando for the loss of's dog,  
Did lug the jeering buffoon like a hog:  
There in that celebrated Comedy,  
(Whether my Father Ben, as well as I,  
Met with Arabian Comments) the smart Play  
Doth patly what my ancient Authors say:  
There's wit to th' height, read it, and try our Dogma,  
Whether from both the places we a Hog may  
Not all alike commend; first Avicen  
Says, Pork's most natural to men, so Ben;  
Hog's flesh is likest man's, saith Isaak;  
The same again saith Ben, but adds, that Sack,  
A Hogshead full, for a vehiculum,  
Will spoil its grumbling in our medium,  
(Or middle Region of our Trunk) for Swine,  
Alive or dead, will be still laid with Wine.  
Indeed my Father Ben doth there produce  
A reason why they were denied the Jews;  
Because that nutrimental animal  
Of a provoking sap, and Hogo● all,  
Would have disordered and o'erpampered those  
Who newly come from Egypt's hard dispose:  
Rebels in rough mosaic Discipline,  
How much more Rebels, had they eaten Swine?  
Which makes me think the Caledonians,  
Alike in Sins, alike in Onions,  
Are of affinity with the old Jews,  
Both for Rebellion, both do Pork refuse.  
Now of this animal there are two sorts,  
The one domestic, t'other extra Ports,  
(That wild and foreign) whose food is such  
As the Wood yields, when winds do lust'ly touch,  
And flail the Oaks and chestnuts, and the berries,  
Which Nature for the birds meant winter cherries. 
(a) Hyp● and Haw●s.   
But oh the flesh of choice-fed household swine!  
And of the quarters, the renowned cold chine!  
Eaten, or sung, or played by Wilson, 
(b) Dr. Wilson Musit. Laure.  sure  
For old Sir Mammon it were yet a lure  
Sufficient to leave Doll, and for a bone,  
To pass his part o'th' philosopher's Stone;  
Hampshire is rare for reering such, and may  
Contend almost with black Westphalia;  
The moister feeding is the home-fed swine,  
Hotter and drier is Sow Peregrine:  
See the attendancy of Suffolk Pigs,  
Fed by the hooped-coat merry milking grigs,  
Cleansed with whey, and fatted with the same,  
Or snails, or good Vine leaves (which pigeons blame)  
Or else the turnip; oh the Turnep-fed  
Swine! may chance save us, turnips being dead,  
With grains, these girls and such Hog-provender,  
Will you a Porker of that fullness rear,  
That Circe's brood, and all her changed Elpenors  
Can't parallel for meat nor for demeanour:  
Such dieted swine are cold and moist, a rare  
Temper, and to the gust most relishing are;  
But quite another thing, when dried by salt,  
It is exuct, and laid up 'mongst the malt:  
Now in hot countries, where our Commentator  
Lived they prescribed the extremities o'th' creature,  
The lugs, the legs, the soused feet and snout,  
I'm for the Roman way, dish it whole 
(c) Totas ponit A●ros Iuv.  out;  
Or as I've seen it rarely raised and drawn  
By Henham cook, up to a 〈◊〉 of B●●wn,  
Where wicked 〈◊〉, yet good 〈◊〉 ●●●berry,  
Hath made the ●a●er, not the brawn●●, c●y;  
Then from the tun too, o● the th●ee 〈◊〉 c●me  
A Ganymed with Sa●k, and warmed ●heg me,  
That the old Matron that old m●mbling ●eed  
Before, did after swallow't with less heed:  
The infant, or the sucking baby dies  
About this season, 
Aug. 24.  a large ●ac●i●ice;  
The ways are thronged, blocked up with bellies big,  
(And bellies would be so) for crackled pig;  
St. Bartholomew the great, and Bat the little,  
Afford not room enough, but the hospital  
Is pressed into, wherein whosoever looks,  
Shall see all dressing on, chirgians and cooks:  
Well fare you sisters of my native soil,  
Eat pig and multiply, recruit your oil  
With unctio●s di●●, it breeds noble chime,  
Call for the other half, and by that time  
Your men will come with the reckoning, so  
You may from Pig unto the Puppets go:  
And then to Islington, and so about,  
Until what's pigged in be pigged out.   

CHAP. XVI. Of the flesh of Deer.  
SUppose us (Madam) in your park, where Deer  
Are kept for every season of the year:  
Do any ask how they're at such command?  
Then know my Lady hath Orphaean hand.  
If He willed beasts by courtly music tamed,  
You m●y do more, unless the bruits be maimed,  
And cannot come; for otherwise your stroke  
Upon the Lute will spi●itize an o●k,  
And make the Park to dan●e, and humbly follow  
Thee as the mistress of the skilled Apollo;  
the late erected House and Garden pales,  
Rose by thy hand (just as did Theb●n w●lls;)  
Thy nimble fingers do so stir the Lute,  
(Like David's Harp) they may a Devil confute:  
Brave Gunning, by his learned arts and t●ngue,  
Gains not so much upon th' Anabaptist throng,  
Than you upon these cognate droves, who stand  
and listen (they love music) to your hand.  
I could into a wood of lawful p●aises launch,  
And p●●ise the creature full●, side and haunch:  
But Rabbi Isaak saith thei● flesh is hard,  
(Not to be go●) at Henham none's debarred:  
Thy Husband's old Canary, and fat Buck,  
With dogs run down, or else with arrows stuck;  
Yet they are melan●holy diet, but  
They all ●●e so which are much given to rut:  
The Fa●●ns a●e wholso●e an● the hei●s digest  
Better than 〈◊〉▪ or mother of the beast:  
The youthful stand is ve●y hot and d●y,  
When old, like other things, their worst is nigh:  
The Eunuch Deer is temperate▪ and most  
Pleasurable when its pleasure's lost:  
Troch upon troch troch troch a reverend stag,  
He doth of age and red-Deer-p●s●y b●agg;  
And tho●gh it's dry yet let the Venison pass,  
His own fat s●pples it, and t'other glass;  
It is o● quick descension, and the marrow  
Slides th●ough the bo●y f●om the guttural narrow:  
And learned Avicen doth say for certain,  
That then●e are p●ocreated many a quartan:  
Ca●ses of Q●artanes we have many sure,  
Oh for an Avicen could tell's the cure!  
Now for conclusion, this beast for game  
And entertainment, hath with us the name:  
Know then, the body is a jovial meat,  
Fit so●Squire Rous, yea for a Prince to eat;  
Its upper part is Antidote▪ but oh,  
There's poison lies i'th' tail (the part below:)  
Emblem of human Chance! in this sad veil  
Nothing's thorough blessed from head to tail.   

CHAP. XVII. Of Hares.  
THe Rabbins say, the Lion sneezing, out  
Started a Cat from his Majesti●k snout,  
Without the Pythagorean motion rare,  
The Cat then sneezing started out a Hare;  
For there is nothing among creatures that  
(B●t Hare) is melan●holy as a cat;  
And we do call them Pusses both; one purres  
Only, and both are vengeance 'fraid of curs.  
Hare is good sport, as all our Gen●●y know,  
The only Recreation left us now;  
For plays are down, unless the puppet-play,  
Sir William's lost, bo●h oil and Opera;  
The noble cockfight done, the harmless bears  
Are more then ringed by th' nose or b● the ears:  
We are serious people grown, and full of cares,  
As melancholy as cats, as glumm as hares.  
Yet tho●gh it generate the grossest blood,  
Then Goats and Ramms, these are more praised food.  
Oh for the pretty sucking Leveret,  
(An excellent dish if that I could it get;)  
Not yet so dry are coneys in degree,  
Moist are the breed of Aubern Conigree;  
Laden with kidneys white, what can you lack,  
Except a glass of Squire Bond's Ogburn Sack?   

CHAP. XVIII. Of bears.  
TEll me you traders for the Greenland wares,  
(For you know best) what diet are the Bears?  
Not only the left shoulder, I believe,  
But the whole Bear is venison, Sheep and Beeve;  
It viscous is, and disobedient,  
And a most indigestive nutriment;  
More fit, saith Rabbi Isaak, for cures  
And medicines, th●n for hungry stomack-lures,  
Unless a drunken Tinker, me●all'd man,  
(Who his teeth out of's budget strengthen can)  
Sho●ld fall to tooth and nail, in's pot he spares  
Nothing that's next, than away with your bears:  
Yet in high Russia, and i'th' land of Whales,  
Bears may be dressed, if ye catch 'em by th' tails;  
And so a●e Apes, that inortogious lump,  
Or any thing, indeed that wants a rump.  
Those men, who, ships departed, stayed behind,  
(For no man's sake will water stay, and wind)  
Can give us best account of this rough beast,  
Whose sad society, most unwelcome guest,  
Was very uncouth and suspicious, when  
'Twas doubtful which was prey, Bears or the men:  
Those Greenlanders, hutched up in frosty cabins,  
Shall be our Aelians, let alone the Rabbins;  
If like to coney's Bears will fat, I know,  
Those must be fausen bears that live in snow:  
Our Paris-garden bears, had they not dy'd,  
Might have been eat, but for Sir Thomas Pride.   

CHAP. XIX. Of the members and parts of Creatures.  
THe Heads of Creatures Countenance, or Faces,  
As swine and Oxen are gross mea●, saith Rasis,  
They'● hot and nourish much, not a good fa●e,  
Unless when Titan's farthest from the Bear;  
In winter deep when you may freely ●rolick  
In cheeks and heads, but that they breed the colic:  
The Brain of temper cold doth na●seat,  
And is offensive to the stomach: what?  
May we not eat them? yes, if you are  
Of constitution hot; the b●ain is rare,  
Eat it the first, and before other dishes,  
But cold complexions, and akin to fishes,  
Or whose distemperature arise from cold,  
With this meanings guest be not too bold:  
The Marrow is of ●emper cold, but not  
So cold as that, though thence its rise is got.  
Hot, and by cold (if in our art there be  
Any such Point found out, unless by me)  
Good for Sir Epicures, and men o'th' chine,  
Who sacrifice to Venus, both in Wine  
And Ceres, and a grand Provision make  
To gratify the flesh, these C●nons take,  
And in a Meal o● marrowbones advance  
As great a show as so much great Ordnance;  
But not so great a noise, when these Guns play,  
The s●lpher's white, and won't itself betray,  
This Sperm-ingenderer is good for such  
Who Paul's strict Canons do not trouble much,  
The spongy Udder and the ●nctious paps  
(The fulsome diet of Sir Mammon's chaps)  
Do nourish most exceedingly, yet slow,  
And in a gen●le pa●e to chile do go:  
Those who have stomachs hot, and livers like,  
May their fleshhook into th' ●udder strike.  
Livers of Beasts are hot and moist, and breed  
Much blood (they are conge●led blood indeed)  
But hard and heavy: that of Lamb or Calf,  
Or of the sucking Pig, is diet safe:  
But Isaak saith that liver doth p●efer,  
Of the sweet Mistress of sir Chanticler:  
The same Arabian discommends the heart,  
A solid, but an indigestile part;  
But when digested, it doth breed good blood,  
And nourisheth as well as any food.  
Why not as well as liver? this we call  
Font of venal blood, that arterial.  
The lights and lungs are of a substance rare▪  
And light, and therefore soon digested are;  
So soon they pass, and from the stomach go,  
(Our bellows called, but yet not windy though)  
D●ess'd with appertenances of the Sows bearn,  
They're too opiparous for Country Kern.  
The reigns are for two reasons not approved,  
First they're gross and hard, not easily moved  
Out of the caldron natural; but when  
(That pot hath Mastered them) they're nought then:  
And 'cause the serous part of u●ine takes  
His tincture from the reigns, them all ●orsake.  
The flesh of creatures, mo●e especi●l that  
Which is of fatter cattle (no● the ●a●)  
Is excellent, breeds spe●m and nobl● blood,  
And in this n●tion is too gene●al food:  
The fat is loa●hsome, and as oil● grea●e  
Is the most moist of all, it doth increase  
Cold and moist humours, and such feeders be  
Full of ungoverned s●pe●fluity:  
But interlined flesh, as I may say,  
Some lean, some fat, carries the praise away●punc;  
And breeds most temperate blood and sperm alike;  
Hence is our Nation ruddier, and the Pike  
Of English war far moves the courtesan,  
That she cries out, Oh my brave English man!  
The Feet do generate a viscous blood,  
And therefore to the Stone in●lin'd, not good:  
The Rump of creatures than th' interior parts  
Ho●●er and lighter are, for the kind darts  
Of Scrotums warm inhabiters (o● heat  
A second forge) th' adja●ent parts do beat  
And ●●imulate, and warms that utmost bit,  
There's something go● by good neigbourhood yet:  
The nearer than the Tes●i●les more hot,  
The farther off by situation nought:  
We will not in our Rules a Proverb cross,  
Th' extremities are always at a loss.   

