TABLE TRAITS, 
 
 WITH 
 
 SOMETHING ON THEM. 
 
 BY 
 
 DR. DORAN. 
 
 Je suis aujourd'hui en train de conter ; plaise a Dieu que cela no. 
 soit pas una calamite publique."— Brillat Savarin. 
 
 LONDON : 
 RICHARD BENTLEY, NEW BURLINGTON STREET; 
 
 OLIVER & BOYD, EDINBURGH; HODGES & SMITH, DUBLIN; 
 
 AXD TO BE HAD OP ALL BOOKSELLERS, AND AT THE RAILWAY STATIONS. 
 
 1854. 
 
'c^f^f 
 
 V b 
 
 LONDON : 
 R. CLAY, PRINTER, BREAD STREET HILL. 
 
TO 
 
 THE RIGHT HONOURABLE 
 
 HENRY, EARL OF HAREWOOD, 
 
 IN GRATEEUL MEMORY OE BY-GONE 
 
 HAPPY YEARS, 
 
 THIS VOLUME IS INSCRIBED 
 
 BY 
 
 THE AUTHOR. 
 
BILL OF FARE. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The Legend of Amphitryon — a Prologue 1 
 
 Diet and Digestion 9 
 
 Water 14 
 
 Breakfast 26 
 
 Materials for Breakfast 31 
 
 Corn, Bread, &c 36 
 
 Tea 48 
 
 Coffee 57 
 
 Chocolate 64 
 
 The Old Coffee Houses 67 
 
 The French Caf^s 80 
 
 The Ancient Cook and his Art 86 
 
 The Modern Cook and his Science 99 
 
 Pen and Ink Sketch of Car^me 114 
 
 Dinner Traits 123 
 
 The Materials for Dining 136 
 
 A Light Dinner for two 169 
 
 Sauces 190 
 
 The Parasite 219 
 
 Table Traits of Utopia and the Golden Age 230 
 
 Table Traits of England in the Early Times 244 
 
 Table Traits of the Last Century 260 
 
 Wine and Water . 282 
 
 The Birth of the Vine, and what has come of it 287 
 
IV BILl. OF FARE. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The Making and ^Farring of Wine 303 
 
 Imperial Drinkers and Incidents in Germany 312 
 
 An Incident of Travel 313 
 
 A few odd Glasses of Wine 324 
 
 The Tables of the Ancient and Modern Egyptians 341 
 
 The Diet of Saints of Old 353 
 
 The Bridal and Banquet of Ferques 372 
 
 The Support of Modern Saints 377 
 
 The Caesars at Table 394 
 
 Their Majesties at Meat 412 
 
 English Kings at their Tables 442 
 
 Strange Banquets 467 
 
 The Castellan Yon Coucy 473 
 
 Authors and their Dietetics 487 
 
 The Liquor-loving Laureates 508 
 
 Supper 513 
 
TABLE TEAITS, 
 
 WITH SOMETHING ON THEM. 
 
 THE LEGEND OF AMPHITRYON. 
 
 A PEOLOGUE. 
 
 " Le veritable Amphitryon est V Amphitryon ou Von dine^ — Moliere. 
 
 Amottg well-worn illustrations and similes, there are 
 few that have been more hardly worked than the above 
 line of Poquehn-Moliere. It is a line which tells us 
 pleasantly enough, that he who sits at the head of a 
 table is among those "respectable" powers who find an 
 alacrity of worship at the hands of man. I say, " at the 
 hands ;" for what is "adoration" but the act of putting 
 the hand to the mouth (as expressed by its components 
 ad and 05, oris) ? and what worship is so common as that 
 which takes this form, especially when the Amphitryon 
 is amiable, and his altar well supplied ? 
 
 But such a solution of the question affords us, after 
 all, no enlightenment as to the mystery of the reaUty of 
 Amphitryon himself, whose name is now worn, and some- 
 times usurped, by those who preside at modern banquets. 
 
 B 
 
2 TABLE TEAITS. 
 
 Was he real ? is he a myth ? was he ever in the body ? 
 or is his name that of a shadow only, employed for 
 purposes of significance ? If real, whence came he ? 
 What does classic story say of the abused husband of 
 Alcmena ? 
 
 Amphitryon was a Theban gentleman, who had two 
 nephews, fast young men, who were slain by the Tele- 
 boans. This is a myth. They were extravagant indi- 
 viduals, of the class of those who count the chimes at 
 midnight. Their father could not help them ; and so the 
 uncle, a bachelor, was expected to do his avuncular office, 
 spend his substance for the benefit of his brother's chil- 
 dren, and get small thanks for his trouble. His brother, 
 however, had an article of small value, — a daughter, 
 named Alcmena ; and this lady was given in marriage to 
 her uncle, without any scruple about the laws of affinity. 
 As soon as the ceremony of the betrothal was over, 
 Amphitryon departed to punish the Teleboans ; and he 
 had not been long absent, when Jupiter presented him- 
 self in the likeness of the absent husband, set up a 
 household with the readily-convinced Alcmena, and became 
 the father of Hercules. When Amphitryon returned, 
 his surprise was natural, and his ill-temper not to be 
 wondered at. But Jupiter explained the imbroglio in a 
 very cavalier way, as was his custom, and which they 
 who are curious may see in the liveliest of the lively 
 comedies of the miller's man, Plautus. 
 
 An incident connected with the story shows us that 
 Amphitryon, fond of good living generally, and of beef 
 in particular, made a razzia among the Teleboan herds, 
 and brought back all the cows and oxen he found amongst 
 them. He was exhibiting the cattle to his brother 
 Electryon, when one of the animals strayed from the 
 herd ; and Amphitryon, in order to bring it back, flung 
 a stick at it, but with such violence, that the weapon, 
 
THE LEGEND OF AMPHITEYON. 8 
 
 falling on tlie horns, rebounded as violently upon 
 Electryon, who died upon the spot. But this, too, is 
 a myth ; and I have no doubt but that Electryon died 
 of indigestion ; for the Teleboan beef was famous for 
 its toughness. Indeed, many of the Teleboes them- 
 selves were so disgusted with it, that they abandoned 
 their ^tolian homes, and settled in the island of 
 Caprese. 
 
 The Egyptians claim Amphitryon for their own. They 
 boast that his dinners at Memphis were divine, and that 
 Hercules, his son, was among the last-born of the gods ; 
 for Hercules was more than a hero among the leek- 
 worshippers of Egypt. But the truth is, that the story 
 of Amphitryon, his strength, his good fare, and his hard 
 fate, belongs to a more distant period and land. It is a 
 Hindoo story, the actors are children of the sun, and 
 Voltaire declares that the tale' is to be found in Dow's 
 " Hindostan ;" but that is as much of a fable as the legend 
 itself of Amphitryon, whose name, by the way, may be 
 as easily "Indicized" as that of Pythagoras. 
 
 In Scotland, the crime of child- stealing is distinguished 
 by the title of "plagiary ;" and an instance of the latter 
 is here before us. When Plautus sat in his master's 
 mill, and thought over the subject of his lively comedy, 
 founded on the story of Amphitryon, he took for granted 
 all that he had been told of his hero's birth and parentage. 
 But the classical Amphitryon is, as I have said, but a 
 stolen child. His home is in the far East ; and his his- 
 tory was calling up smiles upon the faces of listeners b}^ 
 the Indus long before the twin founders of Rome had 
 been intrusted, by their nurse Lupa, to walk alone. The 
 Hindoo Amphitryon was a fellow of some renown, and 
 here is his story. 
 
 A Hindoo, whose name, indeed, has not descended to 
 us, — but he was the individual whom the Greeks stole, 
 
 B 2 
 
4 TABLE TEAITS. 
 
 and called Amphitryon, — lived many years ago. He was 
 remarkable for his gigantic strength and stature ; and he 
 not only found the former a good thing to possess, but 
 he used it like a giant. He had for the wife of his 
 bosom a fair, but fragile, girl, who lay in his embrace, as 
 she sang to him at sunset, "like Hebe in Hercules' 
 arms." It was not often, however, that such passages of 
 peace embellished the course of their daily life. The 
 Hindoo was jealous, and his little wife was coquettish. 
 The lady had smiles for flatterers ; and her monster of a 
 husband had a stick, which showered blows upon her 
 when he detected her neglecting her household work. 
 Cudgelling took its turn with caressing, as it did in the 
 more modern, and consequently more vulgar, case of 
 Captain Wattle and Miss E.oe ; and finally there was 
 much more of the first than there was of the last. One 
 summer eve, the husband, in a fit of frantic jealousy, 
 assaulted his wife so ferociously, that he left her insen- 
 sible on the threshold of their house, and threatened 
 never again to keep up a menage with so incorrigible a 
 partner. 
 
 A Hindoo deity, of an inferior order, — not the King of 
 gods and men, as in the Grecian legend, — had witnessed 
 the whole proceeding from his abiding place in a neigh- 
 bouring cloud. He smiled as the husband disappeared ; 
 and, gradually descending in his little palace to the 
 ground, he lightly leaped on to the firm set earth, gave 
 a hurried glance at the unconscious and thickly -bruised 
 beauty, and then, in testimony of his ecstatic delight, he 
 clapped his hands, and commenced revolving on one leg, 
 as D'Egville used to do, when Venua's violin led the 
 orchestra, and gave him strength. 
 
 The spirit, having subsided into repose, thought for 
 a while, and speedily arrived at a resolution. It infused 
 itself into a human body, which was found without diffi- 
 
THE LEGEND OF AMPHITETON. 5 
 
 culty, and it clothed the whole under the counterfeit 
 presentment of the errant husband. These feats of trans- 
 mutation were common among the eastern deities ; and I 
 take for granted that my readers are aware that Pytha- 
 goras himself — who is connected with Table Traits, on the 
 subject of beans — was no other than Buddha Goroos, who 
 slipped into a vacant body, and taught the metempsychosis 
 to wondering Europe. 
 
 The wife of the Hindoo giant was something astonished^ 
 on recovering herself, to find that she was seated, without 
 any sense of pain, on a bench in the little garden, with 
 her apparent husband at her feet, pouring out protesta- 
 tions of love and assurances of fidelity. She accepted all, 
 without questioning ; for it was all too pleasant to be 
 refused. A new life commenced. The married pair 
 became the admiring theme of the village ; and when a 
 son was born to them, there ensued such showers of 
 felicitations and flowers as had never fallen upon married 
 lovers since the Hindoo world first started on its career, 
 on the back of the self-supporting elephant. Their moon 
 never ceased to shed honey ; and this was flowing, 
 sweetly and copiously as ever, when, one sultry noon, the 
 vagrant husband returned home, and, confronting the 
 counterfeit at an inner door, bitterly satirized the vanity 
 of women who indulged in capricious tempers and Psyche 
 glasses. In an instant, however, he was conscious that 
 his other self was not a reflection, but only the cause of 
 many that began crowding into the brain of the true 
 man. The cool complacency of the counterfeit irritated 
 the bewildered and legitimate husband, and an affray 
 ensued, in which the mortal got all the blows, and his 
 rival all the advantage. The wife was herself perplexed, 
 but manifested a leaning towards the irresistible divinity. 
 In vain did the gigantic original roar forth the tale of his 
 wrongs, and claim his undoubted rights ; and it was only 
 
(5 TABLE TEAITS. 
 
 during a lull in the storm that he heeded a sugges- 
 tion made, to the effect, that all the parties should 
 submit their case to the judgment of an inspired 
 Brahmin. 
 
 This eminent individual speedily perceived that, of the 
 double-man that stood before him, one was a dupe, and 
 the other a deity, — something, at all events, above 
 humanity. The question was, how to discover the 
 divinity. After much cogitation, this was the judgment 
 pronounced by the dusky Solomon: "Madam," said he 
 to the perplexed lady, " your husband was known as being 
 the most robust man ever made out of the red earth, of 
 which was composed the father of us all. Now, let these 
 two litigants salute you on the lips ; and we pronounce 
 him to be the true man who comes off with the loudest 
 report." The trial took place forthwith in presence of the 
 assembled multitude. The Indian mortal first approached 
 the up-raised lips of his wife ; and he performed the 
 required feat with an echo that was as half a hundred 
 culverins to the "pistol-shot" kiss recorded of Petruchio. 
 The Judge and the people looked curiously to the defend- 
 ant, as wondering how, on the pretty instrument before 
 him, he could strike a note higher than his rival. The 
 Indian god addressed him to what seemed a rose-bud wet 
 with dew ; and therewith ensued a sound as though all 
 the artillery of the skies were saluting, too, in honour of 
 the achievement. The multitude and the Brahmin 
 looked, for all the world, as if they had lost their hear- 
 ing ; and it was calculated that the astounding din might 
 have been heard by the slumbering tortoise below the 
 antipodes. At length, the assembly hailed the deity as 
 the undoubted Simon Pure, and looked towards the Brah- 
 min for confirmation of their award ; but the Brahmin 
 merely remarked to them, with urbanity, that they were 
 the sons and fathers of asses, and were unable to distin- 
 
THE LEGEND OE AMPHITRYON. 7 
 
 guish between the almost invisible seed wbicli diets the 
 bird of Paradise, and the gigantic palin of the garden of 
 the gods, each leaf of which is of such extent that an 
 earthly courser, at his utmost speed, could not traverse it 
 in fifty millions of mortal-measured years. " Here is the 
 true husband," added the Judge, putting his hand upon 
 the shoulder of the Indian, " who has done all that human 
 being, in the particular vocation required, could do ; and 
 here," added he, turning reverentially to the other, "is 
 some supreme being, who has been pleased to amuse 
 himself at the expense of his servants." 
 
 The god smiled, and confessed to the excellence of the 
 Judge's perspicuity by revealing himself in his true, and 
 somewhat operatic, form. He ascended the cloud, which 
 appeared in waiting for him like an aerial cab, and, look- 
 ing from over its side, laughingly bade the edified multi- 
 tude farewell, adding, that he was the deity appointed to 
 preside at tables that were not ungraced by the fair ; — and, 
 " if these have a cause for complaint, it is my privilege 
 to avenge them according to my good pleasure." The 
 ladies thereupon flung flowers to him as he rose, and the 
 husbands saluted his departure with rather faint cheers ; 
 but throughout India, while orthodoxy lasted, there never 
 was a table spread, but the master thereat, prince or pea- 
 sant, invoked the Hindoo deity to cast the beams of the 
 sun of his gaiety upon the board. Heresy, however, in 
 this matter, has crept in ; and, if Hindoo feasts lack real 
 brilliancy, it is because the sunlight of the god no longer 
 beams from the eyes of the fair, who are no longer pre- 
 sent sharers in the banquet. It is otherwise in Europe, ^ 
 whither, perhaps, the god came, and aped Jupiter, as well 
 as Amphitryon, when he perplexed the household of 
 Alcmena. He sits presiding at our feast, ensconced within 
 a rose; from thence his smiles urge to enjoyment, and 
 the finger on his lip to discretion; and every docile 
 
S TABLE TRAITS. 
 
 guest whispers suh rosd, and acknowledges the present 
 god. 
 
 It is said, in India, that this divinity was the one who 
 gave men diet, but forgot digestion. It was Hke giving 
 them philosophical lectures, without power to understand 
 them ; and the case is still common enough upon earth. 
 These subjects demand brief notice, were it only by way 
 of appendix to this prolegomenical chapter. 
 
DIET AND DIGESTION. 
 
 " No digest of law 's like the law of digestion." — Moore. 
 
 Our good neighbours the French, or rather, the philo- 
 sophers among them, have asserted that the perfecting 
 of man and his species depends upon attention to diet 
 and digestion ; and, in a material point of view, they are 
 not far wrong ; and, indeed, in a non-material point of 
 view, it may be said that the spirit, without judgment, is 
 very likely to be exposed to indigestion ; and perhaps 
 ignorance complete is to be preferred to an ill-digested 
 erudition. With diet and patience, Walpole thought all 
 the diseases of man might be easily cured. Montesquieu, 
 on the other hand, held that health purchased by rigo- 
 rously watching over diet, was but a tedious disease. But 
 Walpole was nearly correct, while Montesquieu was not 
 very distant from the truth. Dieting, like other things, 
 must be undertaken on common-sense principles ; for, 
 though there be multitudes of mad people in the world, 
 society generally is not to be put upon the regime of 
 "Bedlam." 
 
 We live, not by what we eat, but by what we digest ; 
 and what one man may digest, another would die of 
 attempting. Kules on this subject are almost useless. 
 Each man may soon learn the powers of his stomach, in 
 health or disease, in thi^ respect ; and this ascertained, he 
 has no more business to bring on indigestion than he has 
 to get intoxicated or fall into debt. He who offends on 
 
10 TABLE TRAITS. 
 
 these three points, deserves to forfeit stomach, head, and 
 liis electoral franchise ! 
 
 Generally speaking, fat and spices resist the digestive 
 power ; and too much nutritious food is the next evil to 
 too little. Good cookery, by developing flavour, increases 
 the nutritiousness of food, which bad cookery would per- 
 haps render indigestible. Hence a good cook rises to the 
 dignity of " artist." He may rank with the chemists, if 
 not with the physicians. 
 
 Animal food, of mild quality, is more digestible than 
 vegetable, and fresh meats are preferable to salted. In 
 the latter the salt is a different composition from that 
 which is taken at meals, and which is indispensable to 
 health. Fish fills rather than feeds ; but there are excep- 
 tions to this. Vegetables are accounted as doing little to 
 maintain stamina ; but there have been races and classes 
 of men who have been heroes upon bread, fruit, and vege- 
 tables. The poor cannot live upon "curry," it is true; 
 but in England, with less drink and more vegetable food, 
 they would be an improved race. Not that they could 
 live like a Lazzaroni on maccaroni and the open air. 
 Layard says the Bedouin owes his health and strength to 
 his spare diet. But even a Bedouin swallows lumps of 
 butter till he becomes bilious ; and were he to live in 
 England instead of the desert, he would not keep up his 
 strength by living on the dishes which support him in 
 Arabia Felix. The golden rule is " moderation and regu- 
 larity." He who transgresses the rule, will pay for it by 
 present suffering and a "check" after Christmas. 
 
 A false hunger ought not to be soothed, nor a false 
 thirst to be satisfied ; for satisfaction here is only adding 
 fuel to a fire that would otherwise go out. On the other 
 hand, the bilious and sedentary man need not be afraid of 
 beer ; it is a better stomachic than wine. For him, and 
 for all lords of that heritage of woe, a weak stomach, the 
 
DIET AND DIGESTIOK. 11 
 
 common-sense system of cookery, as it is called, is most 
 required. It is something between the hard crude system 
 of the English, and the juice-extracting method of the 
 French ; with a leaning, however, towards the latter, 
 (with whom it is common to reduce food to a condition 
 of pulp,) hut uniting with it so much of the English 
 custom as allows the gelatinous matter to be retained, 
 especially in the meats. '' Festina lente^'' is '^ Latin de 
 cuisine^'' for " Eat slowly," and it is of first-rate value. He 
 who does so, gives best chance for healthy chyle; and 
 that wanting, I should Hke to know where the post-pran- 
 dial enjoyment would be. Without it, digestion is not ; 
 and when digestion is away. Death is always peering 
 about to profit by his absence. "See to it!" as the 
 Chinese " chop" says. 
 
 There are upwards of seventeen hundred works extant 
 on the subject of diet and digestion. Sufferers may study 
 the question till they are driven mad by doubt and dys- 
 pepsia, and difference of opinions among the doctors. 
 Fordyce saw no use in the saliva, and Paris maintains 
 that without it digestion is not. " Quot homines, tot sen- 
 tenticd^' is as applicable here as in every other vexed ques- 
 tion. But Paris 's book on Diet is the safest guide I 
 know for a man who, being dyspeptic, wants to cure him- 
 self, or simply to discover the definement of his degree of 
 sufiering. On the other hand, every man may find com- 
 fort in the reflection, that with early hours, abundant 
 exercise, generous diet, but not too much of it, and occu- 
 pation, — without which a worse devil than the former 
 enters on possession of the victim, — dyspepsia cannot 
 assume a chronic form. It may be a casual visitor, but 
 it will be the easiest thing possible to get rid of him. 
 But philosophy has said as much from the beginning, 
 and yet dyspepsia prevails and physicians ride in car- 
 riages. Exactly ! and why ? Because philosophers them- 
 
12 TABLE TEAITS. 
 
 selves, like the Stoic gentleman in Marmontel, after prais- 
 ing simplicity of living, sink to sleep, on heavy suppers 
 and beds of down, with the suicidal remark, that " Le 
 Luxe est unejoUe chose. ""^ 
 
 We must neither act unreservedly on the dictum of 
 books, nor copy slavishly the examples of others, if we 
 would have the digestion in a healthy condition. There 
 is a self-monitor that may safely be consulted. Of his 
 existence there can be no doubt ; for every man who wakes 
 with a head-ache most ungratefully blames that same 
 monitory " self." 
 
 If any class may fairly complain of others in this 
 respect, rather than of themselves, it is the "babies." 
 The Bajpoots do not slay half so many of their infants 
 out of pride, as we do by indiscreet dieting ; or, to speak 
 plainly, over-feeding. The New Zealand mother is not 
 more foolish, who thrusts stones down the throat of her 
 babe, in order to make him a stern and fearless warrior, 
 and only mars him for a healthy man. And Christian 
 matrons have been quite as savage without intending it. 
 Brantome's uncle, Chastargnerage, was no sooner weaned 
 than, by the advice of a Neapolitan physician, he took 
 gold, steel, and iron, (in powders,) mixed up with all he 
 ate and drank. This regimen he followed until he was 
 twelve years old, by which time (we are asked to believe) 
 it had so strengthened him that he could stop a wild bull 
 in full course. This diet, however, seems little likely to 
 have produced such an effect. As soon might one expect 
 that the Bolton ass, which chewed tobacco and took snuff, 
 was made swift as a race-horse by so doing. I think that 
 it is of Dean Nowell it is said, that he grew strong by 
 drinking ale. He was the accidental inventor of bottled 
 ale. He was out fishing with a bottle of the freshly- 
 drawn beverage at his side, when intelligence reached 
 him touching the peril his hfe was in, under Mary, which 
 
DIET AND DiaESTION. 13 
 
 made him fly, after flinging away liis rod, and thrusting 
 his bottle of ale under the grass. When he could again 
 safely resort to the same spot, he looked for his bottle, 
 which, on being disturbed, drove out the cork like a 
 pellet from a gun, and contained so creamy a fluid, that 
 the Dean, noting the fact, and rejoicing therein, took care 
 to be well provided with the same thenceforward. As 
 Henry II. was the first King who acted as sewer, and 
 placed the boar's head on the table of his young son, just 
 crowned, so Dean Nowell was the first church dignitary 
 who laid the foundation of red noses, by bringing bottled 
 ale to the notice of the clergy. There is an old tradition, 
 that what this ale used to do for churchmen, cider used 
 to effect for Africans. 
 
 As we have said, " moderation" is the first principle of 
 digestion ; and as, according to the Latin proverb, " water 
 gives moderation," it behoves us to look for a few minutes 
 into the much praised, and little appreciated, aqua pura. 
 
WATER. 
 
 A Kentucky man, who was lately at one of the great 
 tables in an hotel in the States, where the bill of fare was 
 in French, after sorely puzzling himself with descriptions 
 which he could not comprehend, '' cotelettes a la Main- 
 tenon^^ and " ceufs a la hraise ;^^ exclaimed, " I shall go 
 back to first principles: give me some roast beef!" So, 
 after speaking of the birth of him, whose putative father 
 has lent a name to liberal hosts, let us also fall back upon 
 first principles, and contemplate the uses of water. 
 
 There is nothing in nature more useful ; but, commonly 
 speaking, you can neither buy any thing with it, nor get 
 any article for it in exchange. Adam Smith strikingly 
 compares with it the uselessness and the value of a 
 diamond: the latter has scarcely any value in use, but 
 much that is valuable may be had in exchange for it. In 
 the desert a cup full of water is worth one full of diamonds ; 
 that is, in certain emergencies. The diamond and the 
 water illustrate the difference between value in use and 
 value in exchange. 
 
 If water be not, according to Pindar and the legend 
 over the Bath Pump-Eoom, the best of things, few things 
 would attain to excellence without it. Greek philosophy 
 was not wrong which made it the principle of life, and 
 the popular belief scarcely erred in seeing in every stream, 
 spring, and fountain a resident deity. Water was so 
 reverenced by certain ancient nations, that they would 
 
WATER. 15 
 
 never desecrate it by purifying themselves therewith ! 
 The ancient Persians and Cappadocians exempHfied their 
 devotion by personal dirtiness. In presence of the visible 
 power of the stream, altars were raised, and adoration 
 paid to the god whose existence was evidenced by such 
 power. The Egyptians gave their divine river more 
 than prayers, because their dependence on it was more 
 absolute than that of other nations on their respective 
 streams. The Nile, swelling beneficently, bestowed food, 
 health, and therewith content on the Egyptians ; and they, 
 in return, flung gratefully into the stream corn, sugar, 
 and fruit. When human sacrifices were made to rivers, 
 it was probably because the river was recognised as giving 
 life, and was worthy of being paid in kind. We may 
 smile superciliously at this old reverence for the " liquid 
 good," but there was connected therewith much that we 
 might profitably condescend to copy. Greece had her 
 officers appointed to keep her streams pure. Had those 
 officials exposed the people to drink such indescribable 
 matter as we draw from the Thames, they would have 
 been thrown into it by popular indignation. In Eome, 
 Ancus Martins was long remembered, not for his victo- 
 ries, but for his care to supply the city with salubrious 
 and sufficient water ; and if people generally cursed Nero 
 for his crimes, they acknowledged that he had at least not 
 damaged the public aqueducts ; and that in his reign ice- 
 houses were first built, the contents of which enabled 
 thousands to quaff* the cool beverage which is so com- 
 mendably spoken of by Aristotle. 
 