CHAP. XX. Of Bake-meats.  
BAke-meats are generally nought, and Pie  
Is disapproved, though allhallond-day be nigh:  
We write not unto children, whose spoiled gums,  
(whate'er the Coral gained) confess that plums  
And o'erwarmed Custard have edentified,  
(That is, made toothless) many a simp'ring Bride:  
Who for this very reason, all their life,  
Are feign to laugh behind a handkerchief:  
So have I seen a toothless bridegroom sit  
Hungry at's wedding, nor could chew a bit,  
Until the spoon-meat came, than his throat strain  
So wide, you might have seen his heart again:  
Wherefore forbear them, Rabbi Rasis saith,  
But against Pie-meat there is little faith:  
To bodies troubled with an acid wind  
And eructations sour, bake-meats are kind;  
They do eventilate and lay that Flatus,  
Which smells so mawkish from its foul Hiatus;  
For little nourishment they yield, but those  
Whose spongy bodies slimy phlegm o'erflows,  
Or do desire to be gentile, that's gaunt and fine,  
May eat this drying diet (none of mine.)  
Roast-meat, which long-backed curs do spin on spits,  
Are far more nutritive, though they're gross bits,  
And not digested, but by stomach's dint,  
And when the ventricle hath vigour in't;  
It binds the belly, yet there's help for that,  
If you do eat good store of the roast fat:  
But flesh with generous eggs and pepper dressed,  
Of any bake-meat is accounted best.  
Oh for a Pie-meat, be't at any rate,  
Raised by thy hand and ar● (dear Oxford Kate)  
The wisdom of thy Cookery doth raise  
Unto thyself, and Dishes lofty praise:  
Thy meats are a brave winter food, and when  
I do indulge my genius like those men,  
Thy gallant guests, a stately Pie of thine  
Shall fit us for the pretty friend of Wine,  
And Mother of Proserpina: all this  
(Kate) at the length will bring us unto Dis.  
Bake-meats corroborate and nourish more  
Than any diet we have named before:  
But in the summer (Kate) we will forbear,  
They are too hot for us in sultry air,  
And breed the Stone, a thing (sweet Cate) which I  
Nor you would see, to find one petrify.  
And though thy praises I do gladly vent,  
I would be loath to be thy Monument.   

CHAP. XXI. Of Birds in general.  
TH' Arabian Isaak dictateth, that Fowl  
Compared with walking creatures, are the Soul,  
They but the Body of meat; they're light and fine,  
And do the feeder to quick works incline;  
As if their feathers still were on, they spring  
Through the quarters, and are all o'th' wing:  
Rare and aerial, yet the nourishment  
Is small, and less than walking Fowl or Pent;  
Yet our Silvestrian, then domestic bird,  
Is tenderer, as once before y' have heard,  
And of digestion facile, the reason  
Is, their assiduous labour and dry season.  
If Daedalus with any wings of wax,  
Could a made it fly, how light had been an Ox?  
Which now must be most heavy, gross and dull,  
Though it were dressed in Phalaris his Bull,  
As I may guess by Milo, who in sweat  
Of's brows did find an Ox was heavy meat:  
But these high flyers rare, 'cause they do move  
Often, and the dry air to traverse love;  
But the domestic, that less ply the oar  
Of feathered pinions, succulent, are more,  
And generate a noble blood, being moist  
Of temper, nor with airy swimming tossed:  
Of all the Birds that skirre the liquid air,  
Our Aurhor saith the 
* Sturn●s caeteris volatilibus subtilior.  Starling is most rare;  
(A most rare Singer if his tongue be slit,  
Confessed) but not with us a dainty bit:  
Yet if you bring it to an English Cook  
Uncased, he'll make him taste like any Rook:  
The masculine bearns of Partridges are neat,  
The mother's Hen and Pheasant, Lady-meat;  
The cockerels of all birds are lightest food,  
And breed the laudablest and wholsomest blood,  
Strengthens the appetite, their gendering fire  
Fitting them both for diet and desire:  
But yet th'Arabian Doctor Avicen,  
Prefers before all these the creaking Hen,  
And saith that Hen-broth is a remedy  
Probatum against scurfie leprosy:  
Besides, who'd think the female had such praise,  
Since females are the worser many ways?  
The brains, saith he, of Hens increaseth wit,  
Augments its namesakes substance; there is it;  
For those who are fantastic, idle, vain,  
As if their food wer● so, we call Cock-brain.   

CHAP. XXII. Of Hens.  
THe Doctors differ, for Rabbi Isaak  
Doth pull our Hen, and won't allow the crack,  
But justifies the Chick against the dam,  
(A physical, not Divine Axiom)  
And in comparisons not odious,  
Bids us the Chick before the Mother choose,  
As being the tougher nourishment, enough,  
But for my meal give me a Hen tooth-proof,  
Not tough as buff, nor yet as whitleather,  
But often humbled by Sir Chanticler:  
Then full of embryo chick, let her appear  
In claret-sauce throughout all Janivere.  
But for the limber thighs of infant-fowl,  
Which you may draw like Peascods through your jowl,  
Unless in acute fevers, let them eat,  
Whose teeth dare not encounter tougher meat.  
Next unto these the flesh of quails is thought  
Exceeding good, especially jew-bought,  
(That's at the price they were i'th' wilderness)  
But to eat them now in london-dress,  
Or Partridge-chicken (which is grosser food,  
Costive, but nourishing) though the meat's good.  
I shall not venture, and I know the cause,  
Because it did rain Quails, but never sauce.   

CHAP. XXIII. Of pigeons, their young ones, and Ducks.  
THe infant-Pidgeon, and the suc●ing Dove,  
Emblem of Innocence, of Lust, of Love,  
Are a most high and filling diet, hot  
And inflaming, thence are Feave●s got;  
‛ Beware pigeon therefore, till his early flight  
Hath purged his heaviness, and made it light;  
To these invite your phlegmatics, a scholar,  
Men sedentary, but not a man of choler.  
Ducks of aquatic fowl are far the worst,  
Whether Fen-fed, or in your own moats nursed;  
Hot is their blood, and of a Saturn die,  
Gives nauseas and superfluity,  
Yet nourishing enough, if it were good,  
(He don't prescribe a copious, but sound food;)  
Of all the fowl which on the lakes do wander,  
From the wild Duck unto the Goose and Gander,  
There's none but are repletive, if it smell  
Amiss 'tis nought, though 'twere a Barnacle:  
This hinders not the profits of the Coy,  
The smell of gain is sweet, Bon par ma foy.   

CHAP. XXIV. Of the parts of Fowl.  
THe bellies of all Fowl, brawny and tough,  
Are of digestion long, and hard enough;  
But Mastered by the culinary fire,  
They're as good nutriment as you desire.  
The wings of Geese in moistness do abound,  
And so in Hens is the like juiceness found;  
Their constant motion makes them simply good,  
An excellent and inoffensive food.  
But oh the liver of the stubble Goose!  
Set it before the gross Vitellius,  
Or Otho either, and this Emperor  
Shall leave his glass for it, another's his whore.  
Wisdom of Cooks! oh arts of cramming Geese!  
When kitchen Machiavilian policies  
Shall so contrive, that the attractive Liver  
Shall starve all members to augment the liver,  
And by devices hyperphysical,  
Translate the Rickets from the head to th' cawl.  
Wonder in Caponry! but they grow plump  
And fat, by stitching up the merry rump.  
The necks of Geese and Hens, which we do cast  
To th' dunghill, are an excellent repast;  
Arabic dainties bought up by us of late,  
By one, who on all City Feasts do wait,  
The Factor of our poultry gubbins, that  
He may feed high his rare musk-making Ca●.  
The wings of flying creatures do excel  
The legs of walking, motion doth expel  
Superfluous humours: so Fowl crammed and penned,  
Though they be fat, are not good nourishment:  
I do abominate the City-glutton,  
Fat Capon-fed, and shoulder of Mutton:  
If that must be th'entertainment and the cheer,  
Give me the barn-fed bird and mountaineer.  
The Eunuchs of all Fowl are best, and so prevail  
With us, they are no longer meat but Ale:  
Cock is an English malt, and we drink Fowl,  
What once was dished is now swigged up i'th' bowl,  
So that we do not now those gluttons think,  
Who Capons eat, but those who Capons drink:  
Cock-broth, the Ladies sure confortive  
Is gone, for China Ale doth keep alive;  
Who can desire more? Physician's unde  
Is this rare cure from Monday 
* At Temple●ar, who sells China-Ale.  until Sunday.  
The brains of Fowl, less viscous and less dry,  
Are better than of walking poultry,  
Who are of temper ex opposito,  
(That's clean contrary, if you do not know.)  
The brains of infant-Starling, Partridge, Pheasant,  
And Cocks and Hens (Sir Mammon judge) is pleasant.   

CHAP. XXV. Of Eggs and their proprieties.  

AS at Creation, so our book proceeds,  
Hens before Eggs, perfection's in the deeds  
Of the best best Opificer; he made  
Nothing potential, perfect 'twas when said,  
That Protoplastes the first species framed  
Entire, nothing was impotent or maimed  
In its own essence, than he virtues gave,  
Prolific and conservative, to save  
And propagate, which hid in seminal power,  
Traduces the first work unto this hour;  
The parent, not the chick, oviparous,  
The mother's labour hatched in feathered house  
Of her own body, yet 't doth safer dwell,  
And hath a cottage of its own, a shell:  
Our subject is this embryo in's cradle,  
Both possible to live and to be addle,  
Or damned to be devoured before a taste  
Of life, and into various coquery cast▪  
Bred of 
(a) D. Harvey's opinion.  contagion of Sir Chanticlers,  
Upon the bag prolific, the case clear,  
And settled now in plain Anatomy,  
'A spiritized flavour gets, and egg, and me,  
So that the cock-tread and the grosser sperm  
(Which our old Philosophy affirm  
Did generation raise) are only here  
The conduct and the warm conveyancer  
Of this brave Monsieur, and Grand signior spirit,  
Whose warm Afflation does the work o'th' night:  
This egg I set before you, (Madam) sloth  
Makes this poor Book Trencher and tablecloth,  
Not set in salt (unless of slender wit)  
And though but small, yet a most dainty bit,  
Of such vicinity with human blood,  
It straight incorporates, and i● quick food;  
Especially the golden part, the 
* Yolk and White.  Argent is  
Frigid and viscous, of Activities  
Unequal much; so that in thi● white shell,  
The Sun and Moon may be affirmed to dwell:  
The yolk's spermatic, like the gendering Sun,  
The Eggs in watery efficacies run.   

The Eggs of Hens and Partridges incite,  
And those of Ducks are servient ●o delight  
(Though fouler nourishment.) The lay of Geese▪  
Of odour bad, doth loathsomne●s increase,  
Yet are pr●vocative; of Turkeys more,  
Although the waddling treade●'s long, before  
He act (the fu●bler of the Fowls) but mounted▪  
This cobbling ●ame●●e is a 
* The gre●● Turk.  signior counted.  
But hear what Rasis saith, and Avicen,  
Most temperate the l●y's of the pressed Hen,  
And Part●idges, so little loss i'th' food,  
That weight for weight, the yolks convert to blood:  
Boiled ra●ely, they digest a●ace: but hard,  
They do digestion and themselves retard:  
Ta●ne when the cackling Hen Alarum gives  
Of her delivery, Restora●ives:  
Immixed with Honey good for throats are sore;  
And in Consum●tion● we their aid implore:  
No flesh so nourishing and temperate:  
Let those forbear them who are over fat;  
Buttered with ambergrisses a lusty meat,  
V●●ellius (le gross) did often eat;  
A Prince of a short reign, which amply shows,  
Gluttons no fighters are, but for night blows.    

CHAP. XXVI. of MILK.  

KInsman to blood, but twice removed, in Breasts  
Of Women pregnant, in Udders of Beasts  
Elaborated, and the tincture white,  
In Venis Lacteis, (unknown to sight,  
Unless upon dissection) is made,  
Which is this lukewarm Candidates parade.  
It is of equal temper with our blood,  
And having been so once, most proper Food:  
Not dreadful when a Read-coat, and a friend,  
When White-coat to our Ages 
* Infancy and old Age.  either end,  
Its temper doth incline to moist and cold,  
It wets, and fats: Those whom long hectics hold,  
Or the dry Cough, or Urine sharpness pricks,  
And those of Constitutions dry as sticks,  
It benefits, and brings to temper just,  
It foments blood, and the white stream of Lust:  
'Tis of concoction quick, and gets the die  
(Whether the Liver or Veins sanguify,  
Or both, it matters not) which once it had,  
White into red is no conversion bad.  
Wherefore we say, in fevers, are acute,  
In pains o'th' head, in Dropsies, and Scorbute,  
And other cold Diseases, Milk forbear,  
Though Io were the Cow, (and she was rare)  
Of all that spend the Teat, the Milk of Cows  
Is grossest, and most nourishment allows.  
Who do desire Matho's bulk (to fill  
A Coach alone) let him the Milk-pail swill.  
Yet I have heard a Matho of our own  
(By's surcingle of Sheeps-heads quickly known)  
So huge a quantity of Milk did drink  
(A Horse of water could not more I think)  
Yet never was the fatter, nor would be  
If he had eaten Cow, milkmaid, and me.  
Such Guts should be their mutual punishment,  
And Marriot should have eaten Wood of Kent.  
The Milk of Asses Avicen advises,  
To give to all who labour of a Phthisis,  
Or have bad Lungs. The Milk of Goats partakes  
Of either temper, and a medium makes:  
Such wonders are rehearsed of Goats, that if  
You hear 'em you will hardly give belief;  
The very herbs they feed on turns to physic;  
Give them specificks for the Cough or phthisic,  
The infusion is their Milk, and it retains  
The virtue sans apothecary's pains,  
A living rare Pharmacopoeia, and  
Not yet translated by Culpepper's hand.   

The Milk of Sheep is worst, very unsound,  
And doth with su●erfluities abound.  
Milk boiled with Rice, or the like grain (and free  
From its in●●igidating quality)  
Breeds wholesome blood, moistens belly and breast,  
And to the bladder is a welcome guest.  
And Buttermilk in Fluxes, and so Whey  
Is excellent for Lactium tormina,  
If in them you throw in burnt gad of steel,  
You need no other medicine, they it heal.  
Against diseases of the yellow Bi●e,  
Nothing so sovereign, nothing so 
* Cheap.  vile.  
Distempers of much Bacchus, and the Itch,  
And yellow jaundice, Faces called the rich,  
Are cured by these, and Butter that's unsalt,  
By Fricacy doth remedy the fault  
Of filthy morphyed skins: Butter next grace  
Is eaten first, eaten in the last place.  
Then let not Hogens Mogeas only sing,  
Bouter, Bouter is good for any thing.    

CHAP. XXVII. Of CHEESE.  
ALL Cheese is nought, saith the Salernitan,  
The Fresh is cold and gross, yet if a man  
Be not of constitution cold, 'tis good,  
A tolerable, but not commended food.  
Old Cheese (as is its Age) is worse, or better  
The tarter sort is hot, and burns, a getter  
Of extreme thirst, calls for the other Can,  
Be it Holland, Cheddar, or Parmizan.  
Yet after meals a slender quantity  
Corroborates the stomach's mouth, and by  
The sharpness of the Rennet doth remove  
All N●●sea from them, who sweet mee●s love.  
But scraped, as Dr. Buttler ordered Cheese,  
(Who then a butler more can palat-please?)  
'Tis excellent against most Surfeits, saving  
No Sugar spoil the Cambro-britan shaving.  
Ha, ha, Caus Day! yet our Arabians hold,  
No Cheese is safe, whether it be new or old:  
It loads the stomach's of digestion slow,  
And if the colic or the Stone you know,  
Eat, and be sick, then leave't, if not too late,  
Or if you'll eat, eat but a penny weight.   

CHAP. XXVIII. Of FISHES.  

FIshes are like their Element, and place  
Wherein they live, both cold and moist, a ●ace  
Of phlegmatic Creatures, yet they are meat  
which dry, and choleric tem●e●s may well eat;  
And those who would look smug, or el●e snout-fair,  
May take this live●-cooling di●h for fare.  
In f●●vid seasons, and in Climates hot  
Use them: But if the Be●●● the helm hath got,  
Or under Charles his seaun-stard heavy W●ne,  
From this dull nourishment let them refrain▪  
And pituitous bodies must fo●bea●,  
Unless they like the dropsy in the rear.  
The Sea-fish, and of those, they in Rocks dwell  
Are finer, and in temperament excel,  
Digest more easy, and breed better blood  
Than the loose fry, that shoal it in the Flood:  
Yet in the stomach and the entrails they  
(Being little vi●cous) make too long a stay.  
Sweet river-fish slimy, and gross diet,  
Are glibery, and make egression quiet,  
More nourishing than Sea-fish, and of these,  
Those (which the current streams and gravel please,  
And do abhor annoyances of sinks,  
Which spoil their channels with their loathsome stinks)  
Are most delicious, such as perch and ●●out;  
Your Mud-fish all incline you to the Gout.  
But those delighting in sweet scours refine  
Their squamy sides, and clarify their life.  
The Fi●● of Lakes, and Motes, and stagnant ponds  
(Remote from Sea, or where no Spring commands,  
And intermingling its refreshing waves  
Is Tench unto the Mote, and Tenches saves,  
And keeps them medical) are of all sorts  
Less innocent, unless some River courts  
The ●ullen Nymph, and blending waters she  
Of a foul Mops●'s made Leucothoe.  
Her inmates otherwise, like herself, smell,  
Taste of the Harbour (that is) scent not well;  
Slow to digest: alive, they lived too close,  
And dead they can't their native dulne●s lose.  
Give me a Salmon, who with 
* A●a Remigii.  winged Fins  
'Gainst tide and stream ●i●ks o'er the fishing-gins  
Of locks and Hives, and circling in a gyre  
His v●ulting co●●s, he leaps the basfled wire.  
Let Fish have room enough and their full play,  
No liquour want, not on a Fish-street day.  
But they are all meat indigestible,  
Creating thirst, and spawn diseases well.  
Take the less viscous, gracile, cleanly swimmer,  
Smelling like S●elts, whose watery huts are trimmer,  
Than those of Pools and Ponds, or where on weed,  
Or nasty Alga, and base herbs they feed.   

Salt Fish, Can you with patience, Brethren all,  
Hear it, of Salter's and fishmonger's Hall?  
Salt Fish is never good, but on a day  
When you a vomit take, an't may not stay:  
Charge u●on charge, ten shillings cost to dine,  
And h●●f a Crown in Crocus and Squills Wine,  
To cast it up again? whose will adore  
My Arabian Doctors, o● Sir Theodore:  
Vomits nor lead I like, the pendent bullet  
Sh●ll never be the sweeper of my Gullet.  
What I do eat, I do intend to keep,  
By exercise digest, and little sleep.  
But feed not like Sir Theodore for fear  
Vomit nor bullet your o'recharged stomach clear.   

The Barrel Codd, and courtly Pole of Ling,  
Butter and oil marching in either wing,  
And Rope-Canary on the Van and rear,  
Or Graves, or Bourdeaux in a glass for Beer  
Bring on a Friday, storm Arabians then,  

* Mr. of the Swan Fish-street.  Cloudsly and 
* Mr. of the Swan Fish-street.  Ruckly are the better men.   

The River shellfish, and less Lobster-coats,  
Crayfish and crabs that swim, as those in boats  
Do row, are in a Pthisis singular  
Boiled in milk o'th' Beast of the long ear,  
And for Consumptive persons made a Cale,  
As much as 
* My confiding Fishmonger.  Colchis high fetched herbs prevail.  
You have the Fish, pray fall on if you will,  
Madam, the sauce shall not besowre the Bill.    

CHAP. XXIX. Of PULSE or GRAIN.  