 The fountains were the ornaments of the public places, 
 as the crystal ampulla, with its slender neck and its 
 globular body, was of the side-boards of private houses in 
 Home. The common people drank to excess, both of hot 
 water and cold : the former they drank in large measures ; 
 — this was in winter, and m taverns where they fed 
 
16 TABLE TRAITS. 
 
 largely upon pork, and drank the water as a stimulant ! 
 The Emperor Claudius looked upon this regimen as an 
 immoral indulgence, and he closed the taverns where pro- 
 prietors injured the public stomach by such a diet. 
 Some Romans were so particular as to boil the water 
 they intended to drink, in vessels at their own table. 
 They were like the epicures who never intrust the boil- 
 ing of an egg to their own cooks. We may notice that 
 Augustus employed it lavishly, both as a bather and 
 drinker. The "faculty" were unanimous in recommend- 
 ing a similar use of it, and some of these gentlemen made 
 considerable fortunes by the various methods of applying 
 it. For instance, patients resorting to Charmis, to take 
 cold baths in winter under his direction, were required to 
 pay him a consulting fee of £800 ! He was the first 
 " water-cure" Doctor that ever practised, and he realized 
 a fortune such as his successors may aim at in vain. 
 
 Horace Walpole, forgetting what he had once before 
 said, namely, that diet and patience formed the universal 
 panacea, declared that his " great nostrum was the use 
 cold water, inwardly and outwardly, on all occasions, and 
 that with disregard of precaution against catching cold. 
 I have often," he continues, "had the gout in my face 
 and eyes, and instantly dip my head in a paibof cold 
 water, which always cures it, and does not send it any 
 where else." And again, alluding to another use of 
 water, he says sneeringly, " Whether Christianity will 
 be laid aside I cannot say. As nothing of the spirit is 
 left, the forms, I think, signify very little. Surely, it is 
 not an age of morality and principle • does it import 
 whether profligacy is baptized or not ?" 
 
 With regard to the sanitary application of water, as 
 noticed by Walpole, there can be no doubt but that diet 
 and digestion proceed the more perfectly, as the ablution 
 of the body is general and daily, and made with cold 
 
WATER. 17 
 
 water. But discretion must be used ; for there are con- 
 ditions of the body which cannot endure cold bathing 
 without palpitation of the heart following. In such case, 
 tepid water should be used for a time, when the palpita- 
 tions will soon cease, unless the heart be organically 
 affected. 
 
 The same writer's remarks on the Christian uses of 
 water, remind me of what is said of some such uses in 
 Weever's " Funeral Monuments." He cites the inscrip- 
 tions that used to be placed over the holy water in 
 ancient churches. Some deposed that the sprinkling of 
 it drove away devils : — 
 
 '^ Hujus aquce tactus depellit dcemonis actusT 
 Others promised a blessing, as, for example : — 
 
 " Asperget vos Deus cum omnibus Sanctis suis ad vitam cetemamy 
 
 Another implied, that six benefits arose from its use ; 
 namely, — 
 
 " Sex operantur aqua henedictd: 
 
 Cor mundat, accidiam (?) fugat, venalia tollit, 
 Auget opem, removetque hostem, phantasmata pellity 
 
 Homer, too, it will be recollected, speaks of the sound of 
 water insuring consolatory thoughts, in the passage 
 where he describes one " suffering cruel wounds from a 
 diseased heart, but he found a remedy ; for, sitting down 
 beneath a lofty rock, looking down upon the sea, he 
 began to sing." 
 
 The dormitories of many of the old convents were 
 adorned with inscriptions recommendatory of personal 
 cleanliness ; but the inmates generally were more content 
 with the theory than the practice : they were, in some 
 degree, like the man at Bishop-Middleham, who died 
 with the reputation of a water-drinker, but who really 
 killed himself by secret drunkenness. He praised water 
 
 c 
 
18 TABLE TRAITS. 
 
 in public, but drank brandy in private, though it was not 
 till after death that his delinquency was discovered. 
 
 The use of water against the spells of witchcraft lin- 
 gered longer in Scotland than elsewhere. The Strath- 
 down Highlander even now, it is said, is not ashamed to 
 drink " the water of the dead and living ford," on New 
 Year's Day, as a charm to secure him from sorcery until 
 the ensuing New Year. 
 
 St. Bernard, the Abbot, made application of water for 
 another purpose. Butler says of him, that he once hap- 
 pened to fix his eyes on the face of a woman ; but imme- 
 diately reflecting that this was a temptation, he ran to a 
 pond, and leaped up to the neck into the water, which 
 was then as cold as ice, to punish himself, and to van- 
 quish the enemy ! 
 
 There is a second incident connected with water, that 
 will bear to be told as an illustration, at least, of old 
 times. When Patricius was Bishop of Prusa, the Pro- 
 consul Julius resorted thither to the famous baths, and 
 was restored to such vigorous health thereby, that he not 
 only made sacrifice of thanksgiving to Esculapius and 
 Health, but required the Bishop to follow his example. 
 The Prelate declined, and the Proconsul ordered him to 
 be thrown into a caldron of boiling water, by which he 
 was no more afiected than if he had been enjoying a bath 
 of tepid rose-water. Whereupon he was taken out and 
 beheaded. The power that kept the water cool did not 
 interfere to blunt the axe. 
 
 We have seen the reverence paid by certain " ancients 
 of old" to the supposed divinities whose crystal thrones 
 were veiled beneath the waves. Men under a better dis- 
 pensation have shown, perhaps, a worse superstition. 
 Bede makes mention of a Monk who thought he would 
 purify his sin-stained spirit by actual ablution. He had, 
 the church-historian tells us, a solitary place of residence 
 
WATER. 19 
 
 assigned him in the monastery, adjacent to a river : into the 
 latter he was accustomed to plunge, by way of penance to 
 his body. He went manfuU}^ to the bottom, and his mouth 
 was no sooner again in upper air, than it was opened to 
 give utterance to lusty prayer and praise. He would 
 sometimes thus stand for hours, up to the neck, and 
 uttering his orisons aloud. He was in full dress when 
 this penance was performed, and, on coming from the 
 stream, he let his wet, and sometimes frozen, garments 
 dry upon his person. A Friar, once seeing him break the 
 ice, in order that he might make his penitential plunge, 
 expressed shiveringly his wonder at the feat : " It must 
 be so ^ery cold," said the Friar. "I have seen greater 
 cold," was the sole remark of the devotional diver. 
 "Such austerity 1 never beheld," exclaimed another 
 spectator. "J have beheld far greater," replied the 
 Monk. " And thus," adds the historian, as simply as 
 any of them, " thus he forwarded the salvation of many 
 by his words and example." 
 
 Connected with a pious man of our own time, I may 
 mention an incident touching water, which is rather 
 remarkable: — the person to whom I allude is Bishop 
 Gobat, of Jerusalem. He states, in his last Annual 
 Letter, that he is building a school which will cost him 
 about £600 : the school is not yet finished ; but the 
 water used for mixing the mortar has already cost the 
 enormous sum of £60. It is, in fact, a luxury which 
 must be paid for. Where it is so dear, it were well if 
 the people never were thirsty ; and there were such peo- 
 ple of old. 
 
 The late Vice-Chancellor of England, Sir Lancelot 
 Shadwell, was as indefatigable a bather as the Monk 
 noticed by Bede. Every morning throughout the year, 
 during his residence at Barnes Elms, he might be seen 
 wrestling joyously with the Thames. It is said that, on 
 
 c 2 
 
20 TABLE TEAITS. 
 
 one occasion, a party, in urgent need of an injunction, 
 after looking for the Judge in a hundred places where he 
 was not to be found, at length took boat, and encountered 
 him as he was swimming in the river. There he is said 
 to have heard the case, listening to the details as the 
 astonished applicants made them, and now and then per- 
 forming a frolicsome " summersault," when they paused 
 for want of breath. The injunction was granted, it is 
 said ; after which the applicants left the Judge to continue 
 his favourite aquatic sport by himself. 
 
 If the late amiable and able Vice-Chancellor was a 
 water-lawyer, so was the late Archdeacon Singleton a 
 water-divine. When tutor to the young Lords Percy, he, 
 and the eldest of the sons of the then Duke of Northum- 
 berland, — Hugh, Earl Percy, — were expert swimmers, and 
 often, by their achievements, excited the admiration of less 
 daring venturers. The Archdeacon was accustomed to 
 float away for miles from Sion, depending upon the tide 
 to float him back again. At first, many a boatman looked 
 inquiringly at the motionless body carrying on with the 
 stream ; but, when he was better known, his appearance 
 thus excited no more surprise than if he had been in an 
 outrigger, calmly taking a pull before the hour of dinner. 
 
 With respect to water-drinkers, they seem to have 
 abounded among the good old Heathens, of whom so many 
 stories are told that we are not called upon to believe. 
 
 Aristotle, who, like Dr. Macnish, wrote an " Anatomy 
 of Drunkenness," (u^pl MeOrjs,) states therein, that he 
 knew, or had heard, of many people who never experienced 
 what it was to be thirsty. Archonides, of Argos, is cited 
 by him as a man who could eat salt beef for a week with- 
 out caring to drink, therewith or thereafter. Mago, the 
 Carthaginian, is famous for having twice crossed the 
 Desert without having once tasted water, or any other 
 beverage. The Iberians, wealthy and showy people as 
 
WATEE. 21 
 
 they were, were water-drinkers ; and it was peculiar to 
 some of the Sophists of Elis, that they lived upon nothing 
 but water and dried figs. Their bodily strength, which 
 was great, is said to have been the result of such diet ; 
 but, it is added, that the pores of their skin exuded any 
 thing but a celestial ichor, and that, whenever they went 
 to the baths, all the other bathers fled, holding their 
 offended noses between their fingers ! Matris, of Athens, 
 lived all his life upon myrtle-berries and water ; but, as 
 nobody knows how long he did live, it would be rather 
 rash to imitate him in hopes of obtaining extension of 
 existence. Lamprus, the musician, was a water-drinker, 
 as were Polemon, the Academician, and Diodes, of Pepa- 
 rethus ; but, as they were never famous for any thing 
 else, they are hardly worth citing. It is different when we 
 contrast Demosthenes with Demades. Demosthenes 
 states, in his second Philippic, that he was a water- 
 drinker; and Pytheas was right, when he bade the 
 Athenians remark, that the sober demagogue was, like 
 Dr. Young, in fact, constantly engaged in solemn Night 
 Thoughts. "Not so your other demagogue, Demades," 
 said Pytheas ; " Ae is an unclean fellow, who is daily 
 drunk, and who never comes into your assemblies but to 
 exhibit his enormous paunch." Such was the style of elec- 
 tion speeches in Greece ; and it has a smack of the hust- 
 ings, and, indeed, of the market, too, in Co vent Garden. 
 
 To turn from old to modern mythology, I may notice 
 that water entered into the old sports of St. Distaff's 
 Day, or the morrow after Twelfth Day. It is thus 
 alluded to by one whose " mind was jocund, but his life 
 was chaste," — ^tlie lyric Parson of Dean Priors : — 
 
 " Partly work and partly play 
 Ye must, on St. Distaff's Day. 
 Prom the plough soon free your team, 
 Then come home and t'other them. 
 
22 TABLE TEAITS. 
 
 If the maids a-spinning go, 
 
 Burn the flax, and fire the tow. 
 
 Scorch their plackets, but beware 
 
 That ye singe no maiden-hair. 
 
 Bring in pails of water then. 
 
 Let the maids bewash the men. 
 
 Give St. Distaff all the right, 
 
 Then bid Christmas sport ' Good-night ;' 
 
 And next morrow ev'ry one 
 
 To his own vocation." 
 
 When Herrick wrote these lines, T do not know how it 
 may have been at Dean Priors, but London was but indif- 
 ferently supplied with water. But now London is sup- 
 plied with water from eight different sources. Five of 
 them are on tlie north, or Middlesex, side of London, 
 three on the South wark and Surrey side. The first com- 
 prise the New Kiver, at Islington ; the East London, at 
 Old Ford, on the Lea ; the West Middlesex, on the 
 Thames, at Brentford and Hammersmith ; and the Chel- 
 sea and Grand Junction, on the same river, at Chelsea. 
 The south side is entirely supplied from the Thames, by 
 the Southwark, Lambeth, and Vauxhall Waterworks, 
 whose names are descriptive of their locality. 
 
 The daily supply amounts to about 35,000,000 of 
 gallons, of which more than a third is supplied by the 
 New River Company. The original projector of this 
 Company was Sir Hugh Myddelton, who proposed to sup- 
 ^\j the London conduits from the wells about Am well 
 and Ware. The project was completed in 1613, to the 
 benefit of posterity and the ruin of the projector. The 
 old hundred-pound shares are now worth ten times their 
 original cost. 
 
 In 1682 the private houses of the metropolis were only 
 supplied with fresh water twice a-week. Mr. Cunning- 
 ham, in his "Handbook of London," informs us that the 
 old sources of supply were the Wells, or Fleet River, 
 
WATER. 23 
 
 Wallbrook and Langbourne Waters, Clement's, Clerk's, 
 and Holy Well, Tyburn, and the Eiver Lea. Tyburn 
 first supplied the City in the year 1285, the Thames not 
 being pressed into the service of the City conduits till 
 1568, when it supplied the conduit at Dowgate. There 
 were people who stole water from the pipes then, as there 
 are who steal gas now. "This yere," (1479,) writes an 
 old chronicler of London, quoted by Mr. Cunningham, 
 "a wax-charndler in Flete Strete had bi craft perced a 
 pipe of the condite withynne the ground, and so conveied 
 the water into his selar ; wherefore he was judged to ride 
 thurgh the Citee with a condite upon his hedde." The 
 first engine which conveyed water into private houses, by 
 leaden pipes, was erected at London Bridge, in 1582. 
 The pipes were laid over the steeple of St. Magnus ; and 
 the engineer was Maurice, a Dutchman. Bulmer, an 
 Englishman, erected a second engine, at Broken Wharf. 
 Previous to 1656, the Strand and Covent Garden, though 
 so near to the river, were only supplied by water-tankards, 
 which were carried by those who sold the water, or by 
 the apprentice, if there were one in the house, whose duty 
 it was to fill the house-tankard at the conduit, or in the 
 river. In the middle of the seventeenth century. Ford 
 erected water-works on the Thames, in front of Somerset 
 House ; but the Queen of Charles II. — like the Princess 
 Borghese, who pulled down a church next to her palace, 
 because the incense turned her sick, and the organ made her 
 head ache — ordered the works to be demolished, because 
 they obstructed a clear view on the river. The inhabit- 
 ants of the district depended upon their tankards and 
 water-carriers, until the reign of William III., when 
 the York-buildings Waterworks were erected. The 
 frequently-occurring name of Conduit-street, or Conduit- 
 court, indicates the whereabout of many of the old 
 sources whence our forefathers drew their scanty supplies. 
 
24 TABLE TRAITS. 
 
 Water is not necessarily unhealthy, because of a little 
 earthy matter in it ; mineral, or animal, or vegetable mat- 
 ter held in it, by solution, or otherwise, renders it decidedly 
 unwholesome. Eain water is the purest water, when it 
 is to be had by its natural distillation in the open fields. 
 When collected near towns, it should never be used with- 
 out being previously boiled and strained. 
 
 The hardness of water is generally caused by the pre- 
 sence of sulphate of lime. Horses commonly refuse to 
 drink hard water, — a water that can make neither good 
 tea, nor good beer, and which frequently contains many 
 salts. Soft water, which is a powerful solvent of all vege- 
 table matters, is to be preferred for all domestic purposes. 
 Kiver water is seldom pure enough for drinking. Where 
 purest, it has lost its carbonic acid from long exposure ; 
 and in the neighbourhood of cities it is often a slow 
 poison, and nothing more, scarcely to be rescued from 
 the name by the process of filtration. London is still 
 supplied, at a very costly price, with water which is 
 " offensive to the sight, disgusting to the imagination, 
 and destructive to the health." Thames water, as at 
 present flowing into our houses, is at once the jackal 
 and aide-de-camp of cholera. People are apt to praise it, 
 as being the water from which is made the purest porter 
 in the world ; but it is a well-known fact, that the great 
 London brewers never employ it for that purpose. 
 
 The more a spring is drawn from, the softer the water 
 will become ; hence old wells furnish a purer water than 
 those which are more rec*ent ; but a well of soft water is 
 sensibly hardened by a coating of bricks. To obviate this, 
 the bricks should be coated with cement. Snow water . 
 deserves a better reputation than it has acquired. Lake 
 water is fitted only for the commonest household detergent 
 purposes. But the salubrity of water is converted into 
 poison by the conveyances which bring it almost to our lips; 
 
WATEE. 25 
 
 and we have not yet adopted in full the recommendation 
 of Yitruvius and Columella to use pipes of earthenware, as 
 being not only cheaper, but more durable and more whole- 
 some, than lead. We still convey away refuse water in 
 earthenware, and bring fresh water into our houses in 
 lead! The noted choleraic colic of Amsterdam, in the 
 last century, was entirely caused by the action of vegetable 
 matter in the water-pipes. 
 
 Filtration produces no good effect upon hard water. 
 The sulphate of lime, and still more the super-carbonate 
 of lime, are only to be destroyed by boiling. Boiled 
 water, cooled, and agitated in contact with the atmo- 
 sphere, before use, is a safe and not an unpleasant beverage. 
 It is essential that the water be boiling when " toast and 
 water" is the beverage to be taken. 
 
 Water, doubtless, is the natural drink of man — in a 
 natural state. It is the only liquid which truly appeases 
 thirst ; and a small quantity is sufficient for that effect. 
 The other liquids are, for the most part, palliatives merely. 
 If man had kept to water, the saying would not be appli- 
 cable to him, that " he is the only animal privileged to 
 drink without being thirsty." But, then, where would the 
 medical profession have been ? 
 
 But he does well who, at all events, commences the 
 day with water and prayer. With such an one we go 
 hand in hand, not only in that service, but, as now, to 
 Breakfast. 
 
BREAKFAST. 
 
 Swift lent dignity to this repast, and to laundresses 
 partaking of it, when he said, in illustration of modem 
 Epicureanism, that " the world must be encompassed 
 before a washerwoman can sit down to breakfast." 
 
 Franklin, who made a "morality" of every sentiment, 
 and put opinions into dramatical action, has a passage in 
 some one of his Essays, in which he says, that " Disorder 
 breakfasts with Plenty, dines with Poverty, sups with 
 Misery, and sleeps with Death." It is an unpleasant 
 division of the day, but it is truly described, as far as it 
 goes. On the other hand, it is not to be concluded that 
 Disorder is the favourite guest of Abundance ; and I do 
 not know any one who has described a plentiful breakfast, 
 with regularity presiding, better than another essayist, 
 though one of a less matter-of-fact quality than Franklin, 
 — I mean Leigh Hunt. In the " Indicator " he invites us 
 to a " Breakfast in Cold Weather." " Here it is," he says, 
 " ready laid. Imprimis^ tea and coffee ; secondly, dry toast ; 
 thirdly, butter ; fourthly, eggs ; fifthly, ham ; sixthly, 
 something potted ; seventhly, bread, salt, mustard, knives, 
 forks, &c. One of the first things that belong to a break- 
 fast, is a good fire. There is a delightful mixture of the 
 lively and the snug, in coming down to one's breakfast- 
 room of a cold morning, and seeing every thing prepared 
 for us, — a blazing grate, a clean table-cloth and tea- 
 things ; the newly-washed faces and combed heads of a 
 
BREAKFAST. 27 
 
 set of good-humoiu^ed urchins ; and the sole empty chair, 
 at its accustomed corner, ready for occupation. When 
 we lived alone," he adds, "we could not help reading at 
 meals ; and it is certainly a delicious thing to resume an 
 entertaining book, at a particularly interesting passage, 
 with a hot cup of tea at one's elbow, and a piece of buttered 
 toast in one's hand. The first look at the page, accom- 
 panied by a co-existent bite of the toast, comes under the 
 head of ' intensities.' " Under the head of " &c." in the 
 above list, I should be disposed to include " sunshine ;" for 
 sunshine in a breakfast-room in winter, is almost as glo- 
 rious a thing as the fire itself. It is a positive tonic ; it 
 cheers the spirits, strengthens the body, and promotes 
 digestion. As for breakfast in hot weather, all well- 
 disposed persons who have gardens take that meal, of 
 course, in "the arbour," and amid flowers. Breakfasts 
 al fresco are all the more intensely enjoyed, because so 
 few may be discussed in the open air in a country whose 
 summer consists of " three hot days and a thunder-storm ;" 
 and in a climate wherein, according to Boerhaave, people 
 should not leave off* their winter clothing till Midsummer- 
 Day, resuming the same the next morning when they are 
 dressing for breakfast ! Walpole and Boerhaave are 
 right; our summers do sometimes set in with extraor- 
 dinary severity. 
 
 The breakfast of a Greek soldier, taken at dawn of day, 
 required a strong head to bear it. It consisted of bread 
 soaked in wine. If Princes were in the habit of so' break- 
 ing their fast, we hardly need wonder at the denunciation 
 in Ecclesiastes against those who eat in the morning. 
 The Greek patricians sat daily down to but one solid 
 meal. Soldiers and plebeians had less controllable appe- 
 tites, and these could not be appeased with less than two 
 meals a-day. They were accounted peculiarly coarse 
 people who consumed three. The Eomans were, in this 
 
28 TABLE TRAITS. 
 
 respect, similar to the Greeks. Fashionable people ate 
 little or nothing before the hour when they compensated 
 for a long fast by a daily meal, where they fed hugely. 
 A simple breakfast, as soon as they awoke, of " bread and 
 cheese," has a very unclassical sound ; but good authority 
 assures us, that it was a custom duly honoured with much 
 observance. Not of such light fare, however, was the 
 breakfast of Galba. Suetonius says that the old Emperor 
 used to cry for his morning repast long before day-break. 
 This was in winter time. He took the meal in bed, and 
 was probably induced to do so by indisposition ; for he 
 was a huge, ogre-like supper-eater, — eating much, leaving 
 more, and ordering the remains to be divided among the 
 attendants, who duly, rather than dignifiedly, scrambled 
 for the same. 
 
 Modern epicures would hardly approve of some of the 
 dishes half-consumed by the hungry G-alba at breakfast ; 
 but potentates of our own days have made their first 
 meal upon very questionable matter. 
 
 When Clapperton, the African traveller, breakfasted 
 with the Sultan of Baussa, which is a collection of 
 straggling villages on the banks of the Quorra, among 
 the delicacies presented were a large grilled water-rat, 
 and alligators' eggs, fried or stewed. The company were 
 much amazed at the singularity of taste which prompted 
 the stranger to choose fish and rice in preference to those 
 savoury viands. The Prince, who gave this public break- 
 fast in honour of a foreign commoner, was disgusted at 
 the fastidious super-delicacy of his guest. In the last 
 century, our commoners used to give similar entertain- 
 ments- in honour of Princes. 
 
 " JGlia Lsslia" Chudleigh, as Walpole calls the famous 
 lady who was still more famous as Duchess of Kingston, 
 gave splendidly untidy entertainments of this sort in a splen- 
 didly untidy mansion. Her suppers will be found noticed 
 
BREAKFAST. 29 
 
 in another page. In 1763, she gave a concert and vast 
 cold collation, or "breakfast," in honour of Prince Edward's 
 birthday. The scene is admirably painted by Walpole. 
 " The house is not fine, nor in good taste, but loaded with 
 finery. Execrable varnished pictures, chests, cabinets, 
 commodes, tables, stands, boxes, riding on one another's 
 backs, and loaded with terrenes, figures, filligrees, and 
 every thing upon earth ! Every favour she has bestowed 
 is registered by a bit of Dresden China. There is a large 
 case full of enamels, eggs, ambers, lapis-lazuli, cameos, 
 tooth -pick cases, and all kinds of trinkets, things that 
 she told me were her playthings. Another cupboard full 
 of the finest japan, and candlesticks, and vases of rock- 
 crystal, ready to be thrown down in every corner. But 
 of all curiosities are the conveniencies in every bed- 
 chamber ; great mahogany projections, with brass handles, 
 cocks, &c. I could not help saying it was the loosest 
 family I ever saw." 
 
 There was a philosopher of the same century, at whom 
 even Walpole dared not have sneered. I allude to Dr. 
 Black, whom Lavoisier called " the Nestor of the Chemical 
 Bevolution." Dr. Black was famous for the frugality of 
 his breakfasts, and for the singularity of his death, when 
 seated at that repast. His usual fare was a little bread, 
 a few prunes, and a measured quantity of milk and w^ater. 
 One morning in November, 1799, he was seated at this 
 modest meal. His cup was in his hand, when the 
 Inevitable Angel beckoned to him, and the Christian 
 philosopher calmly obeyed. He placed the cup on his 
 knees, " which were joined together, and kept it steady 
 wdth his hand, in the manner of a person perfectly at his 
 ease; and in this attitude he expired, without a drop 
 being spilt, or a feature in his countenance changed, as if 
 an experiment had been required, to show to his friends 
 the facility with which he departed." There w^as neither 
 
30 TABLE TBAITS. 
 
 convulsion, shock, nor stupor, we are told, to announce or 
 retard the approach of death. This was a more becoming- 
 end than that of another chemist, the younger BerthoUet, 
 ■ — although in the latter there was something heroical, 
 too. He had taken his last breakfast, when he calmly 
 proceeded to a sacrifice which he made to the interests of 
 science. He destroyed his life by enclosing himself in an 
 atmosphere of carbonic acid. There he began register- 
 ing all the successive feelings he experienced, which were 
 such as would have been occasioned by a narcotic ; — " a 
 pause, and then an almost illegible word occurred. It is 
 presumed that the pen dropped from his hand, and he 
 was no more." 
 