WE take our rise from Rice, which we find dry,  
●th' fourth, and moderate hot i●h first degree:  
Boiled in fair water 'gainst the colic good,  
They call (the Windy) but a noble food  
Boiled in the milk of Almon●s, which doth lose  
Its ●●iptick quality, than La●yes don't refuse;  
The Candle-cup, they bravely nourish,  
Caus●ng the blood, and seminal virtue flourish.  
If that their Ladi●●ips will make a wash  
Again●t the Morphies, Ri●ie ●lower ●ash  
In ●ountain water, and this clean●ng grain  
Shall clarify the skin, and null the ●●ain.  
But you must ●●ri● it from its husk, its Rind  
Is venomous; and ●lee t●in any wine,  
Or water, ●ain i'th' mouth it doth create,  
Saith Avicen, and will imposthumate.   

Beans are of double sort, or dry, or green,  
Those fo● your Bo●●, these for your Boo●e● for-b●n▪  
The g●een i'th' 〈◊〉 degree are moist and cold;  
But cold and dry in the● 〈◊〉 height the old:  
Bad nourishment an● filthy humours b●eed,  
To a proverb ●●●ive, Ladies, take heed,  
Beyon● th' excuse o'th' Pu●py they exceed:  
Creates by vapours on the inju●'d brain,  
Malignant dreams, and our ch●st●●e p●ofane.  
The great white Bean in his minority,  
Boiled in successive waters, happily  
May be permitted, lose their Windiness  
If boiled with Mint or Comine, you them dress  
Both phlegmatic and Windy meat within  
But the Bean-floor is excellent for the skin.  
" Yet spite of Doctors, and when all is done  
" We will make bold with Pulse at Thorington,  
" And this stern Doctrine against Beans shall ne'er  
" Be held, nor gain repute in Leicestershire,  
Nor yet in Summersault, where Odcombe, bred  
Famous Tom Coriat, Pudding and Bean fed.  
Lentils saith Rasis are both cold and dry,  
Of temper middle others, so let't be  
Bread, melancholy blood, lick up the juice  
Of succulent bodies; spoil the visive use  
By drying qualities, for Corpulent,  
And persons phlegmatic a cure present,  
Used of● saith Isaac, fill with fumes the Brains,  
And cause amazing dreams, and capital pains.  
Ciches are of two sorts, one black, one white,  
The white is hot i'th' first degree, that's right,  
And moist i'th' middle site, hard to digest  
Causing inflammation in the puffed breast.  
Dilate the skin, as 'twere upon the wrack  
Eat (horses) then, until your bellies crack,  
And look most fair, and plump and round  
Fillet and Cascoines will light, and sound,  
The black Ciche is more hot, of moisture less  
Against obstructions of the Sp●een redress  
And liver opilatio●s, boiled, best,  
In horse reddish, it raiseth milk suppressed;  
urine provoks, and the spermatic vein,  
A great increase by this stout Pulse doth gain:  
Wherefore to Stallions 'tis a generous food,  
And makes them active for that noble brood.  
Peases (saith Arnoldus) are not much unlike,  
Wherefore some eat them, bravely by the Strike.  
Then Beans less windy, nor so smoothly pa●●  
The ventricle, lookin the Herbal glass  
Gerard's, and johnson's mirror, and their Pease  
Will every longing eye that sees them please.  
I have a friend that loves them, had a Tutor  
Would eat three mess without a coadjutor.  
Obedience therefore and affection move  
Not to dispraise, what two such wise men love.    

CHAP. XXX. Of Herbs and Plants.  

HElp Pauls-church-yard our physic garden now,  
(And let Tredeskin no more simples show.)  
Where simpling girls, and simpler Women stand  
To sell the gathered Herbage of the Land.  
Medea when she took her flight i'th' air  
Culled not so great ingredients, nor so rare▪  
Hither Apothecaries, hither hast  
Chi'rgians, and midwives (Busy Quacks at last)  
And decayed gallants, Lords of Lands are passant,  
And sequestered Divines buy up the grass out.  
The Ewe, sad Box and Cypress (solemn trees)  
Once Church-yard guests (till burial rites did cease)  
Give place to salads, and confined Apollo  
Trades in these Plants, that do hereafter follow▪   

Ladies secure your Noses, for I bring  
Garlick my first high scented offering.  
its temper hot and dry, whatsoever doth sent  
So strongly is of such a temperament,  
It warms cold bodies, hot anoys, expels  
Wind, and such vapours from the bodies cells.  
It doth incite to lust, an opener high,  
And in a Tertian makes the cold fit fly.  
A Lohoc, that's a Lambative, of this  
Deserves a sanum & expertum; 'tis  
Rare against Coughs, obstructions thick  
Extenuates, and cuts (ye but a lick  
Administered upon a liquorish stick  
For hotter Regions nought, but where the Bear  
Rules, 'tis a lusty, nasty, warming fare.  
The ploughman's Treacle, and sole Antidote,  
Let in the Patient, cure him for a groat.  
Its filthy Hogon is corrected thus  
Bo●●it, 'tis not so odoriferus.  
lentils or Beans eat after it do lay  
The strong Mephitis, Mints will take't away  
" But oh the proof of mower's entrails, which  
" Digest this Plant, as well as Horses Cich.   

Sorrel (saith Rasis) is both hot and dry,  
Gerard doth say it cools (undoubtedly)  
Exasperates the stomach, by which fight  
It moves it to a grateful appetite,  
In Summer season a most delicate sauce,  
In which the taste doth mightily rejoice  
And used with many meats: But when Saint Luke  
Appears once i'th' now un-red-lettered book,  
The salted legs, and springs of slaughtered Swine  
With Sorrel sauce do make us rarely dine.  
To those abound with yellow choler good  
And quencheth thirst (especially that o'th' Wood)  
If p●ssessed, the inflamed blood retreats  
From pestilent favours, Agues, and all heats.  
What virtue have the seeds if you do ask?  
Drunk in red wine, their good against the Las●.  
Now (Mountebanks English, or 〈◊〉 de France)  
Its juice (old Avicen) doth high advance  
And saith against the Tooth ache 'tis as sure  
As any caustics or your handkerchieff cure.   

Diu's hot and dry, saith Isaac, refines  
Ventosities, and tumours, stepped in wines  
The tops of Dill dried, and decocted, raise  
The candid flood i'th' via lacieas.  
Cleansing and causing milk, and doth remove  
Its windiness, Nurses, and mother's love.  
Provoketh urine, is to sperm a friend,  
And puts the mounting Hickets to an end,  
So do the seeds smell't to: Hippocrates.  
Confounds the Hicquets with a lusty sneeze,  
For by that violent stomach-quake, all meat  
(That lay offensive there) doth change its seat;  
Sunned, or boiled in oil, it mitigates  
Great pains, and shuts up Morpheus' heavy gates,  
Allaying vapours, that disturb the head,  
And makes us take the other nap at bed,  
No less affective is this precious Dill  
If boiled in wine against the Matrix ill.  
It doth disperse those clouds, with choke, and smuther  
The uterm vault, called (but not making) mother.  
This Laus Rei hitherto now comes  
Who'd think could hurt? its vitupexiums.  
All human good is mixed; wherefore be wise  
Use not daily, for it spoils the eyes.   

Smallage, or Garden Parsley, or that which  
Delights in waters, or the banks o'th' Ditch.  
Is hot, and dry, but yet the little seed  
Above the leaves i'th' qualities exceed.  
A mighty opener of obstructions tough,  
And smooths the way o'th' ureters, when rough,  
Provokes that serious tide, much more the root  
Boiled in a Broth, doth put the bladder to't.  
The root, or seeds in clysters help alone  
To evacuate, if not contuse the stone.  
It lays the torment of the guts, which may  
Be done by Epsam-beer or else by Whey.  
Most excellent in sauces, and in broth,  
Parsley, and butter, and the Table cloth,  
Are half the charge of a Fish dinner; so  
It is good, and bad sauce, the caveat know.  
Then as in Ruartaines tis, and Agues seen,  
It opens Liver stoppages, and spleen.  
So to the vintner's most assiduous curses,  
It will set open wide your Fish-day purses  
Amongst its mischiefs that, and this shall lie  
It's very hurtful to the epilepsy.  
" Which sickness is more dangerous of late  
" To fall i'th' street, or Tavern-fall i'th' State?  
Or age, or Oruch (for both words do hold)  
Are moist in degree second, in first cold,  
A kitchen Garden Herb, for the pot chief,  
But boiled a salad, bellies bound relief,  
Nourish, and Livers hot gently assuage,  
And raw, or sod allay a guttural rage,  
Or inflammation in the throat, withal  
The seeds in Meath drank, cure th' Icterical.   

Parsnips are of a Temper hot, more dry  
Then moist, and nourish well, not dainty,  
A thicker blood create, but yet not bad,  
A root spermatic makes a Scotchman mad,  
Inflative too, correct them then with Pepper,  
It is no Dulman, no nor nimble leper  
Out of the stomach, but makes wholesome stay,  
And for the Stagnant urine ridds the way.  
Beets are of divers colours, white, black, red,  
According to their hues so tempered,  
The white are moderately moist; and hot  
A garden herb good for the pottage pot.  
The red, and black more hot, abstersive all;  
Because compound of n●tro●s stuff, and sal,  
Whence their virtue diergerticks, said  
To purge by its 
* The Nose.  Emunctory the head,  
Good against sounds i'th' ear, and the tooth ache,  
And doth the Cupidinean locks unlach.  
But oh the riot of the Roman. Beet  
With such a salad their Grand Signior treat▪  
Rub up your noddles my brave English Cooks  
And make our red Beet; that excels in looks  
Excel in taste: what can't your wisdoms do  
With oil and Vinegar, and Pepper too.  
Make it an Antidote (my cunning men)  
And then you jump with Father Avicen.   

Borage is hot and moist, i'th' first degree,  
Or set i'th' confins of each quality.  
Both hot and cold, in its natural poise so just,  
That neither temperature exceeds it trust.  
A Plant ad Pondus (as they say) and where  
You find such balance, the proportions rare.  
The virtues eminent: Have you no courage?  
At any time revive your soul with Borage.  
That Azure flower hath in't a sovereign gift,  
And when a salad can the heart up lift.  
Good against either choler, red or black  
(Infus●d in wine de France, or nobler Sack.)  
Syrup of Borage will make sad men glad,  
And the same syrup doth restore the mad.  
A rare receipt for Bedlam, under deck,  
Prisoners, or my companions under se●▪  
Colo●orts are hot, and of a nitrous juice  
By the first they bind, by th' latter, loose,  
The broth is laxative, there runs the Salt,  
Eat, without broth their styptic, there's their fault.  
To make it unmalitious boil the coal  
In fountain water, cast it away whole,  
Then in a broth, where virtuous powder Beef  
Is boiled, boil that, Cato shall cry it chief  
Of meats, with which he will most amply dine,  
And frolic it, and lick the lusty wine  
That to his cramb, Caulis, or our coals  
His bellies debtor, and his jobbernole.  
For Colewort is an enemy tothth' vine,  
And can our wit's wine forfeited refine.  
Then Socrates, and Cato fear no baggage  
Nor scold, take tother bottle, tother Cabbage.  
It is for shaking hands, and dim eyes good,  
Forgive one fault of melancholy blood.  
What though its windy, Pepper will reform  
That tempest, and appease its flative storm.   

onions are hot and dry, i'th' fourth degree  
But garlic doth exceed i'th' quality.  
Onions are chopped into three several sorts,  
And never a one hath any good reports.  
As to our diet purpose boiled their best,  
Raw eaten worst, but with Vinegar dre●●▪  
They neither heat nor cool, saith Rasis, how?  
When Vinegar both virtues doth allow?  
So ordered, they inflame not unto thirst,  
But raise an appetite, the Carriers first  
And only sauce, his snuff, for the squ●●'d juice  
From's glanderd brains the humour will produce.  
(Good for his Teem and him) with Vinegar  
Immixed, it will the spotted Cutis clear.  
Provoks to sleep, so that your drowsy pate  
Is called most pat, an onion head of late.  
But yet beware, my friends of sleep, and night,  
'tis good to shut your eyes, but nought for sight.  
It dulls the senses, doth infect the breath;  
O does it so! away with it 'tis death.   

The Gourd (saith Avicen) is hot and dry  
(Like the wild 
* Colequentida.  Ci●rul on its quality.)  
In degree second, and its virtues, these,  
It purgeth yellow choler, disagrees  
With Melancholy; wine all might i'th' Gourd  
That hath been housed, purgation will afford.  
Much like our Melon, if they stand, and thrive,  
Are good to make the body laxative.  
Dioscorides saith, that the gourds juice  
Held in the mouth, will ease to the pain produce  
Of toothache. Bitter it is of Taste: know  
Most things that are of special▪ good, are so.   

Cumin is hot and dry, saith Rasis, good  
Against wind i'th' stomach; after food  
Taken a help at Maw, that's to concoct,  
by'ts seeds dr●nk Matrix▪ and the guts unlocked.  
From the pain colick●s the result is  
The very same by clyster or by Pultis.  
With Vinegar immi●t, the overflows  
Called menstrual are repulsed, and bloody nose.  
Secundum artem handled it assuages  
Whatsoever swelling● in the scortum rages,  
And Genitals, 'tis good for Gouty joints,  
And the procedure of it disappoints.  
Boiled with inflative meats, a remedy  
Against their Genuine ventosity.  
What would you more? there's not a nurse nor slut  
But knows 'tis good 'gainst Worms i'th' maw and gut.  
Coming again we shall more virtue find  
Those whom the Pl●urisie, or stitch do grind,  
Let them a bag of Cummin seed, and sal  
(Le-Bay) quill up and warm them all to mal.  
Besprinkled well with good wine vinegar  
And hot applied to th' side o'th' sufferer,  
It is probatum, and will save well nigh  
The Pl●u●us noted help, Plebotomy.   

Fennel is hot, and dry i'th' third degree,  
The seeds or leaves in P●●san made, the dry  
Breasts do replenish, and those hills of silk  
And snow, refurnish with the purest milk;  
Made a decoction they cleanse the reins,  
Open the Liver, and the kidney lanes.  
Do force the stone, and urine to avoid.  
And hath C●t●dian favours oft destroyed.  
By die●retick faculty, now tell  
The verses made on Oxford Holowell.  
" No man will hurt this well, that's wise,  
" For this hurts none, but cures the eyes.  
So Fennel, Roses, V●r●●n, Rue, and Celandine  
Made a water will do good unto thy eyes and mine.  
And to such persons cover to be lean,  
Fen●cularis aqua, scours them clean.   

Hyssop is hot saith Rasis, and if eaten  
Or into powder with some mixtures beaten  
Good for the dark of sight: A water made  
With this and Figs by th' skilful in the trade,  
Gurgl●d, doth unimpostumate the thro●,  
And when by rheums a difficulty's got  
Of swallowing, the straightened passages  
To this decoction yields, and the stops cease  
Lettuce is cold to th' end o'th' third degree,  
With us a salad of high dignity;  
loafed, and unwashed is best, cools the chafed blood,  
For sperm, for milk, for generation good.  
But not the seeds, they're of a quali●y  
Anterostical, that's quite contrary,  
It doth provoke to urine and to sle●p,  
nought for Letharg●ck pa●es: this salad keep.  
And till the Spring, its usual leaves produce,  
Its kindred corn-salad shall be in use.   

Mints in degree the second, hot and dry  
I'th' third, saith Gerard, of famed memory.  
If smelled unto Pliny the Historian writes  
The duller appetite to eat excites.  
Confortative to stomach, we commend  
It in burnt Claret at a vomits end.  
It stays the Hi●quets, Parbrake, and the scour  
By choler made in ventricle the lower  
Taken in juice of sour pomegranates: So  
In vinegar if upward blood do flow.  
In broth if boiled, Senior Pliny writes,  
It stays the blood profluvium, and the whites  
Good against Watry-eye, and scurfie head,  
Of children, and any tumour therein bred.  
With Honey and Spring water mixed it clears  
Absurd obstructions of surda●ter ears  
Infused in milk, against a mad dogs bite,  
'tis good for man, but hang the dog out right.  
Boiled in wine, and vinegar, alone  
It cures the strangury and Kidneys stone  
Against the stings of wasps applied, and Bees  
'tis good. I would there were no worse than these?   

Cresses though in the water do lie,  
Yet are of temp'rament most hot, and dry,  
Especially the seeds to th' fourth degree  
A salad, mixed with Herbal company,  
Virgil's moretum makes it one of those  
Herbs, which do sting with its sharp bite the nose.  

Et na●es a●ri strin●●nt Naftur●ia morsu.  'tis good against Scarbute, or Scorbuch,  
Be the disease old English, or new Dutch.  
It warms the stomach, and the Liver clears  
A● by the cure afore full well appears.  
For 'gainst the Scorbute nothing is so good  
As that which by its virtue clears the blood,  
It cures the worms i'th' belly, not the head,  
Not in a sheeps, wherein a long ones bred.  
Good for the stomach saith the Arab Rasis,  
But Dioscorides the herb disgraces,  
As to that vigour, but commends its power  
For expediting off the bloody scour,  
And though it hurts the early Embryo  
It doth provoke to that, which 
* Venus.  made it so:  
Poppy is white, and black, of this doth come  
The high Nercotick, dulling Opium:  
The whites more candid, and more la●dable,  
This causeth sleep, that death (saith Pliny well)  
Poppy both seed, and leaves, and heads are cold▪  
Stays rheums a cerebro: Be not too bold  
However with't, unless it tempered be  
With good allays, then 'tis a Remedy  
Not dangerous: Beware, best Lady, still  
Of herbs, that do some good, but greater ill.  
Of this is made rare Diacodium,  
The wand of Mercury, and Morpheus drum,  
When sharp diseases, and malignant favour,  
Disturb your rest (as I could wish it never)  
A Poppy caudle made with Almond-cream  
Shall bind the senses, and incline to dream.   

Parsley is hot i'th' second, dry i'th' third  
Degree: By it the stagnant urin's stirred,  
And female courses fixed do find their way  
And the red tide obeys her Cynthia.  
The seeds are hotter than the leaves or Root,  
They open, are abstersive, and drive out  
Aeolian Blasts, and stomack-tearing-toind,  
And them expel at fore door, or behind.  
I● is as helpful to the stone, and gains  
Credit upon the bladders grief, and reins.  
The colic passion is appeased: The doors  
The little doors o'th' body called the Pores,  
It opes by sweat, and makes transpire such vapours  
As fume the house, like ill extinguished tapers.  
It purifies the Liver; made an oil  
It cures the Morf●e, and the specked skins soil  
boiled in Ale the roots and seeds have got  
A ●ame 'gainst poisons, are an Antidote,  
And for its common use, there's scarce a dish  
Without this sauce to your quaint Flesh or Fi●h   

Leeks, or but leek with number singular  
E'en which you like, hot, and dry tempered are?  
Rasis commend●, and discommends the plant  
It is the Appetites friend to its provant  
But enemy to th' head which it doth pain  
And fills with dreams malignant the fumed brain,  
If that the Fountain of the Body's ill  
(The head I mean) let Leeks grow where they will  
Except on thy breastplate. But if you'll' need  
Upon this great Extenuator feed,  
Eat them with Endives, Purslane, Lettuces  
Charge of a salad will his heat appease  
Made in a Lohoc, or a loch, with Figs  
With Bdellium, almonds (tell me Dr Trig's  
Must they be blanched or no?) with liquorice▪  
A quantum sufficit, in short R S.  
With candid sugar, Ana, and these all  
Boiled in a Balneo, till Syrrupical,  
Against catarrhs, and suffocating rheums  
And squinances a power it assumes.  
Madam you'll think I cant, or little lack  
Of John Pontaeus, or an English Quack  
The Emperor Nero called Parrophagus  
That's Leek devourer, eat them like a sus,  
That's like a swine, which is the cause I think  
His memory unto this day doth stink   

Purslane is cold i'th' degree third, and moist  
In second: For stomachs by much wine deboyst  
And high inflamed is good, and extreme thirst  
Purslane will quench (when if your belly burst.  
With water, 'twill not slake) and for your tooth  
aching or edge, the leaves are good forsooth  
The faemal flux, and of boil 
Of Chole● yellow.  rubea  
Or any flux of blood the juice will stay  
If by a syringe you the same minister  
It cures the Matrix heats, the Guts by Glister;  
And Auicenna a new virtue starts  
That the leaves rubbed are medicine 'gainst the Warts,  
The Butchers 'gainst the herbwives seek relief  
And think that Purslane will put down raw beef   

Radish is hot, and dry, a sauce of course  
Both that called biting, and that called horse,  
Both heavy of digestion, both excite  
Before and in the Meal the appetite  
The leaves are more digestive than the root  
Which is a vomit, with some oxymel to't  
It cuts the phlegm, and by its gravity  
Like cheese▪ it make our victuals downward ply  
Water of Radish, or horse radish Ale  
Is good for urine, and provokes to stale,  
But leaves a ●●gou so distasteful I  
Wish that my nose, my palate were not nigh  
The root with Darnel, meal and vinegar  
Of wine de-●●anch, blue and black specks does clear  
That mixed with salt (saith Dioscor●des)  
Will milk in dried paps, and teats increase▪  
Secundum artem ordered makes away  
For the descension of the menstrua  
And mixed with Vinegar hath good dispatch  
Against Hodontalgia, or toothache.  
And without Rasis, or Hippocrates  
Rind on, and off, is eaten with green cheese   

turnip (saith Isaac) 's moist i'th' first degree  
And ●ot i'th' second, a good quality.  
Nature consists in hot and moist. We fall  
When fire licks up the humour Radical.  
Then turnips eat, which though they ill digest,  
Of Garden roots they are accounted best.  
It makes the skin fair as itself, and raises  
That Plimme, and somewhat more, and yet more praises  
For spermatic recruits it gets, they're all  
Good, long, the small, or round, which bears the ball.  
The sheets or tender tops for salads use,  
Boiled, they do belie Asparagus:  
The Commentator (if he guesseth right)  
Affirms they have a virtue good for sight.  
And Pliny (natures great Philosopher)  
Saith, boiled, to frigid feet they heat confer.  
I hold with Pliny, and almost dare swear  
My foot a boiled turnip will not bear.  
But what saith Dioscorides, alone  
A turnip stamped is for kibed heels for-bone,  
To made an Oven for the oil of Roses  
To roast in Embers, is the best of doses.  
Then turnips, 
An abstreperous eryer of turnips, and that disturbs the Author with his b●●ling.  cry man, East, North, West and South,  
And when they're sold, with wheelbarrow stop thy mouth.   