 I have spoken of winter and of summer breakfasts. I 
 must have recourse to Mr. Forrester's " Norway in 1848 
 and 1849," to show what a breakfast for a traveller should 
 be ; namely, oatmeal porridge, or stir-about, with a slice 
 of rye or wheaten bread. Such a breakfast, he says, will 
 not only fortify the traveller for a lengthened period, but 
 to the sedentary, the bilious, and the dyspeptic, its adop- 
 tion will afford more relief than the best prescription of a 
 physician. But this breakfast must be prepared with due 
 care, and this is the fashion of it : " Take two or three 
 handsfuU of oatmeal ; I prefer it of mixed coarse and fine 
 meal, in the proportion of one third of the latter to two 
 of the former. Mingle the meal in a basin of cold water, 
 and pour it into a saucepan containing about a quart of 
 boiling water ; add a small portion of salt. Set the sauce- 
 pan over the fire, and keep stirring it, sprinkling, from 
 time to time, small quantities of the meal, till the com- 
 position boils, and has acquired the proper consistency. 
 That may be known by its glutinous state as it drops 
 from the spoon. Let it simmer for ten minutes, and then 
 pour it, not into a deep dish, but into common dinner 
 plates, and it will form a soft, thin, jellied cake ; spoon 
 
MATEEIALS FOE BEEAKFAST. 31 
 
 out portions of this, and float it in new milk, adding moist 
 sugar, to your taste." For the benefit of others, I may- 
 add my testimony touching this recipe. I have strictly 
 followed the instruction given, and I certainly never 
 tasted any thing to equal the dish. It was execrable ! 
 But it has the double recommendation of being easy to 
 digest, and of keeping off the sensation of hunger for a 
 very long time. Use alone is needed to make it a popular 
 breakfast, and he is a hero who uses it till he likes it. 
 But it is time to consider the various 
 
 MA.TEEIALS FOE BEEAKFAST. 
 
 And first of milk. If Britons really have, what they 
 so much boast of, — a birth-right, — the least disputable 
 article of that class, is their undoubted right to that lacteal 
 treasure which their mother holds from Nature, on trust, 
 for their use and advantage. 
 
 It is a curious fact, that aristocratic infants are those 
 who are most ordinarily deprived of this first right of 
 their citizenship, and are sent to slake their thirst and 
 fortify their thews and sinews at ochlocratic breasts. 
 Jean Jacques Eousseau was not often right, but he was 
 triumphantly so when he denounced the young and 
 healthy mother, let her rank be what it might, who 
 made surrender of what should be one of the purest of a 
 young mother's pleasures, and flung her child to the 
 bosom of a stranger. Who can say what bad principles 
 may not have been drawn in 'with these " early break- 
 fasts?" Certainly this vicarious exercise of the office of 
 maternity is an abomination ; and the abomination of 
 having one's child suckled by a mercenary stranger can 
 
 only be next in intensity to that of having him but 
 
 let us keep to " Table Traits." 
 
82 TABLE TEAITS. 
 
 Milk is too popularly known to need description ; but 
 it is not all that is sold under that name that comes from 
 the cow. The cow with one arm, that produces what 
 fresh medical students call the aqua pum^aginis, has very 
 much to do with the dairies of London. Metropolitan 
 milk-maids are not as unsophisticated as the milk-maids 
 of the olden time ; if, indeed, maids or milk were particu- 
 larly pure even then ; for milk was a propitiatory offering 
 to Mercury, and if ever there was a deity who loved mis- 
 chief, why, Dan Mercury was the one. 
 
 In Rome milk was used as a cosmetic, and for baths as 
 well as beverage. Five hundred asses supplied the bath 
 and toilette-vases of the Empress Poppsea; and some 
 dozen or two were kept to maintain the decaying 
 strength of Francis I. Of course, asses' milk became 
 fashionable in Paris immediately, just as bolster cravats 
 did with us, when the Regent took to them in order to 
 conceal a temporary disease in the neck. 
 
 "Oil of milk" and " cow-cheese" were classical names 
 for butter, — a substance which was not known in either 
 Greece or Rome until comparatively late periods. Greece 
 received it from Asia, and Rome knew it not as an article 
 of food until the legionaries saw the use to which it was 
 applied by the German matrons. The Scythians, like the 
 modern Bedouins, were great butter-consumers. Their 
 ehurners were slaves, captured in war, and blinded before 
 they were chained to the sticks beside the tub, at which, 
 with sightless orbs, they were set to work. 
 
 There have been seasons when, as now in Abyssinia, 
 butter has been burned in the lamps in churches, instead 
 of oil. The "butter-tower" of the cathedral at Rouen 
 owes its distinctive appellation to its having been built 
 from the proceeds of a tax levied in retm^n for permis- 
 sions to eat butter at uncanonical times ; so that the 
 tower is a monument of the violation of the ecclesiastical 
 
MATEBIALS FOB BREAKFAST. 33 
 
 canons. But there is great licence in these matters ; and 
 chapels in Ireland have been constructed with money 
 raised by putting up Moore's erotic works to be raffled 
 for, at half-a-crown a ticket ! 
 
 Groats, cows, sheep, asses, and mares have all contri- 
 buted their milk towards the making of cheese; and 
 national prejudice has run so high on the question of 
 superiority, that as many broken heads have been the 
 result, as there have been rivulets of blood spilt at Dinant 
 on the question of copper kettles. The Phrygian cheese is 
 said to have owed its excellence to the fact, that it was 
 made of asses' and mares' milk mixed together. I 
 doubt, however, if the strong-smelling Phrygian cheese 
 was equal to our Stilton, — which, by the way, is not 
 made at Stilton, — and whose ripeness has been judiciously 
 assisted by the addition of a pint of Madeira. Delicate 
 persons at Rome breakfasted on bread and cheese, — prin- 
 cipally goat cheese. It was administered, on the same 
 principle that we prescribe rump-steak, as sti'engthening. 
 People in rude health flourished in spite of it, and there- 
 fore ailing people must^ it was thought, be invigorated 
 because of it. However, our own system is less open to 
 objection than that of the ancient faculty. 
 
 I do not know whether mothers will consider it com- 
 plimentary or not ; but it is a fact, that the milk of asses 
 more nearly resembles human milk than any other. 
 Like the human milk, it contains more saccharine matter 
 than that of the cow, and deposits a large proportion of 
 curd by mere repose. 
 
 Milk is easily assimilated, nourishes quickly, and but 
 slightly excites to vascular action. It is stringent, how- 
 ever, and has a tendency to create acidity ; but an addi- 
 tion of oatmeal gruel will correct both these matters. 
 Suet, inserted in a muslin bag, and simmered with the 
 milk, is of highly nourishing quality ; but it is some- 
 
 D 
 
34 TABLE TEAITS. 
 
 times more than weak stomachs can bear. Lime-water 
 with milk is recommended as sovereign against the 
 acidity which milk alone is apt to create in feeble 
 stomachs. 
 
 Eggs have been as violently eulogized as they have 
 been condemned, and both in extremes. In some parts 
 of Africa, where they are very scarce, and the Priests are 
 very fond of them, it has been revealed to the people, 
 that it is sacrilege for any but clerical gentlemen to eat 
 eggs ! The lay scruple, if I may so speak, is quieted by 
 the assurance, that, though the sacred hens produce only 
 for the servants at the altar, the latter never address 
 themselves to the food in question, without the whole 
 body of the laity profiting thereby ! I suppose that Dis- 
 senters naturally abound in this part of Africa. There is 
 nothing so unsatisfactory as vicarious feeding. Feeding 
 is a duty which every man is disposed to perform for 
 himself, whether it be expected of him or not. All the 
 eggs in Africa, passing the oesophagus of a Priest, could 
 hardly nourish a layman, even though the eggs were as 
 gigantic as those which an old author says are presented 
 by ladies in the moon to their profoundly delighted hus- 
 bands, and from which spring young babies, six feet 
 high, and men at all points. 
 
 If the matrons in the moon were thus remarkable in 
 this respect, the Egyptian shepherds on earth were not 
 less so in another : they had a singular method of cooking 
 eggs, without the aid of fire. They laid them in a 
 sling, and then applied so violent a rotatory motion 
 thereto, that they were heated and cooked by the very 
 friction of the air through which they passed ! 
 
 Diviners and dreamers dealt largely in eggs. Li via 
 was told, just before the birth of Tiberius, to hatch one 
 in her bosom, and that the sex of the chick would fore- 
 tell that of the expected little stranger. ' In Kome and 
 
MATERIALS FOE BEEAKFAST. 35 
 
 Greece eggs were among the introductory portions of 
 every banquet. But Rome knew only of twenty differ- 
 ent manners of cooking them. What an advance in civil- 
 ization has been made in Paris, which, according to Mr. 
 Robert Fudge, boasts of six hundred and eighty-five ways 
 to dress eggs ! 
 
 Eggs, filled with salt, used to be eaten by curious 
 maidens, after a whole day's fasting, on St. Agnes' Eve : 
 the profit of such a meal was, that she who partook of it 
 had information, in her after-dreams, of that very inter- 
 esting personage, her future husband ! 
 
 There is a story narrated of a Welsh weaver, that he 
 could tell, by the look of the egg, whether the bird would 
 be worth any thing or not. He reminds me of an old 
 Monk I heard of, when in Prague, who, on a man passing 
 him, could tell whether he were an honest man, or a 
 knave, by the smell ! But the Welsh weaver was even 
 more clever than this. He could not onlj^ j^dge of eggs, 
 but hatch them. A badger once carried off his sitting-hen, 
 and no plumed nurse was near to supply her place. The 
 weaver, thereupon, took the eggs (there were six of them) 
 to bed with him, and in about two days hatched them all ! 
 Of this brood he only reared a cock and a hen. The cock 
 was a gallant bird, that used to win fiitclies of bacon for 
 his master at cock-fights ; and the hen was as prolific as 
 Mrs. Partlett could have desired. The result was, that 
 they kept their step-mother, the weaver, in bacon and 
 eggs for many a month ; and the two days spent in bed 
 were not so entirely thrown away as might, at first sight, 
 appear. 
 
 Let it be understood that eggs may lose their nourish- 
 ment by cooking. The yolk, raw or very slightly boiled, 
 is exceedingly nutritious. It is, moreover, the only food 
 for those afflicted with jaundice. When an egg has been 
 exposed to a long continuance of culinary heat, its natm-e 
 
 D 2 
 
36 TABLE TRAITS. 
 
 is entirely changed . A slightly-boiled egg, however, is 
 more easy of digestion than a raw one. The best accom- 
 paniment for a hard egg is vinegar. Eaw eggs have a 
 laxative effect ; hard-boiled, the contrary. There is an 
 idiosyncrasy in some persons, which shows itself in the 
 utter disgust which they experience, not only against the 
 egg itself, but also against any preparation of which it 
 forms an ingredient, however slight. Eggs should always 
 be liberally accompanied by bread ; — of which I will now 
 say a few words, and first of 
 
 COEN. 
 
 Our first parents received the mission to cultivate the 
 garden which was given them for a home. Their Hebrew 
 descendants looked upon tillage of all descriptions with a 
 reverence worthy of the authority which they professed 
 to obey. The sons of the tribes stood proudly by the 
 plough, the daughters of the patriarchs were gleaners, 
 warriors lent their strength in the threshing barn. Kings 
 guided oxen, and Prophets were summoned from the fur- 
 rows to put on their mantles, and go forth and tell of 
 things that were to come. What Heaven had enjoined, the 
 law enforced. The people were taught to love and hold by 
 the land which was in their own possession. To alienate 
 it was to commit a crime. And it is from this ancient 
 rule, probably, that has descended to us the feeling which 
 universally prevails, — that he alone is aristocratic, has the 
 best of power, who is lord of the land upon which he has 
 built his earthly tabernacle. 
 
 The fields of Palestine were fertile beyond what was 
 known elsewhere ; her cattle produced more abundantly, 
 and the very appellations of many of her localities have 
 reference to the beauty and the blessings showered down 
 upon them by the Lord. 
 
CORTf. 37 
 
 Next to it, perhaps, in richness and productiveness, was 
 Egypt, the home of fugitives from other homes where 
 temporary famine reigned. Egypt was long the granary 
 of the Roman empire, and twenty million bushels of corn 
 was the Hfe-sustaining tribute which she annually poured 
 into the store-houses of Imperial Rome. That territory 
 could hardly be more productive, of which an old Latin 
 author speaks, and touching which he says, that a rod 
 thrust into the soil at night would be found budding before 
 morning. And this ancient story, I may notice, has been 
 the venerable father of a large family of similar jokes 
 among our Transatlantic cousins. 
 
 The Egyptians recognised Osiris as their instructor 
 how to subdue and use the earth. The Greeks took the 
 teaching from Ceres. Romulus, too, acknowledged the 
 divine influence ; and his first public act, as King, was 
 to raise the twelve sons of his nurse into a priesthood, 
 charged with watching over the fields, and paying sacri- 
 fice and prayer to Jove for yearly increase of harvests. 
 
 It was a selfish wish ; but not more so than that of the 
 Italian peasants, who, when one who was a native of their 
 district had been raised to the tiara, sent a delegation to 
 request an especial favour at his hands. The new Pope 
 looked on his old acquaintances benevolently, and bade 
 them express their wish. " They wanted but a modest 
 boon," they replied: "nothing more than a declaration 
 from the Pontiff that their district should be henceforth 
 distinguished by its having two harvests every year!'* 
 And the obliging "successor of the Fisherman" smiled, 
 and liot only granted their request, but promised more 
 than he was petitioned for. " To do honour to my old 
 friends," said he, "not alone shall they have two harvests 
 every year, but henceforth the year in their district shall 
 be twice as long as it is in any other !" And therewith 
 the simple people departed joyously. 
 
38 TABLE TRAITS. 
 
 The older Romans honoured agriculture, as did the 
 Jews. Their language bore reference to this, their coin 
 was stamped with symbols in connexion therewith, and 
 their public treasury '' pascua''^ showed, by its name, that 
 "pasturage " was wealth. So he who was rich in minted 
 coin enjoyed i\iQ pecunia, or "money," for which "flocks" 
 (pecus) were bought and sold. The owner of an " estate " 
 {locus) was locuples^ a term for a man well endowed with 
 worldly goods ; and he was in possession of a " salary," 
 who had his solarium, his allowance of salt-money, or of 
 salt, wherewith to savour the food by which he lived. 
 
 The Greeks refreshed the mouths of their ploughing 
 oxen with wine. The labour was considerable ; for, 
 although the plough was light, it lacked the conveniencies 
 of the more modern implement. Like the Anglo-Norman 
 plough, it had no wheels : the wheeled plough is the 
 work of the inventive Gauls. 
 
 The French Republicans made a show of paying honour 
 to agriculture by public demonstrations, the chief actors 
 in which were the foremost men in the Land of Equality. 
 They, absurdly enough, took their idea from the example 
 presented them by a Monarch, all of whom they pro- 
 nounced execrable ; and by one, too, who was the most 
 despotic upon earth, — the Emperor of China. 
 
 And, in the case of the Emperor, there probably was 
 more ostentation than any better motive for the act. 
 Grimm, in his "Correspondence," says, truly enough, 
 that the ceremony is a fine one, which places the Emperor 
 of China, every year, at the tail of the plough ; but, as he 
 adds, it is possible that, like much of the etiquette of 
 European Courts, such a custom may have sunk into a 
 mere observance, exercising no influence on the public 
 mind. " I defy you," he says, " to find a more impressive 
 ceremony than that by which the Doge of Venice yearly 
 declares himself the husband of the Adriatic Sea. How 
 
exalting ! — how stimulating ! — liow proudly inspiring for 
 the Venetians, when their nation was, in reality, sove- 
 reign of the seas ! But now it is little more than a ridi- 
 culous sport, and without any other effect than* that of 
 attracting a multitude of people to the Fair of the 
 Ascension." 
 
 Charles IX., infamous as he was in most respects, was 
 honourahle in one ; namely, in exempting from arrest for 
 debt all persons engaged in the cultivation of land, " with 
 intent to raise grain and fruit necessary for the sustenance 
 of men and beasts." All the property of such husband- 
 men was alike exempted from seizure ; and it strikes us, 
 that this was a much more reasonably-founded exemption 
 than that with which we endow roue Members of Parlia- 
 ment, who have no excuse for exceeding their income. 
 They are free from arrest for six weeks from the proroga- 
 tion of Parliament ; and this is the cause of the farce 
 which is so often played in the autumn and winter, when 
 Parliament is " further prorogued." The Great Council 
 would be all the better for the absence of men who so far 
 forget their duty as to cheat her Majesty's lieges by 
 exceeding their own income. The Senate could better 
 spare the spendthrifts, than the land could spare the pre- 
 sence of him whose mission it is to render it productive. 
 
 Wheat is a native of Asia, — some say, of Siberia ; others, 
 of Tartary ; but it is a matter of doubt, whether it can 
 now be found there growing in a wild state. The Eomans 
 created a corn-god, and then asked its protection. The 
 powerful deity was called Eobigus, and he was solemnly 
 invoked, on every 25th of April, to keep mildew from the 
 grain. The Eomans had a reverence for corn, but barley 
 was excepted from this homage ; and to threaten to put 
 an offending soldier on rations of barley, was to menace 
 him with disgrace. The Italian antipathy still exists, if 
 we may believe the Italian Professor, who, being offered 
 
40 TABLE TEAITS. 
 
 a basin of gruel, (made from barley,) declared its proper 
 appellation to be " acqua crudele^ He accounted of it, as 
 Pliny did of rye, that it was detestable, and could only be 
 swallowed by an extremely hungry man. Oats were only 
 esteemed a degree higher by Yirgil. The poet speaks of 
 them almost as disparagingly as Johnson did, when he 
 described them as " food for horses in England, and for 
 men in Scotland." The grain, however, found a good 
 
 advocate in him who asked, " where did you ever see 
 
 such horses and such men?" The meal is, nevertheless, 
 of a heating quality, and certain cutaneous diseases are 
 traced to a too exclusive use of it. But oatmeal cakes 
 are not bad eating, — where better is not to be procured, — 
 though they are less attractive to the palate than those 
 sweet buns made from sesame grain, and which the 
 E/omans not only swallowed with delight, but used the 
 name proverbially. The lover who was treating his mis- 
 tress to sugared phrases, was said to be regaling her with 
 "sesame cakes." This sort of provision was very largely 
 dealt in by Latin lovers. It was to be had cheaply ; and 
 nymphs consumed as fast as swains presented. 
 
 If lovers gave the light bread of persuasion to win a 
 maiden's affection, the Government distributed solid loaves, 
 or corn to make them with, to the people, in order to gain 
 the popular esteem, and suppress sedition. In some cases, 
 it was as a "poor's rate" paid by the Emperors, and cost- 
 ing them nothing. In too many cases, it was ill applied ; 
 and if Adrian daily fed all the children of the poor, other 
 imperial rulers showered their tens of thousands of bushels 
 daily on an idle populace and a half-dressed soldiery. It 
 was easily procured. Sixty millions of bushels — twenty 
 times that number of pounds' weight — were supplied by 
 Africa; and those "sweet nurses of Rome," the islands 
 of the Mediterranean, also poured into the imperial gra- 
 naries an abundant tribute of the golden seed. It is a 
 
corns". 41 
 
 fact, however, that neither Eomans nor Gaiols were, till a 
 late period, acquainted with the method of making fer- 
 mented bread. 
 
 Ambrosia, nine times sweeter than honey, was the food 
 of the gods ; the first men existed on more bitter fare, 
 — bread made from acorns. Ceres has the honour of 
 having introduced a better fare. Men worshipped her 
 accordingly ; and, abandoning acorns, took also to eating 
 the pig, now allowed to fatten on them at his leisure. 
 Ceres and King Miletus dispute the renown of having 
 invented grin ding-stones. The hand-mill was one of the 
 trophies which the Eoman eagles bore back with them 
 from Asia. Mola, the goddess charged therewith, looked to 
 the well-being of mills, millers, and bread. In Greece, 
 Mercury had something to do with this. It was he, at 
 least, who sent to the Athenian market-women, selling 
 bread, their customers ; and, as he was the God of Elo- 
 quence, it is, doubtless, from this ancient source that all 
 market-women are endowed with shrewdness and loquacity. 
 
 The Athenian bread-sellers are said to have possessed 
 both. Our ladies of the Gate, in -Billing's Ward, are, 
 probably, not behi^j^d them ; and I am inclined to think 
 that a true old-fashioned Bristol market-woman would 
 surpass both. Let me cite an instance. 
 
 Some years ago, an old member of this ancient sister- 
 hood was standing at her stall, in front of one of the 
 Bristol banks. She had a £10 Bank-of-England note in 
 her hand; and as, in her younger days, she had been 
 nurse-maid in the family of one of the partners, she 
 thought she might venture to enter, and ask for gold for 
 her note. She did so ; but it was at a time when guineas 
 were worth five-and-twenty shillings a-piece, and gold was 
 
 scarce, and in short, she met with a refusal. The 
 
 quick-witted market-woman, without exhibiting any dis- 
 appointment, thereupon asked the cashier to let her have 
 
42 TAELE TEAITS. 
 
 ten of the bank's £1 notes in exchange for her " Bank-of- 
 Englander." The cashier was delighted to accommodate 
 her in this fashion. The exchange being completed, the 
 old lady, taking up one of the provincial notes, read aloud 
 the promise engraved upon it, to pay the bearer in cash. 
 "Very good!" said she, with a gleesome chuckle, "now 
 gi' me goold for your notes, or I'll run to the door, and 
 call out, * Bank 's broke !' " There was no resisting this, 
 and the market-woman departed triumphantly with her 
 gold. Light-heeled Mercury could not have helped her 
 better than she helped herself, by means of her own sharp 
 wit. 
 
 Despite what Virgil says of oats, the Roman soldiery, 
 for many years, had no better food than gruel made from 
 oatmeal, and sharpened for the appetite by a little vine- 
 gar. The vinegar was an addition suggested by Numa, 
 who also not only improved the very rude ideas which 
 previously prevailed with regard to the making of bread, 
 but turned baker himself, and sent his loaves to the ovens 
 which he had erected, and to the bakers whom he had 
 raised into a "guild," placed under the protection of the 
 goddess Fornax ; — and a very indifferent, nay, disreputable, 
 deity she was ! The public ovens were to the people of 
 Rome what a barber's shop is to a village in war time, — 
 the temple of gossip. It had been well had they never 
 been any thing worse ! The vocation of baker was here- 
 ditary in a family ; the son was compelled to follow his 
 father's calling. Occasionally, a member of the fraternity 
 was offered a senatorship ; but then he was required to 
 make over his property, realized by baking, to his suc- 
 cessors ; and, consequently, the honour was as deeply 
 declined as the London mayoralty would be by the 
 Governor of the Bank of England. 
 
 If Fornax was the goddess to whose patronage the 
 bakers were consigned by the State, she suffered by the 
 
coRi^. 43 
 
 religious liberty exercised by the bakers themselves, who 
 chose to pay adoration to Vesta. Vesta was the very 
 antipodes in character and attributes to Fornax ; and the 
 selection of the former would seem to show, that the 
 generally reviled bakers could not only praise virtue, but 
 practise it. 
 
 Endless were the varieties of bread sold in the markets 
 at Rome. There was Cappadocian bread for the wealthy ; 
 pugilistic loaves for the athletse ; batter-bread for the 
 strong, and Greek rolls for the weak, of stomach : and 
 there were the prepared bread poultices, which people 
 who, like Pompey's young soldiers, were afraid of injur- 
 ing their complexion, were wont to keep applied to their 
 cheeks during the hours of sleep. Anadyomene so slum- 
 bering, with Adonis at her side similarly poulticed, can 
 hardly be said to be a subject for a painter ; and yet many 
 a blooming Caia slept on the bosom of her Caius, and 
 more panis madidus than blushes on the cheeks of either. 
 
 Pliny ventures on a strange statement with regard to 
 oats. He says that oats and barley are so nearly allied, 
 that when a man sows the one, he is not sure that he 
 may not reap the other ! He also illustrates the prolific- 
 ness of millet, by asserting that a single grain produced 
 " innumerable ears of corn ; and that a bushel (twenty 
 pounds' weight) of millet would make more than sixty 
 pounds of wholesome bread!" The Romans and* the 
 Greeks also appear to have been acquainted with Indian 
 corn. 
 
 Jean Jacques Rousseau, much as he affected to love 
 nature, — and he was himself one of the most artificial of 
 characters, — knew very little about her, or her produc- 
 tions. Some of our great men are described as being in 
 much the same condition of ignorance. Three poets of the 
 last century were one day walking through a field, pro- 
 mising a glorious harvest of grain. One of them extolled 
 
44 TABLE TEAITS. 
 
 the beauty of the wheat. "Nay," said the second, "it 
 is rye." "Not so," remarked the third, "it is a field of 
 barley." A clown, standing by, heard and marvelled at 
 the triple ignorance. " You are all wrong, gentlemen," 
 said he; "those be oats." The poets were town-bred; 
 or were of that class of people who go through a country 
 with their eyes open, and are unable to distinguish between 
 its productions. I have seen Londoners contemplating, 
 with a very puzzled look, the " canary " crops growing in 
 the vicinity of Heme Bay ; and I was once gravely asked 
 if it was "teazle ! " 
 
 These crops are, as I was told by a grower, "capri- 
 cious." They will grow abundantly upon certain land 
 having certain aspects ; but where the aspect is changed, 
 although the land be chemically the same, the canary 
 will scarcely grow at all. It is shipped in large quantities 
 from Heme Bay for London, where it is used for many 
 purposes. None of its uses are so singular as one to which 
 corn was applied, some thirty years ago, in the western 
 settlements of America, namely, for stretching boots and 
 shoes. The boot or shoe was well filled with corn, and 
 made secure by such tight tying that none could escape. 
 It was then immersed for several hours in water ; during 
 which the leather was distended by the gradual swelling 
 of the grain. After being taken from the water, a coat- 
 ing of neat's-foot oil, laid on and left to dry, rendered the 
 boot or shoe fit for wear. 
 