Rue is both hot and dry, i'th' third degree,  
At its approach flies cold ventosity,  
And clogging humours jog, it doth remove  
The sent from those garlic and onions love.  
The Herb (like sampire pickled) helps the sight,  
But so, or not so eat, spoils Cupid's fight.  
In Pestilential times like these, if you  
Do love your safety, stuff your nose with Rue.  
Who can deny what Pliny then attests,  
The leaves in wine are Antidote o'th' best.  
The water thrice distilled, the kidneys cleanse,  
And send all sand incontinent, from thence.   

Sage is of temper hot, and dry, the School  
Salernitan, concludes him for a fool  
That dies with Sage in garden. 'tis a herb  
Of virtue singular to a Proverb.  
And in its name are high auspicia  
Healthful and sovereign that is 
* Sage.  Salvia.  
Let those who to obortions subject are  
Make this same prudent herb their constant fare,  
And what it doth post Partum, for the next  
Consult Agrippa's, and Aetius text,  
Good for the Matrix, and its tenant, nought  
For the person, who, that to lodge there brought.  
And bridles nature's itch: Good for the Brains,  
And head, and senses, which the head contains.  
And how in Ale infused, and brewed, we cry  
It up, with Scabius, Fennel, Betony,  
Apothecary's shops can tell, whose trade  
During these Sage Ale morning draughts doth fade.  
The juice, as well as any black lead comb  
Where white hairs are, will make the black ones come.  
And Macer saith, that pulverised, it takes  
Away the venomous bites of poisonous Snakes.  
How in our late malignant favours we  
Account Sage possets a grand remedy,  
The Country cures can speak: Then for a stitch  
Or pleurisy 'tis poormans cure, and rich  
If in a wooden dish with coals the leaves  
Be dried, vinegar aspersed, it ne'er deceives.  
No maid nor man Cook (unless fool by Age)  
Will dress a pig and not i'th' sauce have Sage.  
Spinach is cold and moist, so temperate,  
The lungs, the throat, the stomach gratulate.  
This wholesome pot herb, which doth exercise  
His lonosing virtues 'gainst the bellies ties.  
Will it untie the bound? such recipes  
Restrained persons will extremely please.  
●t breeds but little, yet good nourishment  
We give't in favours to a good intent,  
And with as good success, if you herbs mate  
Alike, both open, and Refr●gerate.   

mushrooms, or Toadstools, offspring of the earth,  
Or else of Trees a puffy spongy birth.  
Are unto danger cold and moist, if eat,  
And raw cold pituitous blood beget.  
Those whose concavities are red, are worst,  
Let those feed on them to the colic cursed.  
Pepper and oil, and Salt, nay all cook's Art  
Can no way wholsemness to them impart.  
What Doctor Butler said of Cucumber,  
Of these ground-bucklers, we the same aver.  
Dress them with care, then to the dunghill throw'um  
A hogg wont touch 'em, if he rightly know 'em.   

Toadstools are worse than mushrooms of the ground,  
And with a poisonous quality confound:  
A pappy, viscous, gross, cold substance can  
Here find no praise, nor i'th' Salernitan:  
These four are signs of Death, saith Isaac,  
(An old Arabian, and no late-sprung Quack)  
Which if you cut i'th' middle, and let lie  
Till morn, you shall their putrid state descry.  
But oh the praises of the Roman wits:  
Meat for the gods, the Emperor's choice bits.  
Poets and Cooks are friends, and no● at odds▪  
I join, and say they're meat too for such gods.    

CHAP. XXXI. And first of FIGS.  

PReposterous! Figs before Apples placed,  
The Diet's false, and all the Work disgraced.  
Who marshals in the fruit? a Squire, 't may be,  
But yet no Apple-squire you plainly see.  
A fig for such a Squire: Madam, with leave  
You shall our Reasons for our Figs receive.  
‛ Both are coevous fruits of Eden's earth,  
‛ The Fig and Apple don't contend for birth;  
‛ Only the Apple, to one sex's shame,  
‛ Had the misfortune of the leading name.  
That fruit is inauspicious to your kind,  
And purposely I placed the dish behind,  
Lest being perched into the upper place,  
You would not think't a Banquet, but disgrace:  
Think you I should quick Atalanta please  
With golden Apples, whilst Hippomanes  
With Laurel crowned, revives the fatal story  
Of her deluded soul and long lost glory?  
Give place then exprobrating fruit, and come  
Thou Cover-shame, old figtree, in the Room:  
Though men of all the fruit, that hangs o'th' tree,  
Should love none less for your obscurity:  
For by its leaves we lost the precious sight  
Of that which is the masculine delight.  
Figs, either green or dry, do cleanse the sand  
From that straight Quarter, where the reins command.  
Windy when green, but then are laxative,  
Dry they do nourish, make the body thrive,  
And warm the blood, but an excessive use  
(' As all exceedings turn unto abuse)  
Does cause the Itch and Lice, but yet you may  
Give Wormwood in a Fig, for all I say.  
So much saith Rasis, hear what Isaak saith,  
(For a few Figs y'have two physicians, faith.)  
If that you eat them fasting, when all's clear,  
And no crude humours in the stomach rear,  
They make digestion noble, cleanse the breast,  
The lungs, the reins, and stones 
(a) The bladder.  membranous nest,  
Hath it no other virtue? this in sum,  
Roasted 'tis good for an impostumed gum.  
Dates are in temper like to Figs, that's dry  
And moist, but nourish not (so cleverly,  
As we may say) if often eat, they cause  
Gross blood, and both infect the teeth and jaws;  
Provoke to urine, but do swell the S●leen  
And Liver, and the blood turn all to phlegm.  
Still worse and worse; then take them Oxford Kate  
For Marrow-pies, with me they're out of date.  
Grapes are less hot than Dates, a luscious fruit,  
And its alliance blood doth straight recruit,  
Fattens the body, and extends one part,  
For which we need not wicked helps, nor Art.  
The thinner coated Grapes do the less harm,  
And though themselves be slender clad, will warm.  
They all are windy, so are bellows, yet  
Both these and they will fires and flame beget.  
The sweet Grape fattens, and the sharp makes lean,  
Infrigidates, if steeped in water clean.  
sour Grapes are very cold, the belly bind,  
By them the yellow bile and blood's confined.  
P●e●s'd Grapes and raisins are of temperate heat,  
A nourishing fruit, plau●●ble and neat;  
Good 'gainst ob●●ructive coughs, and in a Phthisis,  
Steeped a whole night in Sack do strange devices.  
Fruit of Granado, or pomegranates, are  
Both sweet and sour; both small nourishers▪  
The sweet are rather hot then cold, dispense  
Swellings and thirst, to Agues an offence.  
The sour-sharp Granate cooleth, dries, and binds,  
Those flux-oppressed his noble virtue finds:  
In Morbus Cholera a present cure,  
'Gainst either evacuation sure,  
Then syrup, Conserves, make with Art, and know  
It is ubique good above, below:  
And in the ●aundice, if its juice you try,  
None shall say long, that yellow is your eye.  
Quince, or Cydonean apple's cold and dry,  
Like to the former 
(a) Pomegranate is called Malum Punicum.  Punic in degree.  
Second, o●sweet, or sour, they're binder's stout,  
The sow●e are most restrictive without doubt;  
They rouse the appetite, they bind and lose:  
How's that? both fast and lose? we will us pose▪  
The empty stomach it doth bind, you'll say  
It night▪ where nothing is to send away.  
But ea● Quince after a full meal, anon  
It shall 〈◊〉 down and send to my uncle ●ohn:  
Raw not so good as roast, or bak●d, by Art  
It i● conveyed in every Apple-tart;  
Costive by quality, and therefore is Elixir,  
Where Vomitings▪ o●Lasks, or bloody flix are:  
Against immoderate Me●ses good, and ●uch  
Who blood from head, or stomach vomit much.  
But hear what Simeon Sethi says, if woman  
Pregnant, do make of Quinces a food common,  
She shall bring forth wise and discreet sons;  
‛ Eat Quinces, Ladies, bring forth Solomons.  
pears are all cold, of binding quality,  
Both sweet and sour, and choke-pear belly-ty,  
Unle●s in post-ca●es eaten, than they do  
As Quinces, which like them are costive too:  
Eaten with Toad-stools, or with mushrooms, they  
Lose their restringency, and pass away.  
Eight sorts of civil Pears, beside the wild,  
Gerard hath told in's Herbal well compiled,  
The Katherine called the proud; and James his Pear,  
The Burgomot, or the Palati●er,  
The Royal Pear, and Bishop's Pear, and had  
He found a Lower-house pear (though ne'er so bad)  
I durst profess ●ohnson, and he had meant  
To make of Pears, and Peers a Parliament:  
Apples, saith Rasis, are restringent all,  
Both sweet and sour; the Salern School will call  
Th' Arab to account, since 'tis d●ctatum,  
‛ Post pyra da po●u●, post pomum vade cacatum.  
Gocl●vius help to reconcile this Pique,  
Or else we must no more of Apples speak  
Then thus; Apples are windy, if you eat  
Them with anise seeds, or such like good meat;  
So Apples spiced, and made a good lamb's wool,  
(As saith Salerna) set us to the stool.  
Sweet smelling Apples are restorative,  
Plucked from their mother they do shorte● live▪  
Baked in a Pie with Quinces 'mongst them cut,  
They do the appetite to's business Put.  
But frequent eating weakeneth the nerves,  
Unless you use the syrup or conserves:  
I have a 
* Doctor H.H.  Doctor's, and a learned one'S  
word for't, that eat, they mitigate the stone:  
So though an Apple were the first fruit ill  
It keeps the Ladies at their closets still.  
‛ An excellent revenge, for this bad food,  
‛ By your rare skill preserved, conserved, is good.   

Peaches are cold and moist in degree second,  
A very fruitless fruit, and dangerous reckoned:  
If eaten after meat, it hath a quality  
Corruptive, and the chile doth putrify,  
In Sack imbibed, what will not Sack make good?  
They are admitted, but before your food.  
Unripe they're costive, Ripe they're laxative:  
‛ No man by Peach (in any sense) did live;  
The Peach D' Avant, that's called praecocia,  
And in the Roman tongue called Persica,  
Are ●alatsome, the nauseas abated  
By them, 'tis fit the fruit should be translated.   

Medlars, saith Isaac, are both cold and dry  
I'th' first degree, famed for astringency:  
Especially Medlar the dwarf, procure  
The giant-medlar, that's a Hector sure.  
Strengthens the stomach, and like Hercules  
Allays the tumults and the raging seas  
Of yellow Bile, by two commotions,  
The G●zzards glimmering called in strange notion,  
A report goes, saith Dioscorides,  
That Medlars eaten do the toothache ease.  
Gerard assures, that by the kernels bruised  
Gravel and urine's purged, the stone contused:  
Thy English 
(a) Open A.  nickname doth so much divine;  
But were it so, the Drug gifts would repine.   