 A more interesting anecdote in connexion with corn, 
 and illustrative of character, is afforded us by Dr. Chal- 
 mers in his Diary. The Doctor, as is well known, — and he 
 was ever ready to confess his weakness, — occasionally let 
 his warm temper get the better of his excellent judgment. 
 Here is an instance, which shows, moreover, how Chris- 
 tian judgment recovered itself from the influence of 
 human nature : " Nov. 20th, 1812. — Was provoked with 
 
coEis'. 45 
 
 Thomas taking it upon him to ask more corn for my 
 horse. It has got feeble under his administration of 
 corn, and I am not without suspicion that he appi-opriates 
 it ; and his eagerness to have it strengthens the suspi- 
 cion. Erred in betraying anger to my servant and wife ; 
 and, though I afterwards got my feehngs into a state of 
 placidity and forbearance, upon Christian principles, was 
 moved and agitated when I came to talk of it to himself. 
 Let me take the corn into my own hand, but carry it to 
 him with entire charity. 0, my God, support me!" 
 Was it not to Socrates that some one said ? — " To judge 
 from your looks, you are the best-tempered man in the 
 world." "Then my looks belie me," replied the philo- 
 sopher ; " I have the worst possible temper, by nature ; 
 with the strongest possible control over it, by philo- 
 sophy." Chalmers was, in one sense, like Socrates; but 
 the control over his stubborn infirmity had something 
 better " than your philosophy " for its support. 
 
 Reverting to the feeding of horses, I may notice, that, 
 according to the Earl of Northumberland's "Household 
 Book," the corn was not thrown loose into the manger, 
 but made into loaves. It has been conjectured, that the 
 English poor formerly ate the same bread. There can be 
 no question about it ; and even at the present time it is 
 no uncommon sight, in some towns of the Continent, to 
 see a driver feeding his horse from a loaf, and occasionally 
 taking a slice therefrom for himself. 
 
 There is no greater consumer of com in England than 
 the pigeon. Vancouver, in laudable zeal for the hungry 
 poor, calls pigeons "voracious and insatiate vermin." He 
 calculates the pigeons of England and Wales at nearly a 
 million and a quarter ; " consuming 159,500,000 pints of 
 corn annually, to the value of £1,476,562. lOs." It is im- 
 possible for calculation to be made closer. Darwin says of 
 pigeons, that they have an organ in the stomach for 
 
46 TABLE TRAITS. 
 
 secreting milk. And it is not alone in the way of devour- 
 ing corn that they are destructive. In the " Philosophical 
 Transactions,'* it is mentioned that pigeons for many 
 ages built under the roof of the great church of Pisa. 
 Their dung spontaneously took fire, at last, and the 
 church was consumed. 
 
 I have said that the Roman soldiers marched to victory 
 under the influence of no more exciting stimulant than 
 gruel and vinegar. A little oatmeal has often sustained 
 the strength of our own legions in the hour of struggle. 
 The Germans, brave as they are, sometimes require a 
 more substantial support. Thus, after a defeat endured 
 by the Great Frederick, hundreds of respectable burgesses 
 of the province of Mark set out as volunteers for the 
 royal army, — the Hellengers in white, the Sauerlanders 
 in blue jackets, — each man with a stout staff in his hand, 
 and a rye loaf and a ham on his back. " Fritz " glared 
 With astonishment when they presented themselves at his 
 head- quarters. "Where do you fellows come from?" 
 said he. " From Mark, to help our King." " Who doesn't 
 want you," interrupted Fritz. "So much the better; 
 we are here of our own accord." "Where are your 
 officers ?" " We have none." "And how many of you 
 deserted by the way ?" " Deserted !"^ cried the Markers 
 indignantly : "if any of us had been capable of tJiat^ we 
 should not be what we are, — volunteers." "True!" 
 said the King, " and I can depend upon you. You shall 
 have fire enough soon to toast your bread and cook your 
 hams by." 
 
 When Henri IV. was besieging Paris, held by the 
 Leaguers, the want most' severely felt by the famished 
 inhabitants was that of bread. The Guise party, who held 
 the city, — and the most active agent of that party was the 
 Duchess of Montpensier, the sister of Duke Henri of 
 Guise, — endeavoured to keep life in the people by means 
 
BUTTEE. 47 
 
 that nature revolts at. When every other sort of food 
 had disappeared, the Government within the walls dis- 
 tributed very diminutive rolls made of a paste, the chief 
 ingredient in which was human bones ground to powder. 
 The people devoured them under the name of " Madame 
 de Montpensier's cakes;" — no wonder that they soon 
 after exultingly welcomed the entry of a King, who 
 declared that his first desire was to secure to every man 
 in France his ''poule au 'pot V^ But enough of bread. 
 Let us examine briefly the subject of 
 
 BUTTER. 
 
 The illustrious XJde, or some one constituting him the 
 authority for the nonce, has sneered at the English as 
 being a nation having twenty religions, and only one 
 sauce, — melted butter. A French commentator has added, 
 that we have nothing polished about us but our steel, and 
 that our only ripe fruit is baked apples. Guy Pantin 
 traces the alleged disHke of the French of his day for the 
 English, to the circumstance that the latter poured melted 
 butter over their roast veal. The French execration is 
 amusingly said to have been further directed against us, on 
 account of the declared barbarism of eating oyster-sauce 
 with rump-steak, and " poultice," as they cruelly charac- 
 terize " bread sauce," with pheasant. But, to return to 
 butter : — the spilling of it has more than once been eluci- 
 dative of character. When, in the days of the old regime, 
 an English servant accidentally let a drop or two of 
 melted butter fall upon the silken suit of a French jpetit- 
 maitre, the latter indignantly declared that " blood and 
 butter were an Englishman's food." The conclusion was 
 illogical, but the arguer was excited. Lord John Town- 
 shend manifested better temper and wit, when a similar 
 
48 TABLE TRAITS. 
 
 accident befell him, as he was dining at a friend's table, 
 where the coachman was the only servant in waiting. 
 *' John," said my Lord, " you should never grease any- 
 thing but your coach- wheels." 
 
 It was an old popular error that a pound of butter 
 might consist of any number of ounces. It is an equally 
 popular error, that a breakfast cannot be, unless bread and 
 butter be of it, Marcus Antoninus breakfasted on dry 
 biscuits ; and many a person of less rank, and higher worth, 
 is equally incapable of digesting any thing stronger. Solid 
 breakfasts are only fit for those who have much solid 
 exercise to take after it ; otherwise heartburn may be 
 looked for. Avoid new bread and spongy rolls ; look on 
 muffins and crumpets as inventions of men of worse than 
 sanguinary principles, and hot buttered toast as of equally 
 wicked origin. Dry toast is the safest morning food, 
 perhaps, for persons of indifferent powers of digestion ; or 
 they may substitute for it the imperial fashion set by 
 Marcus Antoninus. Of liquids I may next speak ; and in 
 this our ancient friend, Tea, takes the precedence. 
 
 TEA. 
 
 The origin of tea is very satisfactorily accounted for 
 by the Indian mythologists. Darma, a Hindoo Prince, 
 went on a pilgrimage to China, vowing he would never 
 take rest by the way ; but he once fell asleep, and he was 
 so angry with himself, on awaking, that he cut off his 
 eye-lids, and flung them on the ground. They sprang 
 up in the form of tea shrubs ; and he who drinks of the 
 infusion thereof, imbibes the juice of the eye-lids of 
 Darma. Tea, however, is said to have been first used in 
 China as a corrective for bad water ; and tJiat not at a 
 remote date. 
 
TEA. 49 
 
 In the seventeenth century, half the physicians of 
 Holland published treatises in favour of tea. It was 
 hailed as a panacea, and the most moderate eulogizers 
 affirmed that two hundred cups a day might be drunk 
 without injury to the stomach of the drinker. In the 
 ninth century, tea was taken in China simply as a medi- 
 cine ; and it then had the repute of being a panacea. 
 The early Dutch physicians who so earnestly recommended 
 its use as a common beverage, met with strenuous opposi- 
 tion. France, Germany, and Scotland, in the persons of 
 Patin, Hahnemann, and Duncan, decried tea as an imperti- 
 nent novelty, and the vendors of it as immoral and 
 mercenary. Nor was Holland itself unanimous in pane- 
 gyrizing the refreshing herb. Some, indeed, eulogized the 
 infusion as the fountain of health, if not of youth ; but 
 others again, and those of the Dutch faculty, indignantly 
 derided it as filthy "hay-water." Olearius, the German, 
 on the other hand, recognised its dietetic virtues as early 
 as 1133 ; while a Russian Ambassador, at about the same 
 period, refused a pound or two of it, offered him by the 
 Mogul as a present to the Czar, on the ground that the 
 gift was neither useful nor agreeable. 
 
 The Dutch appear to have been the first who dis- 
 covered the value of the shrub, in a double sense. They 
 not only procured it for the sake of its virtues, but con- 
 trived to do so by a very profitable species of barter. 
 They exchanged with the Chinese a pound of sago for 
 three or four pounds of tea ; and it is very possible that 
 each party, preferring its own acquisition, looked on the 
 opposite party as duped. 
 
 Tea is supposed to have been first imported into England, 
 from Holland, in 1666, by Lords Arundel and Ossory. 
 We cannot be surprised that it was slow in acquiring 
 the popular favour, if its original cost was, as it is said 
 to have been, 60^. per pound. But great uncertainty 
 
50 TABLE TRAITS. 
 
 rests as well upon the period of introduction, as upon the 
 original importers, and the value of the merchandise. 
 One fact connected with it is well ascertained ; namely, 
 that European Companies had long traded with China 
 hefore they discovered the value and uses of tea. 
 
 It is said to have been in favour at the Court of 
 Charles II., owing to the example of Catherine, his Queen, 
 who had been used to drink it in Portugal. Medical men 
 thought, at that time, that health could not be more 
 effectually promoted than by increasing the fluidity of the 
 blood ; and that the infusion of Indian tea was the best 
 means of attaining that object. In 1678, Bontekoe, a 
 Dutch physician, published a celebrated treatise in favour 
 of tea, and to his authority its general use in so many 
 parts of Europe is to be attributed. 
 
 The first tea-dealer was also a tobacconist, and sold the 
 two weeds of novelty together, or separately. His name 
 was Garway, (" Garraway's,") and his locale, Exchange- 
 alley. It was looked upon chiefly as a medicinal herb ; 
 and Garway, in the seventeenth century, not only " made 
 up prescriptions," in which tea was the sole ingredient, 
 but parcels for presents, and cups of the infusion for those 
 who resorted to his house to drink it over his counter. 
 Its price then varied from 11*. to 505. per pound. The 
 taking tea with a visitor was soon a domestic circumstance ; 
 and, towards the end of the century. Lord Clarendon and 
 Pere Couplet supped together, and had a cup of tea after 
 supper, an occurrence which is journalized by his Lordship 
 without any remark to lead us to suppose that it was an 
 extraordinary event. 
 
 Dr. Lettsom has written largely, and plagiarized unre- 
 servedly, on the subject of tea; adding, as Mr. Disraeli 
 remarks, his own dry medical reflections to the sparkling 
 facts of others ; but he was the first, perhaps, who esta- 
 blished the unwholesomeness of green tea. He " distilled 
 
TEA. 51 
 
 some green tea, injected three drachms of the very odorous 
 and pellucid water which he obtained, into the cavity of 
 the abdomen and cellular membrane of a frog, by which 
 he paralysed the animal. He applied it to the cavity 
 of the abdomen and ischiatic nerves of another, and the 
 frog died ; and this he thought proved green tea to be 
 unwholesome" — to the frogs, and so applied, as it un- 
 doubtedly was. Such experiments, however, are unsa- 
 tisfactory. Nux vomica^ for instance, deadly poison to 
 man, may be taken, almost with impunity, by many ani- 
 mals. 
 
 The first brewers of tea were often sorely perplexed 
 with the preparation of the new mystery. " Mrs. Hutchin- 
 son's great grandmother was one of a party who sat down 
 to the first pound of tea that ever came into Penrith. It 
 was sent as a present, and without directions how to use 
 it. They boiled the whole at once in a bottle, and sat 
 down to eat the leaves with butter and salt, and they 
 wondered how any person could like such a diet." 
 
 Steele, in " The Funeral," laughs at the " cups which 
 cheer, but not inebriate." " Don't you see," says he, 
 " how they swallow, gallons of the juice of tea, while their 
 own dock-leaves are trodden under foot ?" 
 
 .What Bishop Berkeley did with " Tar Water," when he 
 made his Essay thereupon a ground for a Dissertation on 
 the Trinity, Joseph Williams — "the Christian merchant" 
 of the early and middle part of last century, whose biogra* 
 phy is well known to serious readers — did, when he wrote 
 to his friend Green upon the necessity of " setting the Lord 
 always before us." When treating of this subject, the 
 pious layman adverts to a present of that new thing 
 called " tea," which Green had sent him, and which had lost 
 some of its flavour in the transit. There is something 
 amusing in the half sensual, half spiritual way in which 
 worthy Joseph Williams mixes his Jeremiad upon tea 
 
 E 2 
 
52 TABLE TBAITS. 
 
 with one upon human morals. " The tea," he says, " came 
 safe to hand, but it hath lost the elegant flavour it had 
 when we drank of it at Sherborne, owing, I suppose, to 
 its conveyance in paper, which, being very porous, easily 
 admits effluvia from other goods packed up with it, and 
 emits effluvia from the tea. Such are the moral ten- 
 dencies of evil communications among men, which nothing 
 will prevent, (like canisters for tea,) but taking to us the 
 whole armour of God. Had the tea been packed up with 
 cloves, mace, and cinnamon, it would have been tinctured 
 with these sweet spices ; so ' he that walks with wise men 
 shall be wise.' He that converses with heaven-born souls, 
 whose conversation is in heaven, whose treasure and 
 whose hearts are there, will catch some sparks from their 
 holy fire ; but ^evil communications corrupt good manners.' 
 I have put the tea into a canister, and am told it will 
 recover its original flavour, as the pious soul which hath 
 received some ill impressions from vicious or vain con- 
 versation will, by retiring from the world, by communing 
 with his own heart, by heavenly meditation, and fervent 
 prayer, recover his spiritual ardour." The simile, how- 
 ever, limps a little ; for if every man canistered himself, 
 and a good example, from the world, the wide-spreading 
 aroma of that example would never seductively insinuate 
 itself into the souls of men. It is by contact we brighten, 
 and sometimes suffer. We must not canister our virtue 
 as Mr. Williams did his tea : the latter was for selfish en- 
 joyment. A guinea may be kept for ever unstained by 
 the commerce of the world, in the very centre of the chest 
 of avarice ; but what good does it do there ? Let it cir- 
 culate merrily through the hundred hands of the giant 
 Industry, and there will be more profit than evil effected 
 by the process. But good Joseph Williams would not 
 have agreed with us, and he would take his saintly similes 
 from traits of the table. " that I may walk humbly," 
 
TEA. 53 
 
 he says, " and look on myself, when fullest of divine com- 
 munications, but as a drinking-glass without a foot, and 
 which, consequently, cannot stand of itself, nor retain 
 what may be put into it." A very tipsy-like simile ! 
 
 I may be permitted to add that, after all, religion 
 happily proved stronger than tea, but not without still 
 stronger opposition ; and we are told by the disgusted 
 Connoisseur, that " persons of fashion cannot but lament 
 that the Sunday evening tea-drinkings in Eanelagh were 
 laid aside, from a superstitious regard to religion." A 
 remark which shows how very poor a connoisseur this 
 writer was in matters of propriety. Not, indeed, that diet 
 and divinity could not be seated at the same table. On 
 Easter-day, for instance, the first dish that used to be placed 
 before the jubilant guests was a red-herring on horseback, 
 set in a corn salad. Some hundred and fifty years ago, too, 
 there was a semi-religious, semi-roystering club held at the 
 " Northern Ale-house in St. Paul's Alle}^" every member 
 of which was of the name of Adam. It was formed in 
 honour and remembrance of the first man. The honour 
 was more than Adam deserved ; for the first created man 
 not only betrayed his trust, but he shabbily sought to 
 lay the responsibility upon the first woman. And as for 
 " remembrance," he has managed to survive even the 
 memory of the club founded by his namesakes, and long 
 since defunct. The members were hard drinkers, but not 
 of saffron posset, which Arabella, in " The Committee," 
 recommends as " a very good drink against the heaviness 
 of the spirits." The Adamites mostly died, as the legend 
 says Adam himself did, of hereditary gout, — an assertion 
 which would seem to indicate that the author of it was of 
 Hibernian origin ! 
 
 There are various passages of our poets which tend to 
 show that "tea" and "coffee" became, very early, fixed 
 social observances. Pope, writing, in 1715, of a lady who 
 
54 TABLE TRAITS. 
 
 left town after the coronation of George I., says that she 
 went to the country — 
 
 " To part her time 'twixt reading and Bohea, 
 To muse, and spill her solitary tea ; 
 Or o'er cold coffee trifle with the spoon, 
 Count the slow clock, and dine exact at noon.'* 
 
 At the same period, the more fortunate belles who 
 remained in town made of tea a means for other ends 
 than shortening time. Dr. Young, in his " Satires," says 
 of Memmia, that — 
 
 " Her two red lips affected zephyrs blow, 
 To cool the Bohea and inflame the beau ; 
 "While one white finger and a thumb conspire 
 To lift the cup and make the world admire." 
 
 Dr. Parr's delicate compliment is well known ; but I 
 may be pardoned, perhaps, for introducing it here. He 
 was not very partial to the Thea Sinensis, though lauded 
 so warmly by a French writer, as '' nostris gratissima 
 3£usis ;^^ but once being invited to take tea by a lady, he, 
 with a mixture of wit and gallantry, exclaimed, " JVec tea- 
 cum possum vivere, nee sine teV The Christchurch men 
 at Oxford were remarkable, at an early period, for their 
 love of tea ; and, in reference to it, they were pleasantly 
 recommended to adopt as their motto : " Te veniente die, 
 te decedente notamus.^'' In 1718, Pope draws an illustra- 
 tion from tea, when writing to Mr. Digby : " My Lady 
 Scudamore," he remarks jocosely, " from having rusticated 
 in your company too long, really behaves herself scanda- 
 lously among us. She pretends to open her eyes for the 
 sake of seeing the sun, and to sleep because it is night ; 
 drinks tea at nine in the morning, and is thought to have 
 said her prayers before ; talks, without any manner of 
 shame, of good books, and has not seen Gibber's play of 
 
TEA. 55 
 
 'The Nonjuror.'" This is a pleasant picture of the 
 "good woman" of the last century. She drank tea at 
 nine in the morning, not sleeping on till noon, to be 
 aroused at last, like Belinda, by — 
 
 " Shock, who thought she slept too long, 
 Leap'd up and waked his mistress with his tongue.'* 
 
 Tea is little nutritious ; it is often injurious from being 
 driink at too high a temperature, when the same quantity 
 of the fluid at a lower temperatiu-e would be beneficial. 
 It is astringent and narcotic ; but its effects are various 
 on various individuals, and the cup which refreshes and 
 invigorates one, depresses or unnaturally excites and 
 damages the digestive powers of others. Green tea can 
 in no case be useful, except medicinally, in cases where 
 there has been excessive fatigue of the mind or body ; 
 and even then the dose should be small. Tea, as a pro- 
 moter of digestion, or rather, as a comforter of the 
 stomach when the digestive process has been completed, 
 should not be taken earlier than from three to four hours 
 after the principal meal. Taken too early, it disturbs 
 digestion by arresting ch^^mification, and by causing disten- 
 sion. The astringency of tea is diminished by adding 
 milk, and its true taste more than its virtue is spoiled by 
 the addition of sugar. 
 
 These remarks are applicable to tea in its pure state, 
 and not to the adulterated messes which come from China, 
 or are made up in England. If sloe leaves here are made 
 to pass for Souchong, so also is many an unbroken chest 
 of " tea" landed, which is largely composed of leaves that 
 are not the least akin to the genuine shrub. Black teas 
 are converted into green, some say by means of a poisonous 
 dye, others by roasting on copper ; but I do not think 
 this process is extensively adopted. At one time the 
 chests were rendered heavy by an adulterated mixture of 
 
56 TABLE TEAITS. 
 
 a considerable quantity of tea, and a not inconsiderable 
 quantity of earthy detritus^ strongly impregnated with 
 iron. But our searchers soon put a stop to this knavery. 
 They ju^t dipped a powerful magnet into the chest, 
 stirred it about, and, when drawn out, the iron particles, if 
 any, were sure to be found adhering to the irresistible 
 "detective." I have heard that Lady Morgan's tea- 
 parties, in Dublin, were remarkable for the excellent 
 qualities both of the beverage and the company ; and 
 also for her Ladyship's stereotyped joke, of " Sugar your- 
 selves, gentlemen, and I '11 milk you all." 
 
 Tea-parties, I may observe in conclusion, are not confined 
 in China to festive occasions. Tea is solemnly drunk on 
 serious celebrations, with squibs to follow. Thus, for 
 instance, at the funeral of a Buddhist Priest, there is 
 thought taken for the living as well as for the dead, for the 
 appetites of mortals as well as for the gratification of the 
 gods. The latter are presented with various sorts of food, 
 save animal. It is placed on the altar, and it is eaten at 
 night by the deities, of course. While the ceremonies pre- 
 liminary to the interment are proceeding, a servant enters 
 the temple, and hands tea round to the reverend gentlemen 
 who are officiating ! The interment usually takes place in 
 the morning, and it is numerously attended ; but if, as the 
 long procession is advancing, the hour of breakfast should 
 happen to arrive, the corpse is suddenly dropped in the 
 highway, the entire assembly rush to their respective 
 homes, and not till they have consumed their tea and 
 toast, or whatever materials go to the constituting of a 
 Chinese dejeuner, do they return to carry the corse to its 
 final resting-place, and fire no end of squibs over it, in 
 testimony of their affliction. Which done, more refresh- 
 ment follows ; and perhaps some of the mourners retire to 
 Chinese taverns, where inviting placards promise them 
 " A cup of tea and a bird's nest for 4id, ! '* 
 
COFEEE. 57 
 
 COFFEE. 
 
 The English and French dispute the honour of being 
 the first introducers of coffee into Western Europe. The 
 Dutch assert that they assisted in this introduction ; and, 
 although coffee was not drunk at Borne, until long after 
 it had been known to, and tasted by, Italian travellers at 
 Constantinople, the Church looked with pleasure on a 
 beverage, one effect of which was to keep both Priests and 
 people awake. 
 
 An Arab author of the fifteenth century — Sherbaddin — 
 asserts, that the first man who drank coffee was a certain 
 Muphti of Aden, who lived in the ninth century of the 
 Hegira, about a.d. 1500. The popular tradition is, that 
 the Superior of a Dervish comtn unity, observing the effects 
 of coffee-berries when eaten by some goats, rendering 
 them much more lively and skittish than before, pre- 
 scribed it for the brotherhood, in order to^ cure them of 
 drowsiness and indolence. 
 
 It was originally known by the name of caJiui or hauJii^ — 
 an orthography which comes near to that of the ingenious 
 Town-Councillor of Leeds, who, writing out a bill of fare 
 for a public breakfast, contrived to spell " coffee " without 
 employing a single letter that occurs in that word, — to 
 wit, Icawphy ! 
 
 Sandys, a traveller of the seventeenth century, gives it 
 no very attractive character. Good for digestion and 
 mirth, he allows it to be ; but he says that in taste as in 
 colour it is nearly as black as soot. 
 
 The coffee-houses of England take precedence of those 
 of France, though the latter have more enduringly 
 flourished. In 1652, a Greek, in the service of an Eng- 
 lish Turkey merchant, opened a house in London. "I 
 have discovered his hand-bill,'' says Mr. Disraeli, "in 
 
68 TABLE TEAITS. 
 
 which he sets forth the virtue of the coffee drink, first 
 pubUquely made and sold in England, by Pasqua Rosee, of 
 St. Michael's Alley, Cornhill, at the sign of his own head." 
 Mr. Peter Cunningham cites a MS. of Oldys in his pos- 
 session, in which some fuller details of much interest are 
 given. Oldys says, " The first use of coffee in England 
 was known in 1657, when Mr. Daniel Edwards, a Turkey 
 merchant, brought from Smyrna to London one Pasqua 
 Eosee, a Eagusan youth, who prepared this drink for him 
 every morning. But the novelty thereof drawing too 
 much company to him, he allowed his said servant, 
 with another of his son-in-law's, to sell it publicly ; and 
 they set up the first coffee-house in London, in St. 
 Michael's Alley, Cornhill. But they separating, Pasqua 
 kept in the house ; and he who had been his partner 
 obtained leave to pitch a tent, and sell the hquor, in St. 
 Michael's church-yard." Aubrey, in his Anecdotes, states 
 that the first vendor of coffee in London was one Bowman, 
 coachman to a Turkey merchant, named Hodges, who 
 was the father-in-law of Edwards, and the partner of 
 Pasqua, who got into difiiculties, partly by his not being 
 a freeman, and who left the country. Bowman was not 
 only patronized, but a magnificent contribution of one 
 thousand sixpences was presented to him, wherewith he 
 made great improvements in his coffee-house. Bowman 
 took an apprentice, (Paynter,) who soon learnt the 
 mystery, and in four years set up for himself. The coffee- 
 houses soon became numerous : the principal were Farres', 
 the Bainbow, at the Inner-Temple Gate, and John's, in 
 Fuller's Bents. " Sir Henry Blount," says Aubrey, " was 
 a great upholder of coffee, and a constant frequenter of 
 coffee-houses." 
 
 The frequenters of these places, however, were consi- 
 dered as belonging to the idle and dissipated classes ; and 
 the reputation was not altogether undeserved. Respect- 
 
corrEE. 59 
 
 able people denounced the cofFee-drinking evils, illus- 
 triously obscure and loyal people dreaded the politics that 
 were discussed at the drinking, and tipsy satirists hurled 
 strong contempt and weak verse at the new-fangled 
 fashion of abandoning Canary wine for the Arabian infu- 
 sion. The fashion, however, extended rapidly ; the more 
 so, that cups were soon to be had at so low a price, that 
 the shops where they were sold went by the name of 
 " Penny Universities." The ladies, who were excluded from 
 public participation in the bitter enjoyment, made some 
 characteristic complaints against the male drinkers, and 
 intimated that the indulgence of cofFee-drinking would in 
 time deteriorate, if not destroy, the human race ; but the 
 imbibers heeded not the complaint, their answer to which 
 was that of Beranger's gay marital philosopher : — 
 
 " Nous laisserions finir le monde, 
 Si nos femmes le voulaient bien." 
 