Aprecocks in my Authors are not found,  
I shall transplant them from our Gerard's ground:  
Alike in nature to the Peach, so may  
Praecocia be the same with Praecoqua.  
We're at a loss, Johnson and Gerard both  
Know not their virtues (no nor I in troth.)  
‛ Preserve on Ladies, howsoe'er, 'tis good  
‛ presumed, until 'tis hurtful understood.   

Citrons, Pomecitrons, Lemons, Oranges,  
Are odoriferous and the scent please,  
Whether from Eden, Media, or Italy,  
Or his dominions, on whom both sun's lie;  
The Catholic Kings Hispania's, they proceed  
The Earth don't rarer fruit nor fragrant breed;  
Delicious to the eye, sweet to the nose;  
'Tis thought the fruit that Adam did depose  
From his high Paradise, un●o●thy wa●e,  
‛ And sad exchange! had it been ne'er so rare:  
Let's search it▪ ve●tues, for our Mother Eve  
Its outside glory could not so deceive:  
Though by the eye much mischief is conveyed,  
‛ Those eyes, those eyes, cried the just yielding Maid.  
Then what magnetic force convinced that soul,  
Which did the Monarch of the World control,  
And moved his ca●tiv'd ●a●●ions to a deed,  
Hath set an edge his long traducted seed?  
Was it the Rinds ●weet smell? My Py●●ha 
* Eve.  knew  
'Twas bitter, hot, and dry for all its h●e)  
‛ Children are caught with Pictures: was't the juice?  
My Grandam knew 'twas sour, and knew its use;  
Knew the seed bitte●, of like quality  
With the odorous rin●s; she would not die  
For Coloquintida; what though she knew  
It had hid virtue poison to subdue?  
Ah but the venom of that crafty Beast  
That circled 'bout he Tree, and stung her breast  
Wo●se then the 〈◊〉 did Cleo●atra: not  
Mi●h idatu●, Tri●cles, not Antidote  
Sufficient to ex●el: He whispered Death,  
And conv●igh'd H●ll in a soft, gentle, b●eath,  
Less could the ho●es of kee●ing ever fair  
(For Citron juice, for that is highly rare)  
Corru●t her judgement, whose tran●parent skin  
Was glass unto her nobler thoughts within.  
‛ That is the least of Beauty, that o'th' ●lass;  
‛ But since her fall, is all that's left alas!  
No the same Ap●le by its proxy told  
Of s●range Omniscience, 
* The Devil.  Never being old:  
‛ These were sure baits; since 'twas her fate to fall,  
‛ She fell not like a Fool; 'twas gallant all.  
Mulberries, cold and dry i'th' third degree,  
Ri●e make the belly moi●t, and lenify,  
Pass quickly out of stomach, or else have  
A pu●refaction, and there find a grave.  
Their juice is like the taste of Wine, and will  
Assuage the heat of any guttural ill:  
With Album graecum mixed, and gargled, cure  
Again●t Squinancies, and throat-Calenture.  
Infused in Fountain-water thirst remove,  
Ta●ne before meat th' appetite improve.  
By styptic quality they're very good  
Against all Fluxes of luxuriant blood.  
Madam, let none offend this prudent Tree,  
Which blooms not till old winter's gusts do fly;  
Reserves its juice within its principal,  
Wise as the Creature which it feeds; for all  
The bitter season of the year, his guest  
The silkworm keeps within its downy nest,  
And when Provisions on the Tree appear  
He doth unwind himself, and falls to's cheer:  
So may your Ladyship pass out of door,  
And feed on them under a Sycamore,  
Which with umbratile leaves will let no Sun  
Hurt your Silk-gown, by its namesake Creatures spun.  
Plums, saith old Isaac, are both black, and white,  
And red, and many coloured for delight:  
They're cold in general, and moist, do lose  
The belly, yellow Bile drive out o'th' house.  
If eaten, as we use at bartholmew-tide,  
Hand over head, that's without care or guide,  
There is a Patient sure; physicians sums  
Have never quicker Counters than these Plums.  
If you will needs be at it before Dinner,  
Eat and be regular, no Diet-sinner:  
Or else they putrify, and breed diseases;  
Wherefore in times of Plague it always pleases  
The prudent Magistrate t' inhibit fruit,  
And Dogs and Hogs, which all are helpers to 't.   

The Damson or plum Damascene is best,  
Plums that are dried give to a welcome Guest.  
But if I sup or dine, it well shall please,  
If that the Buttle● eat those Services.   

Cherries (who'd think it! Yeomanry of Kent  
It is enough to lose your half years rent)  
Are all unwholesome, generate bad blood,  
Viscous and phlegmatic, a feavorish food.  
The tarter tasted are the best, although  
The sweeter at a greater price do go.  
But Galen in his sage formality  
Must yield, if Round-cap Cherry ripe do cry.   

Almonds; the sweet are temperate, the bitter  
Better, and for Physical uses fitter:  
Their moderate heat and oily juice  
Doth lenify the throat, yet they refu●e  
To pass the stomach, unless sugared well;  
Then urine and obstructions they expel,  
And sperm augment: unskinned they nourish worse,  
Their coats, like b●an, a passage for them force.  
skinned they are styptic, and ●erform good task,  
When ordered against bloody Flix and Lask.  
The bitter, hot and dry, are wholesomer,  
Dissolve gross humours, cleanse the ureter,  
Expectorate and sweep the clogged lungs,  
And mundify the S●●leen, and Liver dungs.  
Their oil for many uses serve, get grace  
For keeping terse the Lady's skins and face:  
In physic more successful; so we shall  
Not give our Almonds only unto* Pal.  
Nuts are dry whoresons, though the Tree complain,  
she's thwacked and banged by every Country-Swain;  
'Tis not without a Fault, by Virgil's leave,  
Who did the Nut an innocent fruit conceive.  
For sim●ly of themselves they do great harm,  
Are most obstructive, and in stomachs warm  
And chol●rick engender fumes, and make  
The pate virtiginous, and deadly ache.  
Infused in Sack, their mended quality's  
Approved, who won't in Walnuts sacrifice  
An afternoon to Bacchus, if it rain,  
And moistened skies offend the studious brain?  
But Nuts, two Figs, and twenty leaves of Rue,  
And Salt contunded, (give the Devil his due,  
He is a Nutter too) will expel poison;  
N●y, taken fasting keeps off all that's noisome.  
In hazelnut, or Filbe●d, cold and dry  
Of temper, doth a windy moisture lie,  
Which yields but little nourishment, so tough,  
It will not pass the stomach soon enough,  
But lies like bullet, or small shot of lead,  
Yet u●on these the vulgar sort do feed.  
And at the Play houses, betwixt the Acts,  
The music Room is drowned with these Nut-cracks;  
Whose kernels made into a milk do bind,  
But of themselves the contrary we find,  
And rather cause the bloody Flix, and Lask;  
Wherefore forbear you brethren of the Cask,  
Who in your leather coats eat sacks of Nuts,  
You'll need no new Beer to keep clean your guts.  
Walnuts, or Royal Nuts, or 
* Juglans Jovis glans.  Nuts of Jove,  
(Here's name enough to get a noble love)  
Are the best sort of Nuts, and newly plucked  
Delight the taste, but little juice is sucked  
From its dry kernel, which doth slow desc●●●,  
And by its h●r● concoction doth offend.  
Made in oil▪ like Almonds, th●y make smooth  
The hands and face, like chizel to a booth,  
Or bo●rd, they ●lain the su●fie head, and scales,  
And ●ave the labour of our itching n●ils.  
The green and tender Nut, like Suck●d made,  
And boiled in Sugar ('tis Confectioners trade)  
Is ●o●t delightful and confortative,  
And anti●oticall, then eat, and live.   

chestnuts are dry and binding, in a mean  
twixt hot and cold (Nut Laodicaean then)  
But yet Sardi●ian breed, inflative high,  
As 〈◊〉 i'th' ●ire, their bouncing doth descry.  
After its windy ru●ture roast it well,  
And stee● it in good Sack, until it swell  
By th' infusion, than this Nut is good  
Provocative, and plenty makes of blood:  
Thus rarified by fire, and sewed in Sack,  
We may commend it fulcrum to the back.  
There is a chestnut called Equina, which  
Is horse-chestnut in our sole English speech,  
Which from the ●astern country came, and can  
Horse coughs and Astma's cure, why not in Man?  
We have a Nut too that is called Po●cine,  
An Acron willed we give it to our swine;  
Not meat for men, unless when so tunes all  
Are spent, we diet with the prodigal▪    

CHAP. XXXII. of SPICES.  

PEpper is vehement hot, and mixed with meat  
Assists the stomach to make quick defeat,  
And noble change, on that Mesh or Hoch-podge,  
Which else would longer in her region lodge;  
Great crutches to digestion, and disperses  
Wind, as King Aeolus in Virgil's verses.  
Wherefore on all inflative roots and grass,  
Asperse the Pepper-box, and they will pass.  
But let hot tempers, and in summer time,  
Fobear, unless they will inflame the chime:  
There are some persons too; be none of those,  
Who if they take't, take more than in the nose:  
But they that love the haunch of hunted Deer,  
With salt and pepper, make a noble cheer;  
Yet 'cause my reverend Prelate loves it not,  
With other spices let him make it hot;  
Churchmen must be approved, and verily  
I do submit in more than ordering pie.   

Ginger is hot and moist, and well digests,  
The City Cooks do wisely in their Feasts,  
(Not use it gingerly whereby such Fire,  
And piles of meat concoction safe acquire.  
Wherefore the use of it, and other Spices,  
Have raised the Groce●s, and some quaint devices  
To be o'th' Twelve, to wit, twelve Companies,  
Because of these salvifical supplies,  
As Pepper, M●ce, Cloves, currants and raisins,  
And Prunes, rare ware! kept we the old seasons:  
But that high drug Tobacco free doth pass,  
Whether we have a Christ-tide, or Christmas.  
But to our Ginger (which besides in Ale  
Against its flativeness it doth prevail)  
To livers cold, and stomachs likewise so,  
It doth a friendly heat and hel● bestow;  
Its virtue's known in Com●osition,  
For obscure eyes, so saith my Portington,  
And so saith Rasis, if that dimness be  
Produc●d from moisture and humidity.  
So Avicen commends it to the head  
And throat, with raw cold rheums encumbered.  
Good for the memo●y (saith the same man)  
Forget not then the old physician,  
For your old Blades are best when all is done,  
For they were wise, and had read Solomon.  
Zedoary's hot and dry in the degree  
Next to the first: The Dispensato●y  
Is frequent in its use, for it discusses  
All flatulency which in bodies buzzes;  
It fattens too by occult quality,  
(That's the old help in physic) let it be;  
The world is not discovered all, we can't  
Know any thing completely, not a Plant,  
For every Plant doth hide a Deity,  
And like the Sensitive shrinks when we pry,  
Or touch, beyond decorum, stands the show  
When modest inquisition comes to know.  
But for its virtue known, let it suffice,  
It hath the name of treacle by the wise;  
Good against poisons, and infections good,  
Whether they centre in the spirits or blood.  
Wherefore its use we may commend to all,  
In this next Spring, and in the present Fall.  
It is to th' stomach most comfortative,  
Raiseth the appetite, the scent doth drive  
Of noisome garlic, Onions, and strong Leek,  
(Which make the Ladies at a kiss turn cheek.)  
Good against colic, Stomack-Pains, and Lask,  
And drunk in wine allays our heat of Cask;  
A Panacaea rustic, not sure a greater;  
Yes, Doctor Everard hath found a 
* His universal M●dicine, Tobacco.  better.   

Galingale, both the small and greater root,  
(From India this, from China that sought out)  
Is hot and dry i'th' third degree, sovereign  
Against the maladies of a col● brain  
If it's but smelled unto; but chewed is rare  
For those whose lungs and breath ill savoured are,  
But if the stomach's region's stuffed, and torn  
By wind, let no man this rare Medicine scorn.  
Or when we stomach lack unto our meat,  
It will ●rocure it, and do greater feat,  
(Digest) and greater yet; helps after third  
Concoction, prime food for Venus' Bird:  
And for the colic grief and colder reins,  
The shops can tell you what a price it gains.   

Clove-berry's hot and dry, astringent too,  
Like Cloves in virtue, and in outward show.  
In scent and taste most aromatical,  
(Such Alexander fumed his skin withal,  
Unto odorous transpiration)  
Is good 'gainst Goat-evacuation,  
And Rammish breathings: good too for the eyes,  
Annoyed by cold Catarrhs and Crudities  
Bred in the stomach; Livers cold it warm,  
Would all exotic things did no less harm.   

Rasis saith cinnamon is hot and dry,  
Strengthens the Liver by that quality,  
And stomach too, and gets an appetite,  
And sweeps the wind out of that region quite:  
It doth obstructions clear, that stop the reins,  
Forcing the u●ine in strangurial pains;  
Provokes the Menstrua, old Isaac saith,  
The midwives are of a contrary faith.  
'Tis wholesome made in sauce, and fumes the breath,  
And a Sack posset rarely flavoreth.   

Saffron is hot and dry i'th' first degree,  
The weakened stomachs friend: no enemy  
Unto obstructed Livers, not their breath,  
Which is so short (it differs not from death.)  
The feeble parts it comforts: don't you see  
The Saffron Cawdle every morning fly  
Into the Lady's chambers; they are wise,  
And will take nothing dangerous 'fore they rise.  
For women hard of labour present ease,  
Rasis prefers it 'fore Man-midwiferies,  
Or womens' too, and saith that this alone  
Is the Lucina to be called upon.  
Put into wine it doth inspirit that,  
Firks up its virtues, were it ne'er so flat;  
And in the drinker strikes a cheeriness,  
That Plunder can't allay, nor lay distress.  
It is enough; thy virtues are so high,  
I do commend thee to the Cavalry.   

caraways, or seeds of Caria, whence they take  
Their name, are hot and dry, when made in Cake,  
Or into Confects▪ wholesome Recipe▪  
Against the urines painful stoppages:  
Dissolve collected wind in stomachs crude,  
And blasts Hypocondriacal extrude:  
They Wor●s in children mortify; are best,  
Eat in the van, not i'th' rear▪ o'th' Feast,  
(As is the usual custom) when with cheese  
And apples, these are sawcer-services,  
Correctors of th●t windy fruit, an● why  
Ex●el not wind without their company?  
Wherefore in bread with ●nniseeds (which have  
Virtues alike) immixed, they'll physic save.    

CHAP. XXXIII.  

MUstard is hot and dry, above the third  
Degree, by it the br●in and stomach's stirred,  
And watty humours in born ●egions dried,  
Her Cou●trey-man it's 〈◊〉 virtue tried,  
When that it caught her by the nose, did cry,  
(A pox of her, a ●ox of ●ewxbury.)  
Good sauce for Pork, and ●oose, and Brawn in chief  
For sausages, and Tri●es, and powdered Beef;  
Good for the int●llect, saith Avicen,  
I do 〈◊〉 it unto G●tham, then,  
But they must drink it fa●ing; which they will  
N●●e● observe, though to gain Solomon's skill:  
But yet for humou●s viscous, thick and tough,  
The seed of Mu●●ard is as good as snuff:  
And ●ulveriz'd, and in vine-blan●h de France  
Infused, 'twill make a Tertian Ague dance;  
It will expectorate, and further reach,  
Even to the Stone (if Pliny●ightly teach.)  
But th●n in vinegar you must i● lay,  
Through Alpine hills these two will make a way,   

Salt is alike with Mustards quality  
High-priz●d with us, but more in Gallia,  
Where 'tis a sovereign sauce, fit for a King,  
A sauce finds meat, and clothes, and every thing;  
It takes away fas●idiousness in meat  
(I cannot say, that which the French do eat)  
Who loath even Salt itself, and heartily ha●e  
It, since it comes obtruded on a Rate.  
Yet it subtiles the taste, and makes it play,  
Removing gro●sness from the Uvul●;  
Excites and sharpens duller appetite,  
Hunger and Salt are sauce, or none is right.  
But too much Salt licks up and burns the blood▪  
Just in the body as it is in food,  
Which is exuct, and dry, and juyceless made▪  
Where that its briny fire doth much invade;  
As by experience, to their constant grief,  
Our Mariners do find it in their Beef,  
And Sea provisions, which retu●ns them all  
Tro●hies of Salt, sadly Scorbutical.  
To those that do in Salt too much delight,  
It minorates the seed, bedimms the sight.  
I have two F●iends of either Sex, which do  
Eat little Salt, or none, yet are friends to,  
Of both which persons I can truly tell,  
They are of patience most invin●ible:  
When out of temper no misch●nce at all  
Can put, no▪ if towards them the Salt should fall.  
I know a pretty Pearl such use hath got  
Of Salt, he'd eat (if need) up Madam Lot,  
A little chole●ick Spar●, a very fire,  
Whom if to make your friend you do desire,  
You shall not need a long experience make,  
His Bushel's eaten, and you may him take:  
Though these two tempers are excessive, know,  
A trencher-Salt fo● Tables we allow.  
Rasis saith, Vinega● is dry and cold,  
It makes its lovers macilent and old,  
A vinegar-fact fellow, as we say,  
A Constable on his installing day,  
Looks as if in urine he were soused;  
Beware nightwalkers, you will all be 
* In the Counter.  housed,  
It doth destroy the bodies noble juice,  
Unsucculents the back, and spoils its use;  
A help to Quartan Agues; and all such,  
Who with black Choler do abound o'er much,  
Which it confirms and fixes, E contrae,  
It doth disperse, and infirm Choler Rubea:  
It gives a pass of gust in diet, mends  
The duller juice, and downward grateful send  
There are disputes, whether 'tis hot or cold,  
I'm for my Sages, and with them must hold.   

Honey is hot and dry (saith Isaac)  
In degree second, not doth virtue lack,  
Good for Cacectick persons, whose gross chiles  
And evil humours rarely it subtiles,  
And makes them remeant, passant through the skin,  
Where thousand little doors are to be seen.  
If you would know what are those little doors,  
Madam, undoubtedly they are the Pores.  
The foulness of the putrid blood in veins  
It purifies, cleanseth those channels stains;  
Wherefore let all, whose constitution's cold  
And moist, decrepit persons, and the old  
Lick Honey, or the drink-compound thereof,  
'Twill warm their chillness, and 'twill cure their cough:  
But you, my Friends, of choleric tempers, know  
Honey like choler is, and turneth so:  
Live Honey (as we say) and eaten raw,  
Is much inflative, rakes the breast and Maw,  
Provokes by vomit and by Siege; but supped  
In new laid Egg rare salve for lungs corrupt.  
What need we longer praise it, when we know  
Its Providore, from every flower doth blow,  
Sucks universal Balm, so in a spoon  
You take Gerard's divine 
* The Herbal.  Collection.  
So that the gleanings of the vigorous Bee  
Is Johnson's labours neat Epitome.  
Whom would not this glorious juice entice  
To taste it, though at loved Jonathan's price?   

Oils.  
Of oils the oil of Olives wears the bays,  
Hath higher virtues, therefore higher praise:  
Pliny the Senior, (whom Vesuvius kills,  
And th' eructations of those fiery hills,  
A sad example, and precaution gives  
To all (though ne'er so learned) inquisitives,  
Not to be wise, and peep in things too high,  
We have our Aetna's in Divinity)  
Pardon the length of this Parenthesis,  
That Pliny shall declare oils qualities:  
It is all bodies suppler; but the dry  
And hidebound ought it most to magnify;  
Vellum-faced fellows, living whitleather,  
Eat Genoa Olives, and the oil together,  
Until your parchment bodies give a soul,  
Sordid and covetous train-oil can't unfoul;  
It makes the body strong and vigorous,  
(A word of late in wondrous use with us,  
But then against the sacred oil) it drives  
Poisons, though double twist by jealous Wives.  
It gently lays the torments of the guts,  
Cleanseth the tripes, and o●es those lower huts:  
The headache pains it cures, and mildly swages  
The ardour that in burning favours rages.  
What windy vapours dares i'th' body stay,  
Or come in this aerial Unguents way?  
Then if your eyes you'd have like Diamonds  
Sparkle, (with such rare flame your eyes abounds,  
Madam) oil will ●hem clarify, advance  
A handsome face to Cherub's countenance.  
The Cerusses are known, and we allow  
To you the mellow sleek-stone of the brow;  
Such Arts are legal, wot you what Hester  
Bestowed in sweets, when for the King she dressed her?  
For all our long and still upheld turmoils,  
And all my suffering, I'm for sovereign oils.   

The oil of Nuts most vehement and hot,  
Let them, who fistulas i'th' eye have got,  
Use it from Madam Stepkins hand, or buy  
It well compounded by good Surgery.   

The oil of Almonds is more temperate,  
It doth the breast and lungs cleanse and dilate:  
The grated reins and bladder do receive  
Huge ease, when we this lenifier give.  
Specks in the face it takes away, how so?  
When Ladies that use oil have Specks we know:  
The round, the long, the star, the great, the lesser,  
And are made Ursa's by their Woman-dresser.  
Though Vrsa is a bear, I mean them none,  
Unless it be a Constellation.  
The scars of Wounds by oil and Honey mixed  
Are plained and leveled though a long time fixed:  
Rare remedy in fighting blustering times,  
Such as are ours, the more, God knows, our crimes:  
This Medicine is most parable, not hard;  
Hast thou the Morphyes, use it Renegard,  
Thou who hast ventured much, and bravely dared,  
When that thy body is one scar, as chance  
May make it in thy next renowned advance,  
Then call for oil of Nuts my Renigard.   

Now like the squirrel, which on Nuts doth feed,  
We leap from verses to some nobler deed.    
FINIS.