 While the ladies, through their poetical representatives, 
 were complaining, male philanthropists quickly discerned 
 the social uses of the cup ; and Sir Henry Blount 
 acknowledges, with grateful pleasure, that the custom, 
 on the part of labouring men and apprentices, of drinking 
 a cup of coffee in the morning, instead of their ordinary 
 matinal draught of beer or wine, was chiefly owing to 
 Sir James Muddiford, "who introduced the practice 
 hereof first in London." 
 
 The Government of the Stuarts, hating free discussion, 
 and not particularly caring for wit, watched the coffee- 
 houses with much jealousy, and placed as much restriction 
 upon them as they possibly could strain the law to. The 
 vexatious proceeding did not secure the desired result ; 
 and the coffee-house wits laughed at the Government. 
 The wits, however, were not always successful either in 
 their praise of, or satire against, coffee. Pepys, on the 
 
60 TABLE TRAITS. 
 
 loth of October, 1667, went to the Duke's House, to see 
 the comedy of " Taruga's Wiles ; or, the Coffee-House," 
 of which he says, " The most ridiculous, insipid play that 
 ever I saw in my life ; and glad we were that Betterton 
 had no part in it." But Pepys was probably not in the 
 true vein to decide critically that night ; for his pretty 
 maid Willett was sitting at his side ; and his wife, who 
 was on the other, spoiled the effect of the play by her 
 remarks on the girl's "confidence." Perhaps one of the 
 most cm-ious apologies for coffee-houses was that of 
 Aubrey, who declared that he should never have acquired 
 so extensive an acquaintance but for " the modern advan- 
 tages of coffee-houses in this great city, before which 
 men knew not how to be acquainted but with their own 
 relations and societies. ^^ And Aubrey, who has been 
 called the small Boswell of his day, " was a man who 
 had more acquaintances than friends." 
 
 Yemen is the accepted birth-place, if we may so speak, 
 of the coffee-tree. Pietro de la Yalle introduced it into 
 Italy, La Eoyne into Marseilles, and Thevenot brought it 
 with him to Paris. In 1643, a Levantine opened a 
 coffee-house in Paris, in the Place du Petit Chatelet ; but 
 it was Soleiman Aga, Turkish Ambassador in Paris, in 
 1689, who was the medium through which coffee found 
 its way into the realm of fashion. Had it been really 
 what some have supposed it to have been, — the black 
 broth of the Lacedaemonians,— he could have made it 
 modish by his method of service. This was marked by 
 all the minute details of oriental fashion, — small cups 
 and foot-boys, gold-fringed napkins and pages, coffee 
 wreathing with smoke, and Ganymedes wreathed with 
 garlands, the first all aroma, and the hand-bearers all otto 
 of roses : the whole thing was too dazzling and dramatic 
 to escape adoption. But the intolerable vulgar would 
 imitate their betters, and coffee became as common at 
 
corrEE. 61 
 
 taverns as wine, beer, and smoking. It would liave 
 inevitably been abandoned to coarse appetites only, but 
 for Fran9ois Procope, a Sicilian, who, in the Rue de 
 TAncienne Comedie, exactly opposite to the old play-house 
 in the Faubourg St. Grermain, opened an establishment 
 expressly for the sale of coffee, but with such innocent 
 additional articles as ices, lemonade, and the like harm- 
 less appliances, to make pleasant the seasons in their 
 change. The Cafe Procope became the immediate resort 
 of all the wits, philosophers, and refined roues of Paris. 
 There Rousseau wrote or repeated the lines which brought 
 him into such frequent trouble. There Piron muttered 
 the verses with which the incitement of devils inspired 
 him. There Voltaire tried to rule supreme, but found 
 himself in frequent bitter contest with Palissot and 
 Freron. The Cafe Procope was the morning journal, the 
 foreign news-mart, the exchange, — literary, witty, and 
 emphatically charming. There Lamothe renewed the 
 contest between the ancient and modern, the classical 
 and the romantic, drama. There the brilliant Chevalier 
 de St. Greorges gave lessons in fencing to the men of let- 
 ters ; and thence Dorat addressed his amorous missives to 
 Mademoiselle Saunier. There Marmontel praised Clairon, 
 and the Marquis de Bievre tried his calembourgs ; and 
 there Duclos and Mercier made their sketches of society, at 
 once serious and sarcastic. The universal favour in which 
 coffee is still held in Paris, and the crowds which still 
 wait on " Andromaque," sufficiently belie the famous pro- 
 phecy of Madame de Sevigne, that "coffee and Racine 
 would have their day." The dark infusion reigns with- 
 out a rival, the demi-tasse follows dinner oftener than 
 "grace," Rachel helps to keep Racine alive, and cafe, in 
 its turn, has the reputation of being one of the favourite 
 stimulants of the great tragedienne. 
 
 With regard to the making of coffee, there is no doubt 
 
62 TABLE TRAITS. 
 
 that the Turkish method of pounding the coffee in a 
 mortar is infinitely superior to grinding it in a mill, as 
 with us. But after either method the process recom- 
 mended by M. Soyer may be advantageously adopted; 
 namely, " Put two ounces of ground coffee into a stew- 
 pan, which set upon the fire, stirring the coffee round 
 with a spoon until quite hot, then pour over a pint of 
 boiling water ; cover over closely for five minutes, pass it 
 through a cloth, warm again, and serve." 
 
 The chemist Laplace explained to Napoleon the results 
 of various methods of manipulation. "How is it. Sir," 
 said the Emperor, " that a glass of water in which I melt 
 a lump of sugar, always appears to me to be superior in 
 taste to one in which I put the same quantity of pow- 
 dered sugar ?" " Sire," said the sage, "there exist three 
 substances, whose elements are precisely the same ; namely, 
 sugar, gum, and starch. They only differ under certain 
 conditions, the secret of which Nature has reserved to 
 herself; and I believe that it is possible, that, by the 
 collision caused by the pestle, some of the portions of the 
 sugar pass into the condition of gum or starch, and 
 thence arises the result which has been observed." 
 
 Medical men are widely at issue as to the merits of 
 coffee. All, however, are agreed that it stimulates the 
 brain, and banishes somnolency. Voltaire and Buffon 
 were great coffee- drinkers ; but I do not know that we are 
 authorized to attribute the lucidity of the one or the 
 harmony of the other to the habit in question. Ability 
 would be cheaply purchased if that were the case ; and 
 the "royal road" would have been discovered where it 
 had never been looked foi*. 
 
 The sleeplessness produced by coffee is not one of an 
 unpleasant character. It is simply a painless vigilance ; 
 but, if often repeated, it may be exceedingly prejudicial. 
 Brillat de Savarin illustrates the power of coffee by 
 
COFFEE. 63 
 
 remarking, that a man may live many years who takes 
 two bottles of wine daily; but the same quantity of 
 strong coffee would soon make him imbecile, or drive him 
 into a consumption. 
 
 Taken immediately after dinner, coffee aids the dys- 
 peptic, especially to digest fat and oily aliment, which, 
 without such stimulant, would undoubtedly create much 
 disturbance. The Turks drink it to modify the effects of 
 opium. Cafe au lait, that is, three parts milk to one of 
 coffee, is the proper thing for breakfast ; but the addition 
 of milk to that taken after dinner is a cruelty to the 
 stomach. A Dutchman, named Nieudorff, is said to have 
 been the first who ventured on the experiment of mixing 
 milk with coffee. When he had the courage to do this, 
 the two liquids together were considered something of 
 such an abomination as we should now consider brown 
 sugar with oysters. 
 
 I must not omit to mention, that the favourite beverage 
 of Voltaire, at the Cafe JProcope^ was " cJioca,^^ — a mix- 
 ture of coffee (with milk) and chocolate. The Emperor 
 Napoleon was as fond of the same mixture as he was of 
 Chambertin; and, in truth, I do not know a draught 
 which so perfectly soothes and revives as that of hot, 
 well-frothed '^choca'^ 
 
 Substances mixed with coffee, or substitutes for the 
 berry altogether, have been tried with various degrees of 
 success. Roasted acorns have been made to pass for it 
 when ground. There is more chicory than coffee con- 
 sumed at the present time in France ; and the infusion of 
 the lupin does duty for it at poor hearths in Flanders; 
 as that of roasted rye (the nearest resemblance to coffee) 
 does in America. Experimentalists say, that an excellent 
 substitute for coffee may be made from asparagus ; and 
 Frankfort, alarmed lest the complications of the " Eastern 
 Question " should deprive it of the facilities for procuring 
 
64 TABLE TRAITS. 
 
 the berry as heretofore, is gravely consulting as to whe- 
 ther asparagus coffee may be a beverage likely to be 
 acceptable as a substitute for the much prized '^ demi- 
 tasse'' 
 
 CHOCOLATE. 
 
 Feedikakd Cortez went to Mexico in search of gold ; 
 but the first discovery he made was of chocolate. The 
 discovery was not welcomed ecclesiastically, as coffee was. 
 This new substance was considered a sort of wicked 
 luxury, at least for Monks, who were among the earliest 
 to adopt it, but who were solemidy warned against its 
 supposed peculiar effects. The moralists quite as eagerly 
 condemned it ; and in England Roger North angrily 
 asserted, that " the use of coffee-houses seems much im- 
 proved by a new invention, called ' chocolate-houses,' for 
 the benefit of rooks and cullies of quality, where gambling 
 
 is added to all the rest, and the summons of W 
 
 seldom fails ; as if the devil had erected a new university, 
 and these were the colleges of its Professors, as well as his 
 schools of discipline." The Stuart jealousy of these 
 localities, where free discussion was amply enjoyed, seems 
 to have influenced the Attorney- General of James II. ; 
 for, although they may not have been frequented, he says, 
 by "the factious gentry he so much dreaded," he adds, 
 " This way of passing time might have been stopped at 
 first, before people had possessed themselves of some con- 
 venience from them of meeting for short dispatches, and 
 passing evenings with small expenses." Of what chiefly 
 recommended these places, the stern official thus made a 
 grievance. 
 
 Chocolate (or, as the Mexicans term it, cJiocolalt) is 
 the popular name for the seeds of the cocoa, or, more 
 correctly, the cacao, plant, in a prepared state, generally 
 
CHOCOLATE. G5 
 
 with sugar and cinnamon. The Mexicans improve the 
 flavour of the inferior sorts of cacao seeds by burying 
 them in the earth for a month, and allowing them to 
 ferment. The nutritious quality of either cacao or choco- 
 late is entirely owing to the oil or butter of cacao which 
 it contains. Cacao-nibs, the best form of taking this pro- 
 duction, are the seeds roughly crushed. When the seed 
 is crushed between rollers, the result is flake cacao. 
 Common cacao is the seed reduced to a paste, and pressed 
 into cakes. The cheap kinds of chocolate are said to be 
 largely adulterated with lard, sago, and red-lead, — a 
 pernicious mixture for healthy stomachs ; but what must 
 it be for weak stomachs craving for food at once nutri- 
 tious and easy of digestion ? The " patent " chocolates 
 of the shops are nothing more than various modes of 
 preparing the cacao seeds. 
 
 The ladies of Mexico are so excessively fond of choco- 
 late, that they not only take it several times during the 
 day, but they occasionally have it brought to them in 
 church, and during the service. A cup of good chocolate 
 may, indeed, afford the drinker strength and patience to 
 undergo a bad sermon. The Bishops opposed it for a 
 time, but they at length closed their eyes to the practice. 
 I am afraid there is no chance of the fashion being intro- 
 duced into England. The advantages would be acknow- 
 ledged ; but then there would be a savour of Popery 
 detected about it, that would inevitably cause its rejec- 
 tion. The Church herself found a boon in this exquisite 
 supporter of strength. The Monks took it of a morning 
 before celebrating Mass, even in Lent. The orthodox and 
 strong-stomached raised a dreadful cry at the scandal; 
 but Escobar metaphysically proved, that chocolate made 
 with water did not break a fast ; thus establishing the 
 ancient maxim, '' Liqiiidum nonfrangitjejuniumy 
 
 Spain welcomed the gift of chocolate made her by 
 
66 TABLE TEAITS. 
 
 Mexico with as much enthusiasm as she did that of gold 
 by Peru ; the metal she soon squandered, but chocolate is 
 still to be found in abundance in the Peninsula : it is an 
 especial favourite with ladies and Monks, and it always 
 appears on occasions when courtesy requires that refresh- 
 ments be offered. The Spanish Monks sent presents 
 of it to their brethren in French monasteries ; and 
 Anne of Austria, daughter of Philip II. of Spain, when 
 she brought across the Pyrenees her hand, but not her 
 heart, to the un energetic Louis XIII., brought a sup- 
 ply of chocolate therewith ; and henceforth it became an 
 established fact. In the days of the Regency it was far 
 more commonly consumed than coffee ; for it was then 
 taken as an agreeable aliment, while coffee was still looked 
 upon as a somewhat strange beverage, but certainly akin 
 to luxury. In the opinion of Linnaeus it must have sur- 
 passed all other nutritious preparations, or that naturalist 
 would hardly have conferred upon it, as he did, the proud 
 name of Theohroma, " food for the gods ! " 
 
 Invalids will do well to remember, that chocolate made 
 with vanilla is indigestible, and injurious to the nerves. 
 Indeed, there are few stomachs at all that can bear choco- 
 late as a daily meal. It is a highly concentrated aliment ; 
 and all such cease to act nutritiously if taken into constant 
 use. 
 
 We will now look into some of those famous resorts of 
 by-gone days, where coffee and chocolate were prepared, 
 and wit was bright and spontaneous. 
 
THE OLD COFFEE-HOUSES, 
 
 The " Grecian" appears to have been the oldest of the 
 better-known coffee-houses, and to have lasted the longest. 
 It was opened by Constantine, a Grecian, "living in Thread- 
 needle-street, over against St. Christopher's Church," in 
 the early part of the last half of the seventeenth century. 
 Its career came to a close towards the middle of the nine- 
 teenth century ; namely, in 1843, when the Grecian Coffee- 
 house, then in Devereux-court, Strand, where it had 
 existed for very many years, was converted into the " Gre- 
 cian Chambers," or lodgings for bachelors. 
 
 Constantine not only sold " the right Turkey coffee 
 berry, or chocolate," but gave instructions how to " pre- 
 pare the said liquors gratis." The "Grecian" was the 
 resort rather of the learned than the dissipated. The 
 antiquarians sat at its tables ; and, despising the news 
 of the day, discussed the events of the Trojan war, and 
 similar lively, but remote, matters. The laborious trifling 
 was ridiculed by the satirists ; and it is clear that there 
 were some pedants as well as philosophers there. It 
 was a time when both sages and sciolists wore swords ; 
 and it is on record that two friendly scholars, sipping their 
 coffee at the " Grecian," became enemies in argument, the 
 subject of which was the accent of a Greek word. What- 
 ever the accent ought to have been, the quarrel was acute, 
 and its conclusion grave. The scholars rushed into Deve- 
 reux-court, drew their swords, and, as one was run through 
 
 r 2 
 
68 TABLE TRAITS. 
 
 the body and killed on the spot, it is to be supposed that 
 he was necessarily wrong. But the duel was the strangest 
 method of settling a question in grammar that I ever 
 heard of. Still it was rather the scholars than the rakes 
 who patronized the " Grecian ;" and there were to be 
 found the Committee of the Royal Society, and Oxford 
 Professors, enjoying their leisure and hot cups, after philo- 
 sophical discussion and scientific lecturing ; and even the 
 Privy Council Board sometimes assembled there to take 
 coffee after Council. 
 
 The " coffee-houses," which were resorted to for mere 
 conversation as well as cofiee, began on a first floor ; they 
 were the seed, as it were, whence has arisen the political 
 and exclusive " club" of the present day. The advantages 
 of association were first experienced in coffee-houses ; but 
 at the same time was felt the annoyance caused by intru- 
 sive and unwelcome strangers. The club, with its bal- 
 lot-box to settle elections of members, was the natural 
 result. 
 
 William Urwin's Coffee-house, known as "Will's," from 
 its owner's name, and recognised as the "Wits'," from its 
 company, was on the first floor of the house at the west 
 corner of Bow-street and Eussell-street, Co vent Garden. 
 In the last half of the seventeenth century, it was at the 
 height of its good fortune and reputation. The shop 
 beneath it was kept by a woollen-draper. 
 
 Tom Brown says that a wit was set up at a small cost ; 
 he was made by " peeping once a day in at Will's," and 
 by relating " two or three second-hand sayings." It was 
 at Will's that Dry den " pedagogued" without restraint, 
 accepted flattery without a blush, and praised with happy 
 complacency the perfection of his own works. He was 
 the great attraction of the place, and his presence there of 
 an evening filled the room with admiring listeners, or 
 indiscreet adulators. Dry den had the good sense to retire 
 
THE OLD COrFEE-HOTJSES. 69 
 
 early, when the tables were full, and he knew he had 
 made a favourable impression, which the company might 
 improve in his absence. Addison, more given to jolly 
 fellowship, sat late with those who tarried to drink. Pepys, 
 recording his first visit, in February, 1663-4, says that 
 he stepped in on his way to fetch his wife, " where Dry den 
 the poet, (I knew at Cambridge,) and all the wits of the 
 town, and Harris the player, and Mr. Hoole of our Col- 
 lege. And had I had time then, as I could at other 
 times, it will be good coming thither ; for there I per- 
 ceive is very witty and pleasant discourse. But I could 
 not tarry ; and, as it was late, they were all ready to go 
 away." 
 
 The reign of Dryden at Will's was not, however, with- 
 out its pains. Occasionally, a daring stranger, like young 
 Lockier, raw from the country, would object to the dicta 
 of the despot. Thus, when Drj^den praised his " Mac 
 Flecknoe," as the first satire " written in heroics," the 
 future Dean timidly suggested that the " Lutrin " and 
 the " Secchia Bajpita " were so written ; and Dryden ac- 
 knowledged that his corrector was right. The London 
 beaux would have been afraid, or incapable, of setting 
 Dryden right ; they were sufficiently happy if they were 
 but permitted to dip their fingers into the poet's snuff- 
 box, and, at a separate table, listen to the criticisms 
 uttered by the graver authorities who were seated round 
 another, at the upper end of the room. Of the disputes 
 that there arose, " glorious John" was arbiter; for his 
 particular use a chair was especially reserved ; therein 
 enthroned, he sat by the hearth or the balcony, according 
 to the season, and delivered judgments which were not 
 always final. 
 
 No man was better qualified to do so, for the " spe- 
 cialty" of Will's Coffee-house was poetry. Songs, epi- 
 grams, and satires, circulated from table to table ; and 
 
70 TABLE TEATTS. 
 
 the wits judged plays, even Dry den's, until the play- 
 wrights began to satirize the wits. "With Dry den, " Will's" 
 lost some of its dignity. Late hours, card-playing, and 
 politics ; poets more didactic in their verse, and essayists 
 more instructive in their prose, than in their daily prac- 
 tice ; " dissipateurs" like Addison, and peers who shared in 
 Addison's lower tastes, without either his talent or occa- 
 sional refinement, — spoiled the character of "Will's," 
 where, by the way. Pope had been introduced b}^ Sir Charles 
 Wogan, though, years before, in his youth, he had been 
 proud to follow old Wycherley about from coffee-house to 
 coffee-house; and then ^'Button's" attracted the better 
 portion of the company, and left Will's to the vulgar and 
 the witless. 
 
 " Button's " Coffee-house was so named from its original 
 proprietor, who had been a servant of the Countess of 
 Warwick, the wife of Addison. It was situated in Great 
 Russell-street, on the south side, about two doors from 
 Covent Garden. What Dryden had been at " Will's," 
 Addison was at " Button's." There, — after writing during 
 the morning at his house in St. James's Place, where 
 his breakfast-table was attended by such men as Steele, 
 Budgell, Philips, Carey, Davenant, and Colonel Brett, 
 with some of whom he generally dined at a tavern, 
 — he was to be found of an evening, until the supper hour 
 called him and his companions to some other tavern, 
 where, if not at Button's, they made a night of it. Pope 
 was of the company for almost a year, but left it because 
 the late hours injured his health ; and furthermore, per- 
 haps, for the reason, that his irritable temper had rendered 
 him unpopular, and that he had so provoked Ambrose 
 Philips, that the latter suspended a birchen rod over 
 Pope's usual seat, in intimation of what the ordinary 
 occupant would get if he ventured into it. The Butto- 
 nians were famous for the fierceness of their criticism, 
 
THE OLD COrrEE-HOUSES. 71 
 
 "but it appears to have been altogether a better organized 
 establishment than Will's ; for while the parish registers 
 show that the landlord of the latter was fined for misde- 
 meanour, the vestry-books of St. Paul (Covent Garden), 
 prove that Button paid " for two places in the pew No. 18, 
 on the south side of the north aisle, £2. 25. ;" and charity 
 leads us to conclude that Daniel and his wife occupied 
 the places so paid for, and were orthodox as well as loyal. 
 The "Lion's Head" of the "Guardian," which was put 
 up at Button's, over the box destined to receive contribu- 
 tions for the editor, is now at Woburn, in the possession 
 of the Duke of Bedford. 
 
 Of coffee-houses that went by the name of " Tom's" 
 there were three. At the one in Birchin-lane, Garrick 
 occasionally appeared among the young merchants ; and 
 Chatterton, before despair slew even ambition, more than 
 once dined. At the second house so called, in Devereux- 
 court, many of the scholars, critics, and scientific men of 
 the last century used to congregate. There Akenside 
 essayed to rule over the tables as Dryden had done at 
 "Will's," and Addison at "Button's;" but his imperious 
 rule was often overthrown by "flat rebellion." The 
 "Tom's" was opposite "Button's," and stood on the 
 north side of Great Eussell-street, No. 17. It received 
 its name from the Christian appellation of its master, 
 Thomas West, who committed suicide in 1722. If guests 
 gained celebrity in the latter days at " Will's" for writing 
 a "posie for a ring," so at "Tom's" Mr. Ince was held 
 in due respect, for the reason that he had composed a 
 solitary paper for the " Spectator." It was a place where 
 the tables were generally crowded from the time of Queen 
 Anne to that of George III. Seven hundred of the 
 nobility, foreign Ministers, gentry, and geniuses of the 
 age, subscribed a guinea each, in 1714, for the erection of 
 a card-room ; and this fact, with the additional one that, 
 
72 TABLE TEAITS. 
 
 only four years later, an enlarged room for cards and con- 
 versation was constructed, may serve to show by what 
 sort of people, and for what particular purposes, " Tom's" 
 was patronized. 
 
 At the time that White's Chocolate-house was opened 
 at the bottom of St. James' s-street, — the close of the last 
 century, — it was probably thought vulgar ; for there was a 
 garden attached, and it had a suburban air. At the 
 tables in the house or garden more than one highwayman 
 took his chocolate, or threw his main, before he quietly 
 mounted his horse and rode slowly down Piccadilly 
 towards Bagshot. Before the establishment was burned 
 down, in 1733, it was famous rather for intensity of 
 gaming than excellence of chocolate. It arose from its 
 ashes, and settled, at the top of the street, into a fixed- 
 ness of fashion that has never swerved. Gallantry, plea- 
 sure, and entertainment were the characteristics of the 
 place. The celebrated Lord Chesterfield there " gamed, 
 and pronounced witticisms among the boys of quality." 
 Steele dated all his love-news in the "Tatler" from 
 White's. It was stigmatized as "the common rendez- 
 vous of infamous sharpers and noble cullies;" and bets 
 were laid to the effect that Sir William Burdett, one of 
 its members, would be the first Baronet who would be 
 hanged. The gambling went on till dawn of day ; and 
 Pelham, when Prime Minister, was not ashamed to divide 
 his time between his ofiicial table and the picquet-tablo 
 at White's. Selwyn, like Chesterfield, enlivened the 
 room with his wit. As a sample of the spirit of betting 
 which prevailed, Walpole quotes " a good story made at 
 White's." A man dropped down dead at the door, and was 
 carried in ; the Club immediately made bets whether he 
 was dead or not, and, when they were going to bleed him, 
 the wagerers for his death interposed, and said it would 
 afiect the fairness of the bet ! 
 
THE OLD COFFEE-HOrSES. 73 
 
 Some of the old rules of the houses are rich in " table 
 traits." Thus, in 1736, every member was required to pay 
 an extra guinea a year " towards having a good cook." 
 The supper was on table at ten o'clock ; the bill at twelve. 
 In 1758, it was agreed that he who transgressed the 
 rules for balloting should pay the supper reckoning. In 
 1797 we find, " Dinner at 10s. 6d. per head, (malt Hquor, 
 biscuits, oranges, apples, and olives included,) to be on 
 table at six o'clock; the bill to be brought at nine." 
 " That no hot suppers be provided, unless particularly 
 ordered ; and then be paid for at the rate of 8^. per head. 
 That in one of the rooms there be laid every night (from 
 the Queen's to the King's birthday) a table, with cold 
 meat, oysters, &c. Each person partaking thereof to pay 
 4s., malt liquors only included." 
 
 Colley Cibber was a member, but, as it would seem, an 
 honorary one only, who dined with the Manager of the 
 Club, and was tolerated afterwards by the company for 
 the sake of his wit. Mr. Cunningham states, that at the 
 supper given by the Club in 1814, at Burlington House, 
 to the Allied Sovereigns, there were covers laid for 2,400 
 people, and that the cost was " £9,849. 2^. 6^." " Three 
 weeks after this, (July 6, 1814,) the Club gave a dinner 
 to the Duke of Welhngton, which cost £2,840. 10s. 9^/." 
 The dinner given, in the month of February of the pre- 
 sent year, to Prince George of Cambridge, was one not to 
 welcome a victorious warrior, but to cheer an untried, 
 about to go forth to show himself worthy of his spurs. 
 White's ceased to be an open Chocolate-house in 1736, 
 from which period it has been as private an establish- 
 ment as a Club can be said to be. 
 
 The poHticians had their coffee-houses as well as the 
 wits. The "Cocoa Tree," in St. James' s-street, was the 
 Tory house in the reign of Queen Anne. The " St. 
 James's" was the Whig house. It was a well-frequented 
 
74 TABLE TRAITS. 
 
 house in the latter days of George II., when Gibbon 
 recorded his surprise at seeing a score or two of the 
 noblest and wealthiest in the land, seated in a noisy 
 coffee-room, at little tables covered by small napkins, 
 supping off cold meat or sandwiches, and finishing with 
 strong punch and confused politics. 
 
 The St. James's Coffee-house ranked Addison, Swift, 
 Steele, and, subsequently, Goldsmith and Garrick, among 
 its habitues. It had a more solid practical reputation than 
 any of the other coffee-houses ; for within its walls Gold- 
 smith's poem of "Retaliation" originated. But politics 
 was its " staple ;" and poor politicians seem to have been 
 among its members, seeing that many of them were in 
 arrears with their subscriptions : but these were probably 
 the outer-room men ; for the magnates, who were accus- 
 tomed to sit and watch the line of Bourbon, within the 
 steam of the great coffee-pot, were doubtless punctual in 
 their payments ere they could have earned the privilege. 
 And yet their poetical acumen was often more correct 
 than their political discernment ; for while the company at 
 Button's ascribed the " Town Eclogues" to Gay, the coffee- 
 drinkers at St. James's were unanimous in giving them 
 to a lady of quality. 
 
 Of the coffee-houses of a second order, the "Bedford," 
 in Covent Garden, was probably the first ; but, for good 
 fellowship, it equalled any of the more exclusive houses ; 
 for Garrick, and Quin, and Murphy, and Foote, were of 
 the company. Wit was the serious occupation of all its 
 members ; and it never gave any of them serious trouble 
 to produce in abundance. Quin, above all, was brilliant 
 in the double achievements of Epicureanism and sparkling 
 repartee. Garrick, in allusion to the sentiments often 
 expressed here by his brother actor, wrote the epigram- 
 matic lines, supposed to be uttered by Quin, in reference 
 to a discussion on embalming the dead, and which will be 
 
THE OLD COFFEE-HOUSES. 75 
 
 found in a subsequent chapter, under the head of " Table 
 Traits of the last Century." 
 
 iEsopus, the actor, who was to Cicero what Quin was 
 to George the Third, — he "taught the boy to speak," — 
 ^sopus was as great an epicure, in his way, as Quin him- 
 self. It is related of him, that one day he dined off a 
 costly dish of birds, the whole of which, when living, had 
 been taught either to sing or speak, ^sopus was as fond 
 of such a dish as his fellow-comedian, Quin, was of mullet ; 
 for which, and for some other of his favourite morceaux^ 
 he used to say that a man ought to have a swallow as 
 long as from London to Botany Bay, and palate all the 
 way ! When the fish in question was in season, his first 
 inquiry of the servant who used to awaken him was, " Is 
 there any mullet in the market this morning, John?" 
 and if John replied in the negative, his master's reported 
 rejoinder was, "Then call me at nine to-morrow, John." 
 
 The Bedford Coffee-house had its disadvantages, as 
 when bullies, like Tiger Eoach, endeavoured to hold 
 sovereignty over the members. But usurpers like the 
 Tiger were deposed as easily by the cane as by the sword ; 
 but such occurrences marred the peace of the coffee-house, 
 nevertheless. It was, indeed, a strange company that some- 
 times was to be found within these houses. At Batem's, 
 the City House, patronized by Blackmore, the brother of 
 Lord Southwell was to be found enacting the parasite, 
 and existing by the aid of men who thought his wit worth 
 paying for. Child's Coffee-house, St. Paul's Church-yard, 
 was patronized by the Clergy, who assembled there, espe- 
 cially the younger Clergy, in gowns, cassocks, and scarfs, 
 smoked till they were invisible, and obtained the hono- 
 rary appellation of " Doctor" from the waiters. Clerical 
 visitants were also to be found at the "Smyrna," in Pall 
 Mall. Swift was often there with Prior ; and the politics 
 of the day were so loudly discussed, that the chairmen 
 
76 TABLE TRAITS. 
 
 and porters in waiting outside used to derive that sort of 
 edification therefrom which is now to be had in the cheap 
 weekty periodicals. " Garraway's" takes us once more 
 into the City. Garway, as the original proprietor was 
 called, was one of the earliest sellers of tea in London ; 
 and his house was frequented by nobles who had business 
 in the City, who attended the lotteries at his house, or 
 who wished to partake of his tea and coffee. Foreign 
 Bankers and Ministers patronized " Kobin's ;" the buyers 
 and sellers of Stock collected at "Jonathan's ;" and the 
 shipping interest went, as now, to "Lloyd's." All these 
 places were in full activity of business and coffee-drinking 
 in the reign of Queen Anne. Finally, the lawyers 
 crowded "Squire's," in Fulwood's Kents ; and there, it 
 will be remembered, Sir Roger de Coverley smoked a pipe, 
 over a dish of coffee, with the Spectator. But enough 
 of these places, whose names are more familiar to many 
 of us than their whereabout, but whose connexion with 
 what may be called the table-life of past times gives me 
 warrant for the notice of them, with which, perhaps, I 
 have only troubled the reader. I will only add, that the 
 ceremony of serving chocolate was never such a solemnity 
 in England as in France. In the latter country, as late 
 as the days of Louis XVL, a " man of condition" required 
 no less than four footmen, each with two watches in his 
 fob, according to the fashion, to help him to take a single 
 cup of chocolate. One bore the tray, and one the choco- 
 late-pot, a third presented the cup, and a fourth stood in 
 waiting with a napkin ! — and all this coil to carry a 
 morning draught to a poor wretch, whose red heels to his 
 shoes were symbols of the rank which gave him the pri- 
 vilege of being helpless. 
 
 The old coffee-houses were not simply resorts for the 
 critics, the politicians, and the fine gentlemen. Gay, 
 writing to Congreve, in 1715, says, "Amidst clouds of 
 
THE OLD COFFEE-HOUSES. 77 
 
 tobacco, at a coffee-house, I write this letter. There is a 
 grand revolution at Will's. Moira has quitted for a 
 coffee-house in the City ; and Titcomb is restored, to the 
 great joy of Cromwell, who was at a great loss for a person 
 to converse with upon the Fathers and church history. 
 The knowledge I gain from him is entirely in painting 
 and poetry ; and Mr. Pope owes all his skill in astronomy 
 to him and Mr. Whiston." Pope learnt his astronomy by 
 the assistance of what Moore calls, " the sun of the table ;*' 
 for, adding a postscript to Gay's letter to Congreve, he 
 says, " I sit up till two o'clock, over Burgundy and 
 Champagne." Ten years before, the coffee-house and 
 London life had less charms for him. Witness the para- 
 graph in the letter to Wycherley, in 1705, to this effect : 
 " I have now changed the scene from town to country, — 
 from Will's Coffee-house to Windsor Forest. I found no 
 other difference than this betwixt the common town wita 
 and the downright country fools, — that the first are 
 partly in the wrong, with a little more flourish and 
 gaiety ; and the last, neither in the right nor the wrong, 
 but confirmed in a stupid settled medium, betwixt both." 
 But, ten years later than the period of Pope's postscript 
 to Congreve, in which he boasted of sitting over wine 
 during the "wee short hours ayont the twal'," as Burns 
 calls them, we find the boaster stricken. Swift, writing 
 to him, in 1726, remarks, " I always apprehend most for 
 you after a great dinner ; for the least transgression of 
 yours, if it be only two bits and one sup more than your 
 stint, is a great debauch, for which you certainly pay 
 more than those sots who are carried drunk to bed." 
 
 In England, the chocolate and coffee-houses were not 
 confined to the metropolis and its rather rakish inhabit- 
 ants. The Universities had their coffee-houses, as London 
 had ; and the company there, albeit alumni of the various 
 Colleges, do not appear to have been remarkable for refine- 
 
78 TABLE TEAITS. 
 
 ment. Dr. Ewins, at Cambridge, in the last century, 
 acquired the ill-will both of Town and Gown for exer- 
 cising a sort of censorship over their conduct. According 
 to Cole, the Antiquary, they needed it ; for he says, with 
 especial allusion to the Undergraduates, that " they never 
 were more licentious, riotous, and debauched. They often 
 broke the Doctor's windows," he adds, "as they said he 
 had been caught listening on their staircases and (at 
 their) doors." The Doctor, like his adversaries, was in 
 the habit of visiting the Union Coffee-house, opposite St. 
 Radigund's (or Jesus) lane, — a fashionable rendezvous. 
 He was there one night about Christmas, 1771, or Janu- 
 ary, 1772, "when some Fellow-Commoners, who owed 
 him a grudge, sitting in the box near him, in order to 
 affront him, pretended to call their dog * Squintum,' and fre- 
 quently repeated the name ver}' loudly in the coffee-house ; 
 and, in their joviality, swore many oaths, and caressed 
 their dog. Dr. Ewin, as did his father, squinted very much, 
 as did Whitefield, the Methodist teacher, who was vul- 
 garly called Dr. Squintum, from the blemish in his eyes. 
 Dr. Ewdn was sufficiently mortified to be so affronted in 
 public. However, he carefully marked down the number 
 of oaths sworn by these gentlemen, whom he made to pay 
 severely the penalty of five shillings for each oath, which 
 amounted to a good round sum." The next week, ballad- 
 singers sang, in the streets of Cambridge, a ballad, which 
 they gave away to all who would accept a copy, and from 
 which the following verses are extracted. They will 
 show — if nothing else — that the University coffee-house 
 poet was less elegant than Horace, and that the " well of 
 English" into which he had dipped was not altogether 
 "undefiled:"— 
 
 " Of all the blockheads in the Town, 
 That strut and bully up and down. 
 And bring complaints against the Gown, 
 
 There 's none like Dr. Squintum, 
 *^ 
 
THE OLD COFFEE-HOUSES. 79 
 
 " With gimlet eyes and dapper wig. 
 This Justice thinks he looks so big : 
 A most infernal stupid gig 
 
 Is this same Dr. Squintum. 
 
 " What pedlar can forbear to grin, 
 Before his Worship that has been. 
 To think what folly lurks within 
 
 This Just Ass Dr. Squintum ? " 
 
 Old Eeiie d'Anjou used to say, that, as soon as a man 
 had breakfasted, it was his bounden duty to devote him- 
 self to the great business of the day, — think of dinner. 
 We will in some wise follow the instructions given, — 
 first, however, saying a word or two upon French coffee- 
 houses, and then upon those who naturally take pre- 
 cedence of " dinners," — the cooks by whom dinners are 
 prepared. 
 
THE FRENCH CAFES. 
 
 Ik the reign of Louis XV. there were not less than six 
 hundred cafes in Paris. London, at the same period, could 
 not count as many dozens. Under Louis Napoleon, the 
 cafes have reached to the amazing number of between 
 three and four thousand. All these establishments 
 acknowledge the Cafe Procope as the founder of the 
 dynasty, although, indeed, there were coffee-vendors in 
 Paris before the time of the accomplished Sicilian. " Vix- 
 erunt fortes ante Agamemnonay 
 
 The consumption of coffee in Paris, at the period of 
 the breaking out of the Pevolution, was something enor- 
 mous. The French West-Indian Islands furnished eighty 
 millions of pounds annually, and this was irrespective of 
 what was derived from the East. The two sources toge- 
 ther were not sufficient to supply the kingdom. Thence 
 adulterations, fortunes to the adulterators, and that 
 supremacy of chicory, which has destroyed the well- 
 earned reputation of French coffee. 
 
 I have already spoken of the Cafe Trocofe^ and here I 
 will only add an anecdote illustrative of the scenes that 
 sometimes occurred there, and of the national character 
 generally in the reign of Louis XV. One afternoon that 
 M. de Saint Foix was seated at his usual table, an officer 
 of the King's Body-Gruard entered, sat down, and ordered 
 "a cup of coffee, with milk, and a roll," adding, " It will 
 serve me for a dinner!" At this Saint Foix remarked 
 
THE FEENCH CAEES. 81 
 
 aloud, tliat " a cup of coffee, with milk, and a roll, was 
 a confoundedly poor dinner." The officer remonstrated; 
 Saint Foix reiterated his remark, and again and again 
 declared, that nothing the gallant officer could say to the 
 contrary, would convince him that a cup of coffee, with 
 milk, and a roll, was not a confoundedly poor dinner. 
 Thereupon a challenge was given and accepted, and the 
 whole of the persons present adjourned as spectators of a 
 fight, which ended by Saint Foix receiving a wound in 
 the arm. " That is all very well," said the wounded 
 combatant ; " but I call you to witness, gentlemen, that 
 I am still profoundly convinced, that a cup of coffee, with 
 milk, and a roll, is a confoundedly poor dinner 1" At this 
 moment, the principals were arrested, and carried before 
 the Duke de Noailles, in whose presence Saint Foix, 
 without waiting to be questioned, said, " Monseigneur, I 
 had not the slightest intention of offending the gallant 
 officer, who, I doubt not, is an honourable man; but 
 Your Excellency can never prevent my asserting, that a 
 cup of coffee, with milk, and a roll, is a confoundedly 
 poor dinner." " Why, so it is," said the Duke. " Then 
 I am not in the wrong," remarked Saint Foix; "and a 
 cup of coffee," at these words Magistrates, delin- 
 quents, and auditory, burst into a roar of laughter, and 
 the antagonists became friends. It was a more bloodless 
 issue than that which occurred to Michel Lepelletier, in 
 later years, at the Cafe Fevrier. He was seated at din- 
 ner there, when an ex-garde-du-corps, named Paris, 
 approached him, inquired if he were the Lepelletier who 
 had voted for the death of Louis XYL, and, receiving an 
 affirmative reply, drew forth a dagger, and swiftly slew 
 him on the spot. 
 
 Before Procope, the Armenian, Pascal, sold coffee at the 
 Fair of St. Germain, at three-halfpence a cup ; and the 
 beverage was sung by the poet Thomas in terms not exactly 
 
82 TABLE TRAITS. 
 
 like those with which DeHUe subsequently sang the virtues 
 of the tree. The French coffee-houses at once gained 
 the popularity to which they aspired. To Pascal suc- 
 ceeded Maliban, and then Gregoire opened his establish- 
 ment in the Eue Mazarin, in the vicinity of players and 
 play-goers. At the same time, there was a man in Paris, 
 called "the lame Candiot," who carried ready-made coffee 
 about from door to door, and sold it for a penny per cup, 
 sugar included. The cafe at the foot of the bridge of 
 Notre-Dame was founded by Joseph ; that at the foot of 
 the bridge of St. Michel, by Etienne ; and both of these 
 are more ancient than that of Procope, who was the first, 
 however, who made a fortune by his speculation. The 
 Quaide Z'J5/c?oZehadits establishment, (the CafeManoury,) 
 which I believe still exists, as does the Cafe de la Begence, 
 which dates from the time of the Kegent Duke of Orleans, 
 and where Pousseau used to play at chess, and appear in 
 his Armenian costume. It was also frequented, incog., by 
 the Emperor Joseph. The oldest cafe in the Palais Royal 
 is the celebrated Cafe de Foy, so called from the name of 
 its founder. Carl Vernet was one of its most constant 
 patrons. He was there on one occasion, when some 
 repairs were going on, and, in his impatience, he flung a 
 wet colouring brush from him, which struck the ceiling 
 and left a spot. He immediately ascended the ladder, 
 and with a touch of his finger converted the stain into a 
 swallow ; and his handy-work was still to be seen on the 
 ceiling, when I was last in Paris. It was before the Cafe 
 de Foy that Camille Desmoulins harangued the mob, in 
 July, 1789, with such effect, that they took up arms, 
 destroyed the Bastille, and inaugurated the Revolution. 
 
 The Cafe de Valois will long be remembered for its 
 aristocratic character ; that of Montansier, on the other 
 hand, was remarkable for the coarseness of its frequenters, 
 and the violence with which they discussed politics, 
 
THE TEENCH CAEES. 83^ 
 
 especially at the period of the Eest oration. The Cafe du 
 Caveau was more joyously noisy with its gay artists and 
 broad songs. The Empire brought two establishments 
 into popular favour, both of which appealed to the lovers 
 of beauty as well as of coffee. The first was the Ccffe du 
 Bosquet, and the second the Cafe des Mille Colonnes. 
 Each was celebrated for the magnificent attractions of 
 the presiding lady, — the helle limonadiere, as she was at 
 first called, or the dame du comptoir, as refinement chose 
 to name her. Madame Eomain, at the Mille Colonnes, 
 had a longer reign than her rival ; and the lady was alto- 
 gether a more remarkable person. In the reign of Louis 
 XYIII., her seat was composed of the throne of Jerome, 
 King of Westphalia, — which was sold by auction on the 
 bankruptcy of his Majesty. Madame Romain descended 
 from it, like a weary Queen, to take refuge in a nunnery ; 
 and, curiously enough, the ex-King has recovered his 
 "throne," which now figures, in the reduced aspect of a 
 simple arm-chair, in the salon of his residence at the 
 Palais Royal. After the abdication of Madame Romain, 
 the Mille Colonnes endeavoured to secure success by very 
 meretricious means. Girls of a brasen quality of beauty 
 bore through the apartments flaming bowls of punch, 
 usually taken after the coffee ; and the beverage and the 
 bearers were equally bad. 
 
 As the Cafe Chretien was once thoroughly Jacobin, so 
 the Cafe Lemblin became entirely Imperial, and was the 
 focus of the Opposition after the return of the Bourbons. 
 It was famous for its chocolate, as well as for its coffee. 
 When the Allies were at Paris, it was hardly safe for the 
 officers to enter the Cafe Lemblin, and many scenes of 
 violence are described as having occurred there, and many a 
 duel was fought with fatal effect, after a c^^dispute between 
 French and foreign officers, — and all for national honour. 
 The Bourbon officers were far more insulting in the cafes 
 
 a 2 
 
84 TABLE TRAITS. 
 
 to the ex-imperial " braves," than the latter were to the 
 invading Captains, — and they generally paid dearly for their 
 temerity. Finally, — for to name all the cafes in Paris, 
 would require an encyclopaedia, — it is worthy of notice 
 that Tortoni's, which is now a grave adjunct to the Bourse^ 
 first achieved success by the opposite process of billiard- 
 playing. A broken-down provincial advocate, Spolar of 
 Eennes, came to Paris with a bad character, and a capital 
 cue ; and the latter he handled so wonderfully at the Cafe 
 Tortoni, that all Paris went to witness his feats. Talley- 
 rand patronized him, backed his playing, and gained no 
 inconsiderable sum by the cue-driving of Spolar, whose star 
 culminated when he was appointed " Professor of Billiards 
 to Queen Hortense," — an appointment which sounds 
 strange, but which was thought natural enough at the 
 time ; and, considering all things, so it was. 
 
 There is one feature in the French cafes which strikes 
 an observer as he first contemplates it. I allude to the 
 intensity, gravity, and extent of the domino-playing. A 
 quartett party will spend half the evening at this mystery, 
 with nothing to enliven it but the gentlest of conversa- 
 tion, and the lightest of beer, or a simple petit verve. 
 The Government wisely thinks that a grave domino- 
 player can be given to neither immorality nor conspiracies. 
 But a British Grovernment proudly scorns to tolerate such 
 insipidities in Britons. British tradesmen, at the end of 
 the day, may be perfectly idle, spout blasphemy, and get 
 as drunk as they please, in any London tavern, provided 
 they do not therewith break the peace ; hut^ let the 
 reprobates only remain obstinately sober, and play at 
 dominoes, then they ofiend the immaculate justice of 
 Justices, and landlords and players are liable to be fined. 
 So, on Sabbath nights, the working-classes have thrown 
 open to their edification the gin-palaces, which invite not 
 in vain ; but if one of these same classes should, on the 
 
THE FRENCH CAEES. 85 
 
 same Sunday evening, knock at the religiously-closed door 
 of a so-called free library, the secretary's maid who 
 answers the appeal would be pale with horror at the 
 atrocity of the applicant. And what is the bewildered 
 Briton to do ? He looks in at church, where, if there be 
 a few free seats, they have a look about them so as to 
 make him understand that he is in his fustian, and that 
 he and the miserable sinners in their fine cloth are not on 
 an equality in the house of God ; and so he turns sigh- 
 ingly away, and goes where the law allows him, — to the 
 house of gin. 
 
 But, leaving the further consideration of these matters 
 to my readers, let us now address ourselves to the sketching 
 of a class whose most illustrious members have borne 
 witness to their own excellency, not exactly according to 
 the fashion spoken of by Shakspeare ; namely, by putting 
 a strange face on their own perfection. 
 
THE ANCIENT COOK, AND HIS ART, 
 
 It is an incontestable fact, that he who lives soberly 
 does not depend upon his cook for the pleasure which he 
 derives from his repast. Nevertheless, the cook is one of 
 the most important of personages ; and even appetite, 
 without him, would not be of the value that it is at 
 present. A great artiste knows his vocation. When the 
 cook of Louis XYIII. was reproached, by His Majesty's 
 Physician, with ruining the royal health by savoury juices, 
 the dignitary of the kitchen sententiously remarked, that 
 it was the office of the cook to supply His Majesty with 
 pleasant dishes, and that it was the duty of the doctor to 
 enable the King to digest them. The division of laboiu*, 
 and the responsibilities of office, could not have been better 
 defined. 
 
 From old times the cook has had a proper sense of the 
 solemn importance of his wonderful art. The Coquus 
 Gloriosics, in a fragment of Philemon, shows us what 
 these artists were in the very olden time. He swears by 
 Minerva that he is delighted at his success, and that he 
 cooked a fish so exquisitely, that it returned him 
 admiring and grateful looks from the frying-pan ! He 
 had not covered it with grated cheese, not disguised it 
 with sauce ; but he had treated it with such daintiness 
 and delicacy, that, even when fully cooked, it lay on the 
 dish as fresh-looking as if it had just been taken from the 
 lake. This result seems to have been a rarity ; for, when 
 the fish was served up at table, the delighted guests tore 
 
THE ANCIENT COOK, AND HIS AET.' 87 
 
 it from one another, and a running struggle was kept up 
 around the board to get possession of this exquisitely 
 prepared morceau. "And yet," says the cook, "I had 
 nothing better to exhibit my talent upon than a wretched 
 river fish, nourished in mud. But, Jupiter Saviour ! if 
 I had only had at my disposal some of the fish of Attica 
 or Argos, or a conger from pleasant Sicyon, like those 
 which Neptune serves to the gods in Olympus, why, the 
 guests would have thought they had become divinities 
 themselves. Yes," adds the culinary boaster, "I think I 
 may say that I have discovered the principle of immor- 
 tality, and that the odour of my dishes would recall life 
 into the nostrils of the very dead." The resonant vaunt 
 is not milike that of Bechamel, who said that, with the 
 sauce that he had invented, a man would experience 
 nothing but delight in eating his own grandfather ! 
 
 Hegesippus further illustrates the vanity of the genus 
 CO quorum of his days. In a dialogue between Syrus and 
 his chef^ the master declares that the culinary art appears 
 to have reached its limit, and that he would fain hear 
 something novel upon the subject. The cook's reply 
 admits us to an insight into ancient manners. " I am 
 not one of those fellows," says the personage in question, 
 " who are content to suppose that they learn their art by 
 wearing an apron for a couple of years. My study of the 
 art has not been superficial : it has been the work of my 
 life ; and I have learned the use and appliances of every 
 herb that grows — for kitchen purposes. But I especially 
 shine in getting up funeral dinners. When the mourners 
 have returned from the doleful ceremony, it is I who 
 introduce them to the mitigated affliction department. 
 While they are yet in their mourning attire, I lift the 
 lids of my kettles, and straightway the weepers begin to 
 laugh. They sit down with their senses so enchanted, 
 that every guest fancies himself at a wedding. If I can 
 
88 TABLE TRAITS. 
 
 only have all I require, Syrus," adds the artist, " if my 
 kitchen be only properly furnished, you will see renewed 
 the scenes which used to take place on the coasts fre- 
 quented by the Syrens. It will be impossible for any 
 one to pass the door ; all who scent the process will be 
 compelled, despite themselves, to stop. There they will 
 stand, mute, open-mouthed, and nostrils extended ; nor 
 will it be possible to make them * move on,' unless the 
 police, coming to their aid, shut out the irresistible scent 
 by plugging their noses." 
 
 Posidippus shows us a classical master-cook instructing 
 his pupils. Leucon is the name of the teacher ; and the 
 first truth he impresses on his young friend is, that the 
 most precious sauce for the purpose of a cook is impu- 
 dence. " Boast away," he says, " and never be tired of 
 it." For, as he logically remarks, " if there be many a 
 Captain under whose dragon-embossed cuirass lies a poor 
 hare, why should not we, who kill hares, pass for better 
 than we are, like the Captains ?" "A modest cook must 
 be looked on," he says, " as a contradiction in nature. 
 If he be hired out to cook a dinner in another man's 
 house, he will only get considered in proportion to his 
 impudence and overbearing conduct. If he be quiet and 
 modest, he will be held as a pitiful cook." 
 
 Alexis, another artist, takes other and higher ground. 
 He says, that in all the arts the resulting pleasure does 
 not depend solely on those who exercise the art ; there 
 must be others who possess the science of enjoyment. 
 This is true ; and Alexis further adds, that the guest who 
 keeps a dinner waiting, or a master who suddenly demands 
 it before its time, are alike enemies to the art which 
 Alexis professes. 
 
 The earthly paradise of the early cooks was, unques- 
 tionably, among the Sybarites, — the people to whom the 
 crumpling of a rose under the side on which they lay, 
 
THE ANCIENT COOE:, AND HIS AET. 89 
 
 gave exquisite pain. They were as self-luxurious as though 
 the world was made for them alone, and they and the 
 world were intended to last for ever. They would not 
 admit into their city any persons whose professions 
 entailed noise in the practice of them : the trunkmaker at 
 the corner of St. Paul's would have heen flogged to death 
 with thistle-down, if he had carried on his trade in 
 Sybaris for an hour, and if a Sybarite could have been 
 found with energy enough to wield the instrument of 
 execution ! The crowing of one of the proscribed race of 
 cocks once put all the gentlemen of the city into fits ; and, 
 on another occasion, a Sybarite telling a friend how his 
 nerves had been shaken by hearing the tools of some 
 labouring men in another country strike against each 
 other, at their work, the friend was so overcome, that 
 he merely exclaimed, "Good gracious!" and fainted 
 away. 
 
 Athenseus, borrowing, if I remember rightly, from one 
 of the authors whose works were in that Alexandrian 
 library, the destruction of which by the Caliph Omar, Dr. 
 Gumming tells us in his " Finger of God," is a circum- 
 stance at which he is rather glad than sorry, — Athenseus 
 mentions the visit of a Sybarite to Sparta, where he was 
 invited to one of the public dinners, at which the citizens 
 ate very black broth, in common, out of wooden bowls. 
 Having tasted the national diet, he feebly uttered the Sy- 
 baritic expression for " Stap my vitals !" and convulsively 
 remarked, that " he no longer wondered why the Lacedae- 
 monians sought death in battle, seeing that such a fate 
 was preferable to life with such broth !" 
 
 Certainly the public repasts of the Sybarites were of 
 another quality. The giver of such repasts was enrolled 
 among the benefactors of their country, and the cook who 
 had distinguished himself was invested with a golden 
 crown, and an opera ticket ; that is, free admission to those 
 
90 TABLE TRAITS. 
 
 public games where hired dancers voluptuously perverted 
 time and the human form divine. 
 
 I am afraid that all cooks in remote ages enjoyed but 
 an indifferent reputation, and thoroughly deserved what 
 they enjoyed. The comic Dionysius introduces one of 
 the succulent brotherhood, impressing upon a young 
 apprentice the propriety of stealing in houses where they 
 were hired to cook dinners. The instruction is worthy 
 of Professor Fagan of the Saffron-Hill University. " What- 
 ever you can prig," says the elder rogue, " belongs to 
 yourself, as long as you are in the house. When you get 
 past the porter into the street, it then becomes my pro- 
 perty. So fake away ! (BaSf^e l^vp afia,) and look out for 
 unconnected trifles." 
 
 And yet Athenseus asserts that nothing has so power- 
 fully contributed to instil piety into the souls of men, as 
 good cookery ! His proof is, that when men devoured each 
 other, they were beasts, — which is a self-evident proposi- 
 tion ; but that when they took to cooked meats, and 
 were particular with regard to these, why, then alone they 
 began to live cleanly, — which is a proposition by no means 
 so self-evident. In his opinion, a man to be supremely 
 happy only needed the gift of Ceres to Pandora,-^a good 
 appetite, and an irreproachable indigestion. These are, 
 doubtless, great portions of happiness ; and if felicity can 
 do without them, — which is questionable, — where they are 
 not, comfort is absent, and a good conscience is hardly a 
 sufficient compensation. 
 
 If Sybaris was the paradise of cooks, Lacedsemon was 
 their purgatory. The}^ were blamed if men grew fat on 
 their diet, and plump children were legally condemned to 
 get spare again upon their gruel. The Romans, again, 
 restored the cook to his proper place in society. He 
 might be still a slave, and so were greater men than he ; but 
 lie was the confidant of his master, and there were not a 
 
THE AKCIENT COOK:, AND HIS ART. 91 
 
 few who would have exchanged their liberty for such a 
 post and chains. And who dare affirm that the coquus 
 was not an officer of distinction ? He who knows how to 
 prepare food for digestion and dehght, is a greater man, 
 in one particular at least, than Achilles, Avho could go no 
 farther in culinary science than turning the spit ; than 
 Ulysses, who could light fires and lay cloths with the dex- 
 terity of a Frankfort waiter ; or than Patroclus, who could 
 draw wine and drink it, hut who knew no more how to 
 make a stew, than he did how to solve the logarithms of 
 Napier. 
 
 When it is- asserted that it was Cadmus, the grand- 
 father of Bacchus, who first taught men how to eat as 
 civilized beings should, it is thereby further intimated 
 that good eating should be followed by good drinking. 
 
 We have heard of cooks in monasteries who made dis- 
 sertations on eternal flames by the heat of their own fires : 
 so Timachidas, of Ehodes, made patties and poetry at 
 the same stove, and both after a fashion to please their 
 several admirers. Artemidorus was the Dr. Johnson of 
 his own art, and wrote a Kitchen Lexicon for the benefit 
 of students. Sicily especially was celebrated for its lite- 
 rary cooks, and Mithoecus wrote a treatise on the art ; 
 while Archestratus, the Syracusan, looking into causes 
 and efiects, meditated on stomachs as well as sauces, and 
 first showed how digestion might be taught to wait on 
 appetite. Then theoretical laymen came in to ,the aid of 
 the practical cook, and gastronomists hit upon all sorts 
 of strange ideas to help them to renewed enjoyments. 
 Pithyllus, for instance, invented a sheath for the tongue, 
 in order that he might swallow the hottest viands faster 
 than other guests, who wisely preferred rather to slowly 
 please the palate than suddenly satisfy the stomach. It 
 is of Pithyllus the Dainty, that it is related how, after 
 meals, he used to clean his tongue by rubbing it with a 
 
92 TABLE TRAITS. 
 
 piece of rough fish-skin ; and his taking up hot viands 
 with his hand, Hke that of Gotz von Berhchingen, encased 
 in a glove, is cited as proof that the Greeks used no forks. 
 The spoons of the Eomans had a pointed end, at the 
 extremity of the handle, for the purpose of picking fish 
 from the shell. 
 
 Then came the age when, if men had not appetites of 
 nature's making, they were made for them hy the cooks ; 
 and the latter, in return, were crowned with flowers by 
 the guests who had eaten largely, and had no fears of indi- 
 gestion. The inventor of a new dish had a patent for its 
 exclusive preparation for a year. But ere that time it 
 had probably been forgotten in something more novel dis- 
 covered by a Sicilian rival ; for the Greeks looked on 
 Sicily as the Parisians of the last century used to look 
 on Languedoc, — as the only place on earth where cooks 
 were born and bred, and were worth the paying. The 
 artists of both countries, and of the opposite ages men- 
 tioned, were especially skilled in the preparation of mate- 
 rials which were made to appear the things they were 
 not ; and a seemingly grand dinner of fish, flesh, and 
 fowl, was really fashioned out of the supplies furnished 
 by the kitchen garden. The Greeks, however, never 
 descended to the bad taste of which the diarists of the 
 last century show the French to have been guilty ; namely, 
 in having wooden joints, carved and painted, placed upon 
 their tables for show. Artificial flowers may be tolerated, 
 but an artificial sirloin, made of a block of deal, would be 
 very intolerable board indeed, particularly to the hungry 
 guests, who saw the seemingly liberal fare, but who could 
 make very little of the deal before them. 
 
 In Sicily, the goddess of good cheer, Adephagia, had 
 her especial altars, and thence, perhaps, the estimation in 
 which the Sicilian cooks were held, who prayed to her for 
 inspiration. Her ministers were paid salaries as rich as 
 
THE AKCIENT COOK, AND HIS ART. 93 
 
 the sauces they invented. Something like £800 jper 
 annum formed the Jionorarium of the learned and juicy 
 gentleman. But he was not always to be had, even at 
 that price; and the disgusted Languedocien who would 
 not remain in the cuisine of the Duke of Richmond, when 
 Governor of Ireland, for the sufficient reason that there 
 was no Opera in Dublin, had his prototype among his 
 Sicilian predecessors. The jealousy of the culinary bonds- 
 man in Greek households against the free cook from 
 Sicily, must have been sometimes deadly in its results. 
 
 The best-feed cook on record is the happy mortal to 
 whom his master Antony gave a city, because he had 
 cooked a repast which had called forth encomium from 
 that dreadful jade, Cleopatra. 
 
 But money was the last thing thought of by the 
 wearied epicures of Rome, especially when what they gave 
 belonged to somebody else. When Lucullus spent £1,000 
 sterling on a snug dinner for three, — himself, Csesar, and 
 Pompey, — ^he doubtless spent his creditors' money; at 
 least, extravagant people generally do. Claudius dined 
 often with six hundred guests, and the Roman people 
 paid the cooks. The dinners of Yitellius cost that sacri- 
 legious feeder upwards of £3,000 each, but the bills were 
 discharged by a levy on the public pocket. When Tibe- 
 rius ordered several thousands sterling to be bestowed on 
 the author of a piece wherein every thing eatable was 
 made to speak wittily, the author was really paid out of 
 the popular pocket ; and when Geta insisted on having/ 
 as many courses at each repast as there were letters in 
 the alphabet, and all the viands at each course so named 
 that their initials should be the same as that of the course 
 itself, he was the last person who troubled himself about 
 the payment for such extravagance. 
 
 The cooks of such epicures must necessarily, however, 
 have been as despotic in the kitchen as their lord was in 
 
94 TABLE TEAITS. 
 
 the saloon. The slaves there, who hurried to and fro, hear- 
 ing their tributes of good things from the market-place, 
 or distributing them according to his bidding, obeyed 
 the cook's very nod, nay, anticipated his very wishes. 
 They were, in fact, the ministers of an awful Sovereign. 
 The cook was their Lord paramount. The stewards pos- 
 sessed no little power ; but when the fires were lighted, 
 and the dinner had to be thought of, the head cook was 
 the kitchen Jupiter ; and when he spoke, obedience, 
 silence, and trembling followed upon his word. 
 
 From his raised platform, the ArcJiimagirus, as he 
 was called, could overlook all the preparations, and with 
 his tremendous spoon of office he could break the heads 
 of his least skilful disciples, and taste the sauces seething 
 in the remotest saucepans. The effect must have been 
 quite pantomimic ; and to complete it, there was only 
 wanted a crash of discordant music to accompany the 
 rapid descent of the gigantic spoon upon the skull or 
 ribs of an offender. The work was done in presence of 
 the gods, and scullions blew the fires under the gaze 
 of the Lares, — sooty divinities to whom, the legend 
 says, inferior cooks were sometimes sacrificed in the 
 month of December. "But," as Othello says, "that's a 
 fable!" 
 
 Great Roman kitchens were as well worth seeing, and 
 perhaps were as often inspected by the curious and privi- 
 leged, as that of the Eeform Club. "Order reigned" 
 there quite as much as it did, according to Marshal 
 Sebastiani, at Warsaw, amid the most abject slavery. 
 Art and costliness were lavished upon the vessels, but the 
 human beings there were exactly the things that were 
 made the least account of. 
 
 No doubt that the triumph, of the art of the cook con- 
 sisted in serving up an entire pig at once roasted and 
 boiled. The elder Disraeli has shown from Archestratus 
 
THE ANCIENT COOK, AND HIS ART. 95 
 
 how this was done. " The animal had been bled to death 
 by a wound under the shoulder, whence, after copious 
 effusion, the master-cook extracted the entrails, washed 
 them with wine, and hanged the animal by the feet. He 
 crammed down the throat the stuffings already prepared. 
 Then, covering the half of the pig with a paste of barley 
 thickened with wine and oil, he put it in a small oven, or 
 on a heated table of brass, where it was gently roasted 
 with all due care. When the skin was browned, he boiled 
 the other side, and then, taking away the barley paste, the 
 pig was served up, at once boiled and roasted." And such 
 was the way by which the best of cooks spoiled the best 
 of pigs. 
 
 According to Plautus, cooks alone were privileged in 
 the old days to carry knives in their girdles. In the 
 ^'Aidularia,'' old Euclio says to Congrio, the cook, ^'Adtres 
 vivos jam ego deferam tuum nomen^'' — " I '11 go and inform 
 against you to the Magistrates." "Why so ?" asks Con- 
 grio. " Because you carry a knife," — " Quia ctdtrum habes.^'' 
 "Y/ell," says the artist, standing on his rights, '^ cocum 
 decet^'* " it is the sign of my profession." From another of 
 the many cooks of Plautus we learn, in the '' Mencechmei,^^ 
 that, when a parasite was at table, his appetite was reck- 
 oned as equivalent to that of eight guests ; and when 
 Cylindrus is ordered to prepare a dinner for Mensechmus, 
 his "lady," and the official parasite, "Then," says the 
 cook, " that 's as good as ten ; for your parasite does the 
 work of eight : " — 
 
 " Jam isU sunt decern. 
 Nam parasitus octo hominum munus facile fuoigitur" 
 
 The musicians would appear to have lived as pleasantly 
 as the parasites. Simo remarks to Tranio, in the " Mostel- 
 laria^"* that he lives on the best the cooks and vintners 
 can procure for him, — a real fiddler's destiny : — 
 
96 TABLE TEAITS. 
 
 " Musice hercle agitis cetaiem : ita ut vos decet. 
 Vino et victUy piscatu probe electiliy 
 Vitam colitis'* 
 
 Stalino eomplains in the " Casina,^^ that, clever as cooks 
 are, they cannot put a little essence of love into all their 
 dishes, — a sauce, he says, that would please everybody. 
 Their reputation in Eome for stealing was much the same 
 as that enjoyed by their Grecian brethren. The scene of 
 the ^^Casina^'' indeed, is in Athens ; but Olympio utters a 
 Eoman sentiment when he says, that cooks use their 
 hands as much for larceny as cookery, and that wherever 
 they are they bring double ruin, through extravagance 
 and robbery, upon their masters : " TJhi sunt^ diiplici damno 
 dominos multant^ This is further proved by the speech of 
 JEpidicus^ in the comedy so called, where that slave-cook 
 speaks of his master's purse as if it were game, to disem- 
 bowel which, he says, he will use his professional knife : — 
 
 " Acutum cultrum haheo, senis qui exenterem 
 Marsupiumj" 
 
 We learn something of the pay of a cook from a speech 
 of one of the craft, in the " JPseudolus.'^ Ballio, seeing a 
 single practitioner remaining in the square to be hired, 
 asks how it is that he has not been engaged. " Uloquar,^^ 
 says the cook, " here is the reason : — 
 
 " He who, now-a-days, comes here to hire cooks, 
 No longer seeks the hest, that is, the dearest. 
 But some poor spoil-sauce who for nothing works. 
 Therefore you see me here alone to-day. 
 A poor drachma hath my brethren purchased ; 
 But under a crown I cook a dish for no man. 
 For 'twixt the common herd and me, you see. 
 There is a diff 'rence : they into a dish 
 Fling whole meadows, and the guests they treat. Sir, 
 As though they were but oxen out at grass. 
 Herbs season they with herbs, and grass with gra^ ; 
 And in the mess, garlic, coriander, fennel. 
 
THE ANCIENT COOK, AND HIS AET. 97 
 
 Sorrel, rochet, beet-root, leeks, and greens, 
 
 All go together, with a pound of benzoin, 
 
 And mustard ditto, that compels the tears 
 
 From out the eyes of those that have to mix it. 
 ***** 
 
 If men are short-lived now, the reason 's plain : 
 
 They put death into their stomachs, and so 
 
 Of indigestion and bad cookery die. 
 
 Their sauces but to think of, makes me shudder ; 
 
 Yet men will eat what asses would not bend to, 
 ***** 
 
 "Who of my dishes eats, obtains at least 
 
 Two hundred happy years of life renew'd. 
 
 I season Neptune's fishes with a juice 
 
 Made up of Cicilindrum, Muscadel, 
 
 Sipolindrum, and Sancapatides. 
 
 The odour of my mutton, nicely stuffed 
 
 "With Cicimandrum, Nappalopsides, 
 
 And of Cataractaria a pinch, 
 
 Feeds Jupiter himself, who, when I rest, 
 
 Sleeps on Olympus, sad and supperless. 
 
 As for my potions, he who deeply drinks. 
 
 Gulps with the draught the gift of endless youth." 
 
 Finally, after inventing the above names unpronounce- 
 able of sauces that do not exist, the boaster adds, that his 
 fee is a crown, provided he is not overlooked ; but that if 
 there be supervision to check him in his perquisites, he is 
 not to be hired under a mina : — 
 
 " Si crediSy nummos ; si non, ne mina quidem /" 
 
 I do not know if cooks more especially used different 
 fingers in mingling their sauces, according as they were 
 employed on wedding banquets, martial feasts, senatorial 
 entertainments, al-fresco dejeuners^ or commercial suppers ; 
 but certain it is, that the fingers were sacred to diverse 
 deities. The thumb was devoted to Venus, the index 
 finger to Mars, the longest finger to Saturn, the next to 
 the Sun, and the little finger to Mercury. 
 
 H 
 
98 TABLE TRAITS. 
 
 I conclude with a remark that I hope will be gratify- 
 ing to all culinary artists who respect themselves and 
 their calling, and who are anxious to prove that their 
 vocation is of ancient and honourable descent. Cadmus, 
 who introduced letters into Grreece, had formerly been 
 cook to the King of Sidon. Thus learning ascended to 
 us from the kitchen ; and to the ex-cook of the King of 
 Sidon we perhaps owe all the epics that have ever been 
 written. By this genealogy, even " Paradise Lost " may 
 be traced to the patties of Cadmus. But cooks in England 
 may boast of a noblesse de cuisine, which dates from the 
 Norman Conquest. When William, who wooed his wife 
 Matilda by knocking her down, had established himself 
 in England, he gave a banquet, at which his cook, Tezelin, 
 served a new white soup of such exquisite flavour, that 
 William sent for the artist, and inquired its name. " I 
 call it Billegrout,^^ said Tezelin. "A scurvy name for 
 so good a soup," said the Conqueror ; ^' but let that pass. 
 We make you Lord of the Manor of Addington !" Thus 
 modern cooks may boast of a descent from the landed 
 aristocracy of the Conquest ! Some of their masters cannot 
 do as much ; and this, perhaps, accounts for the pride of 
 the one, and the simplicity of the other. 
 
THE MODERN COOK, AND HIS SCIENCE. 
 
 If it were necessary that the cook of the ancient world 
 should he a Sicihan, and that the cuisinier of the ancient 
 regime should he of Languedoc, (the native place of " hlanc 
 manger ^'^ so in these modern times he alone is considered 
 a true graduate in the nohle science de la gueule who is a 
 Gaul hy hirth, or who has gone through his studies in 
 the University of French Kitchens. In England, it must 
 he confessed that great cooks have formed the exception 
 rather than the rule ; and that our native culinary litera- 
 ture, however interesting in certain national details, is 
 chiefly hased upon a French foundation. And yet we 
 may hoast of some native professors who were illustrious 
 in their way. Master John Murrel, for instance, wrote 
 a cookery hook in 1630, and dedicated it to the daughter 
 of the Lord Mayor. He starts hy asserting that cookery 
 hooks generally mar rather than make good meats ; and 
 then shows what good meats were in his estimation, hy 
 teaching how to dress " minced huUock's kidney, a rack of 
 veal, a farced leg of mutton, an umhle pie, and a chewit 
 of stockfish." He is succulently eloquent on a compound 
 production, consisting of marrow-hones, a leg of mutton, 
 fowls and pullets, and a dozen larks, all in one dish. 
 
 The Duke of Newcastle, in the last century, had a 
 female cook of some renown, named "Chloe." General 
 Guise, at the siege of Carthagena, saw some wild fowl on 
 the wing, and, amid the din of war, he thought of " Chloe" 
 and her sauces. She was famous for her stewed mush- 
 
 H 2 
 
100 TABLE TRAITS. 
 
 rooms, and there is an anecdote connected therewith that 
 will hear repeating. " Poor Dr. Shaw," writes Horace 
 Walpole, " heing sent for in great haste to Claremont, (it 
 seems the Duchess had caught a violent cold hy a hair of 
 her own whisker getting up her nose, and making her 
 sneeze,) the poor Doctor, 1 say, having eaten a few 
 mushrooms before he set out, was taken so ill that he was 
 forced to stop at Kingston ; and, heing carried to the first 
 apothecary's, prescribed a medicine for himself which 
 immediately cured him. This catastrophe so alarmed 
 the Duke of Newcastle, that he immediately ordered all 
 the mushroom-beds to be destroyed ; and even the toad- 
 stools in the park did not escape scalping in this general 
 measure. And a voice of lamentation was heard at 
 E-amah in Claremont, ' Chloe^ weeping for her mush- 
 rooms, and they are not!" But, let us turn to trace 
 lightly the genealogy of the cooks of modern times. 
 
 The descent of the barbarians from the north was 
 the ruin of cooks as well as of Kings, of kitchens as well 
 as constitutions. Many of the cooks of the classic period 
 were slain like the Druid Priests at the fire of their own 
 altars. A patriotic few fled rather than feed the invader ; 
 and the servile souls who tremblingly offered to prepare a 
 fricassee of ostrich brains for the Northmen, were dis- 
 missed with contempt by warrior princes, who lived on 
 under-done beef, and very much of it ! 
 
 But as sure as the Saxon blood beats out the Norman, 
 so does good cookery prevail over barbarous appetites. 
 The old cooks were a sacred race, whose heirs took up 
 the mission of their sires. This mission was so far trium- 
 phant, that, at the period of Charlemagne, the imperial 
 kitchen recognised in its chef the representative of the 
 Emperor. The oriental pheasant and the peacock, in all 
 the glories of expanded tail, took the place, or appeared 
 at the side, of coarser viands. The dignity and the 
 
THE MODERK COOK:, AND HIS SCIENCE. 101 
 
 mirth of Charlemagne's table were heightened by the 
 presence of ladies. Brillat de Savarin states, that since 
 that period the presence of the fair sex has ever been a law 
 of society. But in this he errs ; for the Marquis de 
 Bouille, in his admirable work on the Dukes of Guise, 
 affirms that the good civilizing custom had fallen into 
 disuse, but that a permanent improvement was com- 
 menced in the reign of Francis I., when the Cardinal of 
 Lorraine induced that Monarch to invite ladies to be 
 present at all entertainments given at Court. Society 
 followed the fashion of the Sovereign ; and as it used to be 
 said, "No feast, no Levite," so now it was felt that 
 where there was no lady, there was no refined enjoyment. 
 
 At whatever period the emancipation of the ladies from 
 their forced seclusion took place, from that period the 
 tone of social life was elevated. They went about, like 
 Eve, " on hospitable thoughts intent." The highest in rank 
 did not disdain to supervise the kitchen ; they displayed 
 their talents in the invention of new dishes, as well as in 
 the preparation of the old ; and they occasionally well- 
 nigh ruined their lords by the magnificence of their tastes, 
 and their sublime disregard of expense. All the sump- 
 tuary laws of Kings to restrain this household extrava- 
 gance were joyously evaded, and banquets became deadly 
 destructive to men's estates. 
 
 The French Kings granted corporate rights to the dif- 
 ferent trades connected with the kitchen and the table ; 
 and perhaps the most valued privilege Avas that conceded 
 by Charles IX. to the pastry-cooks, who alone were per- 
 mitted to make bread for the service of the Mass. 
 
 Montaigne, in his pleasant way, recounts a conversa- 
 tion he had with an Italian chef who had served in the 
 kitchen of Cardinal Caraffa, up to the period of the death 
 of his gastronomic Eminence. "I made him," says the 
 great Essayist, "tell me something about his post. He 
 
102 TABLE TRAITS. 
 
 gave me a lecture on the science of eating, witli a gravity 
 and magisterial countenance as if he had been determining 
 some vexed question in theology. He deciphered to me, 
 as it were, the distinction that exists between appetites : — 
 the appetite at fasting ; that which people have at the 
 end of the second or third service ; the means of awaking 
 and exciting it ; the general ' police,' so to speak, of his 
 sauces ; and then particularized their ingredients and 
 effects. The differences of salads, according to the seasons, 
 he next discoursed upon. He explained what sorts ought 
 to be prepared warm, and those which should always be 
 served cold ; the way of adorning and embellishing them, 
 in order to render them seductive to the eye. After this 
 he entered on the order of table-services, — a subject full of 
 fine and important considerations ; and all this was puffed 
 up with rich and magnificent terms ; phrases, indeed, 
 such as are employed by statesmen and diplomatists, 
 when they are discoursing on the government of an 
 empire." We see by this what the ^' art de la gueule''^ 
 was in the days of Charles IX., whose mother, Catherine 
 de Medicis, had introduced it into France, as a science 
 whereby men should enjoy life. The same lady introduced 
 also poisoning, as a science whereby men might be deprived 
 of life. Her own career was full of opposing facts like 
 these, — facts which caused a poetic cook to write the epi- 
 taph upon her, which says : — 
 
 " Here lieth a Queen, who was angel and devil. 
 Admirer of good, and a doer of evil ; 
 She supported the State, and the State she destroyed ; 
 She reconciled friends, and she friendships alloyed ; 
 She brought forth three Kings, thrice endanger'd the Crown, 
 Built palaces up, and threw whole cities down ; 
 Made many good laws, many bad ones as well. 
 And merited richly both heaven and hell." 
 
 The mention of Cardinal de Caraffa, by Montaigne, 
 
THE MODERN COOK, AKD HIS SCIENCE. 103 
 
 reminds me that, for a gastronome, the Cardinal was sin- 
 gularly sanguinary in spirit. I know no one to compare 
 with him, except Dr. Cahill, who is not averse to good 
 living, and who has earned so gloomy a notoriety by his 
 terrible sentiment of the massacre of Protestants being " a 
 glorious idea." CarafFa was enabled to enjoy both his 
 propensities, of swallowing good things and slaughtering 
 heretics. "Having obtained leave from the Pope t 
 establish the Inquisition at Rome, at a time when the 
 resources of the State ran low, he turned his private pro- 
 perty to the use of his zeal, and set up a small Inquisition 
 at his own expense." Thus he could dine within hearing 
 of the groans of his victims ; his cook could inform him 
 that the hares and heretics had both been roasted ; and 
 he may have been occasionally puzzled to know whether 
 that smeU of burning came from the patties or the 
 Protestants. 
 
 The Italian cooks were, for a season, fashionable in 
 France ; but they had a passion for poetry as well as for 
 pies, and werej given to let their sauces burn while 
 they recited whole pages of " Orlando Furioso." They 
 were critics as well as cooks, and the kitchens resounded 
 with their denunciations of all who objected to the merits 
 of the divine Ariosto. But even the Papal ennobling 
 of a cook could not compensate for an indifferent dinner ; 
 and though Leo X., in a fit of modest delight at a sauce 
 made by his cook during Lent, named him fi'om that 
 circumstance "Jack o' Lent," or ''''Jean de Careme,^^ the 
 French would not allow that such an event authorized 
 the artiste to be dreaming over epics, when he should be 
 wide awake to the working of his proper mystery. But 
 the mystery itself was much obstructed by the political 
 events of the times. There were the bloody wars of the 
 Guises, the troubles of the League, the despotic reign of 
 Richelieu, the cacochymical temperament (as the editor of 
 
104 TABLE TRAITS. 
 
 the ^' AlmanacJi des Gourmands'''' would call it) of Louis 
 XIII., and the ridiculous war of the Fronde. The glory of 
 the French kitchen rose with that of the Grand Monarque, 
 and Vatel and Louis XI Y. were contemporaries. Yatel 
 slew himself to save his honour ! The King had come to 
 dine with Conde ; but the cod had not arrived in time to 
 he dressed for the King, and thereupon the heroic artist 
 fell upon his sword, like an ancient Roman, and is immor- 
 talized for ever by his glorious folly ! 
 
 But there was nothing really heroic in the death of 
 Vatel, whose sword was pointed at his breast by wounded 
 vanit3^ Far more heroic was the death of the cook of 
 the Austrian Consul, in the late cruel massacre, by the 
 cowardly Russian fleet, at Sinope. The Consul's cook 
 was a young woman of thirty years of age. The Musco- 
 vite murderers were at the very height of their bloody 
 enjoyment, and sending shots into the town, when the 
 cook attempted to cross a garden, to procure some herbs ; 
 for Consuls must dine, though half the world be dying. 
 She had performed her mission, and was returning, when 
 a thirty-six pounder shot cut her completely in two. 
 Rather than give up the parsley for her master's soup, 
 she thus encountered death. What was Yatel and his 
 bodkin, to this more modern cook and the thirty-six 
 pounder, loaded by the Czar for her destruction ? 
 
 The cooks "looked up" in the nights and suppers of 
 the Regency, and the days and dinners of Louis XY. It 
 would be difficult to say whether under the Regent, or 
 under the King, the culinary art and its professors most 
 flourished. I am inclined, however, to think, that, during 
 the tranquil and voluptuous period of the reign of Louis 
 XY., the cooks of France rose to that importance from 
 which they have never descended. They became a recog- 
 nised and esteemed class in society, whose spoiled children 
 they were ; and, in return, it was very like spoiled children 
 
105 
 
 that they behaved. But how could it be otherwise, when 
 the noble, the brave, and the fair girded aprons to their 
 loins, and stood over stew-pans, with the air of alchymists 
 over alembics ? It is to the nobility and other distin- 
 guished persons in high life, yet not noble, in France, that 
 gastronomy owes many a dish, whose very name betrays 
 to ecstasy. And here are a few of these droll benefactors 
 of mankind. 
 
 The Marquis de Bechamel immortalized his name, in 
 the reign of Louis XIY., by his invention of cream-sauce, 
 for turbot and cod. Madame de Maintenon imagined the 
 " cutlets in curl-papers " which go by her name, and which 
 her ingeimity created in order to guard the sacred sto- 
 mach of the Grand Monarque from the grease which he 
 could not digest. The " Chartreuse a la 3Iauconseil " is the 
 work, and the most innocent one, of the free and easy 
 Marchioness of that name. A woman more free and easy 
 still, the Duchess of Yilleroy, (Marechale de Luxem- 
 bourg,) produced, in her hours of reflection, the dish known 
 as the jpoulets a la Villeroy. They were eaten with bread 
 a la Regent, of which the author was the roue Duke of Or- 
 leans. His too "well-beloved " daughter, the Duchess of 
 Berry, had a gastronomic turn of mind, like her illus- 
 trious father. She was an epicurean lady, who tasted of 
 all the pleasures of life without moderation, whose device 
 was, "Short and sweet," and who was contented to die 
 young, seeing that she had exhausted all enjoyment, and 
 had achieved a renown, that should embalm her name for 
 ever, as the inventor of the filets de taper eau. The gigot 
 a la Mailly was the result of much study, on the part 
 of the first mistress of Louis XV., to rid herself of a 
 sister who was a rival. Madame de Pompadour, another 
 of the same King's "ladies," testified her gratitude for 
 the present which the Monarch made her of the Chateau 
 de Bellevue, by the production of the filets de volaille a la 
 
106 TABLE TEAITS. 
 
 JBellevue, The Queen of Louis was more devout, but not 
 less epicurean, than his mistresses ; and the petites houchees 
 a la JReine, if they were not of her creating, were named in 
 honour of Maria Leczinzka. Louis himself had a con- 
 tempt for female cooks ; but Madame Du Barry had one 
 so well-trained, that with a charming dinner of coulis de 
 faisans, croustades de lafoie de lottes, salmis de becassine, 
 pain de volaille a la supreme^ poularde au cresson, ecre- 
 visses au vin de Sauterne, bisquets de pecJies au Noyau, and 
 creme de cerneaux, the King was so overcome with 
 ecstasy, that, after recovering from the temporary disgus 
 he experienced at hearing that it was the handy work of 
 a woman, he consented to ennoble her by conferring upon 
 her the cordon bleu, — which phrase, from that time, has 
 been accepted as signifying a skilled female cook. 
 
 With respect to other dishes and their authors, the 
 vol au vent a la Nesle owns a Marquis for its father ; and 
 the poularde a la Montmorency is the offspring of a Duke. 
 The JBayonnoise, or the Mabonnoise rather, recalls one of 
 the victories of the Duke de Richelieu ; and veau a la 
 Monty oljier, well inflated, was the tribute of a culinary 
 artist to the hero who first rode the air at the tail of a 
 balloon. The sorbet a la Donizetti was the master- 
 piece of the Italian confectioner of the late Duke of 
 Beaufort. He had been to the Opera ; and one of the 
 composer's charming airs having given him an idea, he 
 brooded over it, till, an hour or so before dawn, it was 
 hatched into reality, when he rushed to the Duke's bed- 
 chamber, and, " drawing Priam's bed-curtains in the 
 night," announced to his startled Grace the achievement 
 of a new sorbet. 
 
 The tendrons d''agneaux au soleil, and the Jilets de 
 poulets a la Fompadour, were two of the dishes invented 
 by the famous lady of that name. The carbonnade a la 
 Soubise, and the carre de veau a la Guemenee, date — 
 
THE MODERN COOK, AKD HIS SCIENCE. 107 
 
 the first from the reign of Louis XY., the last from 
 that of Louis XYI., — periods when the people were 
 famishing. The Pompadour was a great patron of the 
 arts, and especially of the culinary art ; and the cuisine 
 des petits appartements, during her reign, was at the very 
 height of its savoury reputation. The Prince of Souhise 
 was a poor General, but a rich glutton ; and his son-in- 
 law, the Prince de Guemenee, was famous for his inven- 
 tion of various ragouts, his inordinate extravagance, and 
 his bankruptcy, with liabilities against him amounting to 
 twenty-eight millions of francs. Madame la Marechale de 
 Mirepoix was the authoress of cailles a la Mirepoix ; and 
 her descendants live on the reputation acquired thereby 
 by their epicurean ancestress. The Bourbons vied with 
 the aristocracy in taxing their genius, and cudgelling 
 their brains, in order to produce new dishes. Thus, the 
 potage a la JLavier was the production of Louis XVIII., in 
 the days of his early manhood ; while the soupe a la Conde 
 was a rival dish invented by his princely cousin, — a cousin, 
 by the way, who, when a refugee in England, used to pass 
 his evenings at Astley's, with his pockets full of apples, 
 which he gallantly presented to ladies as highly, but not 
 as naturally, coloured as the fruit. Perhaps the reputa- 
 tion of the Marechal de Eichelieu rests more on his 
 houdins a la carpe, than on his battles and hillets-doux. 
 Finally, a m^^sterious obscurity conceals from us the 
 name of the inventor of the petites loucliees de foie gras. 
 He is the Junius of gastronomic literature ; but if he be 
 guessed at in vain, he is blessed abundantly, as one who 
 has concentrated paradise, (an Epicurean's paradise,) and 
 given an antepast thereof, in a single mouthful. 
 
 The Prince de Soubise was famous in the reign of Louis 
 XY. for giving great dinners, and paying nobody but his 
 cooks, and the young ladies of the opera. He once varied 
 his extravagance by a splendid fete, which was to ter- 
 
108 TABLE TRAITS. 
 
 minate by a supper. His chef waited on him with the 
 bill of fare for the banquet, and the first article which 
 attracted his attention was " fifty hams.'* " Half a hun- 
 dred hams !" said the Prince, " that 's a coarse idea, Ber- 
 trand. You have not got to feed my regiment of cavalry." 
 " Truly, Prince ! and only one ham will appear on the 
 table ; I want the remaining forty-nine for adjuncts, sea- 
 sonings, flavourings, and a dozen other purposes." " Ber- 
 trand," replied the Prince, " you are robbing me, and I 
 eannot^allow this article to pass." " Monseigneur ! " ex- 
 claimed the offended artiste, " you doubt my morals, and 
 libel my merit. You do not know what a treasure you 
 possess in me ; you have only to order it, and those fifty 
 hams which so terribly offend you, why, I will put them 
 all into a phial not bigger than my thumb !" The Prince 
 smiled, and Bertrand triumphed. 
 
 The cooks of the young King Louis XYI. remarked, 
 with mingled terror and disgust, that his appetite was 
 rather voracious than delicate. He cared little what he 
 ate, provided there was enough of it ; and he looked to 
 nutrition rather than niceness. A succulent joint with 
 him had more merit than the most singular of dishes, the 
 invention of which had perhaps caused three nights of 
 wakefulness to its author. But the aristocracy, the law, 
 and finance, maintained tables which ought to have been 
 the pride of Yersailles. Late dinners, or gorgeous sup- 
 pers, were indulged in to such a degree by the moneyed 
 classes, that it was familiarly said, that of an evening the 
 chimneys of the Faubourg Saint Honor e made fragrant 
 with their incense the entire capital. It was reckoned 
 that, at this period, twenty thousand men had no other 
 profession than that of " diner out," which they carried 
 on, like the parasites of old, by retailing anecdotes and 
 news in return for the repast. It was a time when " Mon- 
 seigneur" thought nothing of dispatching his cook to 
 
THE modep.:n' coob:, ats^d his scie:n^ce. 109 
 
 London to procure a turtle ; which, after all, was less extra- 
 vagant than the process of Camhaceres, who had his Peri- 
 gord pies sent to him through the post, " On His Majesty's 
 Service." The Languedocien cooks in France were paid 
 the quadruple of the salary of the family tutor, good 
 eating being so much more essential to life than mere 
 instruction ; and, besides, could the family tutor have 
 accomplished any thing that could equal the achievement 
 of the family cook who could bring to table entire a 
 '^ sanglier a la crapaudine f"*^ The cooks of the age of 
 Louis XVI. invented the " louillie'' and the " consomme,'' 
 because mastication was considered by them a vulgar 
 process ; and the royal cooks, during Passion Week, mani- 
 pulated the vegetables placed before the King into the 
 forms of ocean-dwelling fish, and gave to the semblance 
 the taste of the reality for which it passed to the eye. 
 
 The glory of gastronomy was again rising when it was 
 suddenly quenched by the revolutionary torrent, and the 
 nation was put on a three years' meagre dietary by the 
 Jacobins and the Directory. But the Revolution, which 
 affected to hate cooks as aristocratic appendages that 
 ought to be suppressed, sometimes made, where it hoped 
 to mar. The case of Ude is one in point. 
 
 Monsieur Ude, like Prince Eugene, was originally 
 intended for the Church. At the breaking out of the 
 French Revolution, he was residing, for instruction, with 
 an Abbe, and master and pupil had to fly before the 
 popular indignation, which, for a time, assailed the Church, 
 and all therewith connected. Ude's life was in peril in 
 the public streets, and he just saved it, by rushing into 
 the shop of a pastry-cook, where he found a permanent 
 asylum. The " house of Ude," like other great houses, 
 nearly perished in the great political shipwreck of the day, 
 and this particular scion thereof took to the study of prac- 
 tical gastronomy, and became chief supreme in various 
 
110 TABLE TRAITS. 
 
 great kitchens, from that of royalty down to that of 
 Crockford. 
 
 When the sluices of the French Revolution were 
 opened, how diverse were the fortunes of those who 
 fled from hefore it ! It was the same with the gentlemen 
 who had followed the fortunes of Napoleon. They were 
 scattered, like the Generals of Alexander, without being 
 able, like them, to retire upon independent sovereignties, 
 and rear dynasties of barbaric splendour. Some went to 
 Greece to crush despotism, some went to Lahore to aid it. 
 A few, like Latour d'Auvergne, took to the Church ; but, 
 saving that portly person himself, none had the good luck 
 to reach the archiepiscopate. Those who failed to procure 
 employment in foreign armies, and yet could not lay aside 
 their propensity for killing, went to the East, and pre- 
 scribed as Physicians. Such of the rest as were abso- 
 lutely fit for nothing, and willing to do it, inundated 
 England, and undertook the light and irresponsible office 
 of Private Tutors ! 
 
 But it was the earlier Revolution that afforded examples 
 of the greatest contrasts. Many young men, intended 
 for the Church, changed their profession, and became 
 popular, useful, and rich, in the households of European 
 royalty, as civilizers of the kitchen, who raised cookery 
 from its barbarous condition to a matter of science and 
 taste. Perhaps the most curious of the waifs and strays 
 of the Revolution flung upon our shores, was the Chevalier 
 D'Aubigne, who contrived to live, as so many French 
 gentlemen of that time did, in bitter poverty, without a 
 sacrifice of dignity. He had one day been invited by an 
 English friend to dine with the latter at a tavern. In 
 the course of the repast, he took upon himself to mix the 
 salad ; and the way in which he did this, attracted the 
 notice of all the other guests in the room. Previous to 
 the period of which I am speaking, lettuces were com- 
 
THE MODEE:^^ COOK, AND niS SCIEIS'CE. Ill 
 
 monly eaten, by tavern frequenters at least, an nattirel, 
 with no more dressing than Nebuchadnezzar had to his 
 grass when he dieted daily among the beasts. Conse- 
 quently, when D' Aubigne handled the preparation forwhich 
 he had asked, like a chymist concocting elixir in his labo- 
 ratory, the guests were lost in admiration ; for the refresh- 
 ing aroma of a Mayonnaise was warrant to their senses, 
 that the French Knight had discovered for them a new 
 pleasure. One of them approached the foreign magician, 
 and said, " Sir, it is universally known that your nation 
 excels all others in the making a salad. Would it be too 
 great a liberty to ask you to do us the favour to mix one 
 for the party at my table ?" The courteous Frenchman 
 smiled, was flattered, performed the office asked of him, 
 and put four gentlemen in a state of uncontrollable ecstasy. 
 He had talked cheerfully, as he mixed gracefully and 
 scientifically, and, in the few minutes required by him to 
 complete his work of enchantment, he contrived to ex- 
 plain his position as emigrant, and his dependence on the 
 pecuniary aid afforded by the English Government. The 
 guests did not let the poor Chevalier depart without 
 slipping into his hand a golden fee, which he received 
 with as little embarrassment, and as much dignity, as 
 though he had been the Physician De Portal taking an 
 honorarium from the hands of the Cardinal de Rohan. 
 
 He had communicated his address, and he, perhaps, was 
 not very much surprised when, a few days after, he received 
 a letter in which he was politely requested to repair to a 
 house in Grosvenor Square, for the purpose of mixing a 
 salad for a dinner-party there to be given. D' Aubigne 
 obeyed the summons ; and, after performing his mission, 
 returned home richer by a five-pound note than when 
 he went out. 
 
 Henceforth he became the recognised " fashionable 
 salad-maker;" and ladies " died" for his salads, as they 
 
112 TABLE TBAITS. 
 
 do now for Constantine's simulative bouquets. The pre- 
 parer was soon enabled to proceed to his responsible duties 
 in a carriage ; and a servant attended him, carrying a 
 mahogany case, containing the necessary ingredients for 
 concocting various salads, according to the respective tastes 
 of his employers. At a later period, he sold, by hundreds, 
 similar mahogany cases, which he had caused to be made, 
 and which were furnished with all matters necessary for 
 the making an irreproachable salad, and with directions 
 how to administer them. The Chevalier, too, was, like 
 old Carre, — whose will was so cleverly made by the very 
 disinterested friends who had never before spoken to him, 
 — a prudent and a saving man ; and by the period which 
 re-opened France to the emigres, he had realized some 
 eighty thousand francs, upon which he enjoyed a dignified 
 retirement in a provincial town. He invested sixty thou- 
 sand francs in the Funds ; with the other twenty thousand 
 he ^ purchased a little estate in the Limousin, and, if he 
 lacked a " legend" to his device, I would have helped 
 him to one in " Sal adfert'^ 
 
 A Knight over a salad-bowl is not a chivalrous picture ; 
 but the stern necessity of the case gave it dignity, and 
 the resulting profits quieted the scruples of the gentle- 
 man. When Booth pounced upon Captain Bath, sitting 
 in a dirty flannel gown, and warming his sister's posset 
 at the fire, the noble and gaunt Captain was taken some- 
 thing aback, and said, in a little confusion, " I did not 
 expect, Sir, to be seen by you in this situation." Booth 
 told him " he thought it impossible he could appear in a 
 situation more becoming his character." The compli- 
 ment was equivocal ; but the Captain said, " You do not ? 
 By Gr — I am very much obliged to you for that opinion ; 
 but I believe. Sir, however my weakness may prevail on 
 me to descend from it, no man can be more conscious of 
 his own dignity than myseK." The apology of good 
 
THE MODEEK COOK, AND HIS SCIENCE. 113 
 
 Captain Bath in Fielding's " Amelia," would have served 
 the Chevalier who made salads, had he needed one. 
 
 If a salad made the fortune of a Chevalier, it on one 
 occasion made that of a female cook, with whose dexterity 
 in this respect a learned English Judge was so enchanted, 
 that he raised the lucky maiden to the quality of wife. If 
 we discuss the traits of life at table, we have nothing to 
 do with the secrets of household ; but an incident, illus- 
 trative of the consequences of this match, may be men- 
 tioned. The Judge ever after was famous for protracting 
 the sittings in court beyond all precedent and patience ; 
 and when weary Barristers were aghast at hearing a new 
 cause called on, when the night was half spent, and fairly 
 remonstrated against the judicial cruelty, the learned 
 husband of his cook would remark with a sigh, " Grentle- 
 men, we must be somewhere ; we cannot be better any 
 where than where we now are," — the half of which asser- 
 tion was stoutly denied by his hearers. 
 
 Our aristocracy are not quite so famous for their inven- 
 tion of dishes as that of France ; but their love for good 
 dinners, and their knowledge of what they ought to be, 
 are not inferior to the affection and science of our neigh- 
 bours. When Lord Marcus Hill officiated as whipper-in 
 to the Whig Government, it was part of his office to 
 order the fish dinner at which Ministers regale themselves 
 when sessional cares no longer molest them. The fish 
 dinners of Lord Marcus are remembered with satisfaction 
 and gratitude ; for they were first-rate in their way. The 
 reputation of the Carlton cuisine and cellar is said to be 
 chiefly owing to Sir Alexander Grant, of whom a gastro- 
 nomic critic says, " No living Amphitryon has given 
 better dinners in his time ; and few can boast of having 
 entertained more distinguished guests." His name, as a 
 patron, reminds me of that of Careme, as a practitioner. 
 
PEN AND INK SKETCH OF CAREME. 
 
 It would be as easy to compile a Dictionary of Cooks, 
 as of Musicians or Painters ; but it would not be so 
 amusing or so edifying, except perhaps to those who 
 think more of their stomach than of their mind. But it 
 loould then be attractive and useful to the majority of 
 readers ; for the sages themselves are not unmindful of 
 their stomachs, and, according to a sage, they would be 
 unworthy of the name if thiey neglected that vital matter. 
 Johnson, you know, lived in an age when things were 
 called by their real names. " J'appelleMn chat un chat^'^ 
 was the device of the plain-spoken, when not only men, 
 but ladies, bold as the Thalestris of Young's pungent 
 satire, loudly dared to name what nature dared to give. 
 Dr. Johnson, then, says, " Some people have a foolish way 
 of not minding, or pretending not to mind, what they 
 eat. For my part, I mind my telly very studiously ; for 
 I look upon it that he who does not mind his helly^ will 
 hardly mind any thing else !" 
 
 To the world, then, even a Biographical Dictionary of 
 Cooks might be captivating ; but as my present mission 
 is not to write an Encyclopaedia, but rather deferentially 
 to offer my little sketches to gentle, and not too critical, 
 readers, with leisure half-hours at their comm.and, so do I 
 offer them a sketch of Careme, as the knowledge of the 
 individual may stand for that of the class. 
 
 He was illustrious by descent ; for one of his ancestors 
 
PEN AND INK SKETCH OE CABEME. 115 
 
 had served in the household of a Pope, who himself made 
 more sauces than saints, Leo X. But Careme was one 
 of so poor and so numerous a family, that when he came 
 into the world, he was no more welcome than Oliver 
 Goldsmith was : the respective parents of the little-cared- 
 for babes did not know what future great men lay in 
 naked helplessness before them. One wrote immortal 
 poetry, and starved : the other made delicious pastry, and 
 rode in a chariot ! We know how much Oliver received 
 for his " Vicar ; " while Anthony Careme used to receive 
 twice as much for merely writing out a recipe to make a 
 " pdtey Nay, Careme's untouched patties, when they 
 left royal tables, were bought up at a cost which would 
 have supported Goldsmith for a month ; and a cold 
 sugared entremet, at the making of which Careme had 
 presided, readily fetched a higher price than the public 
 now pay for the " Complete Works" of the poet of Green- 
 Arbour-court ! 
 
 Careme studied under various great masters, but he 
 perfected his studies under Boucher, chef des services of 
 the Prince Talleyrand. The glory of Careme was co-eval 
 with that of Napoleon : those two individuals were gr.eat 
 men at the same period ; but the glory of one will, per- 
 haps, be a little more enduring than that of the other. I 
 will not say whose glory will thus last the longer ; for as 
 was remarked courteously by the Oxford candidate for 
 honours, who was more courteous than " crammed," and 
 who was asked which were the minor Prophets, " I am 
 not willing to draw invidious distinctions !" 
 
 In the days of the Empire, — the era of the greatness, of 
 the achievements, and of the reflections of Careme, — the 
 possession of him was as eagerly contested by the rich as 
 that of a nymph by the satyrs. He was alternately the 
 glory of Talleyrand, the boast of Lavalette, and the pride 
 of the Saxon Ambassador. In their houses, too, his hand 
 
 I 2 
 
 J. 
 
116 TABLE TRAITS. 
 
 was as often on liis pen as on the handle of his casserole ; 
 and inspiration never visited his hrain without the call 
 being duly registered in his note-book, with reflections 
 thereon highly philosophical and gastronomic. 
 
 But Careme was capricious. It was not that he was 
 unfaithful, but he was volage ; and he passed from kitchen 
 to kitchen, as the bee wings from flower to flower. The 
 Emperor Alexander dined with Talleyrand, and forthwith 
 he seduced Careme : the seduction-money was only £100 
 sterling per month, and the culinary expenses. Careme 
 did not yield without much coyness. He urged his love 
 for study, his desire to refine the race of which he made 
 himself the model, his love for his country ; and he even 
 accompanied, for a brief moment, " Lord Stewart" to 
 Vienna ; but it was more in the way of policy than pastry : 
 for Count Orloff was sent after him on a mission, and 
 Careme, after flying, with the full intention of being fol- 
 lowed, to London and Paris, yielded to the golden solici- 
 tation, and did the Emperor Alexander the honour of 
 becoming the head of the imperial kitchen in whatever 
 palace His Majesty presided. But the delicate suscepti- 
 bility of Careme was wounded by discovering that his 
 book of expenses was subjected to supervision. He flung 
 up his appointment in disgust, and hastened across Europe 
 to England. The jealous winds wished to detain him for 
 France, and they blew him back on the coast between 
 Calais and Boulogne, exactly as they did another gentle- 
 man, who may not be so widely known as Careme, but 
 who has been heard of in England under the name of 
 William Wordsworth. Careme accepted the omen, repaired 
 to Paris, entered the service of the Princess Bagration, and 
 served the table of that capricious lady, en maitre d' hotel. 
 As the guests uttered ecstatic praises of the fare, the 
 Princess would smile upon him as he stood before her, 
 and exclaim, " He is the pearl of cooks !" Is it a matter 
 
PEN AND INK SKETCH OE CAREME. Il7 
 
 of surprise that he was vain ? Fancy being called a 
 "pearl" by a Princess ! On reading it we think of the 
 days when Lady Mary Wortley Montague put nasty 
 ' footmen into eclogues, and deified the dirty passions of 
 Mrs. Mahony's lacquey. 
 
 The Princess, however, ate herself into a permanent 
 indigestion, and Careme transferred his services to the 
 English Ambassador at the Court of Vienna. There, 
 every morning, seated in his magnificent kitchen, Careme 
 received the visit of "Milor Stewart," who seldom left 
 him without presents and encouragements. Indeed, these 
 rained upon the immortal artist. The Emperor Alex- 
 ander had consented to have Careme' s projects in culinary 
 architecture dedicated to him, and, with notice of consent, 
 sent him a diamond ring. When Prince Walkouski 
 placed it on his finger, the cook forgot his dignity, and 
 burst into tears. So did all the other cooks in the 
 Austrian capital, — out of sheer jealousy. 
 
 Careme, two years before Greorge IV. was King, had 
 been for a short period a member of the Regent's house- 
 hold. He left Vienna to be present at the Coronation ; 
 but he arrived too late ; and he does not scruple to say, 
 very ungenerously, that the banquet was spoiled for want 
 of his presence, nor to insinuate that the colleagues with 
 whom he would have been associated were unworthy of 
 such association, — an insinuation at once base and base- 
 less. After being the object of a species of semi- worship, 
 and yielding to every new offer, yet affecting to despise 
 them all, Careme ultimately tabernacled with Baron 
 Eothschild in Paris ; and the super-human excellency of 
 his dinners, is it not written in the " Book without a 
 Name" of Lady Morgan? And was not his residence 
 there the object of envy, and cause of much melan- 
 choly, and opportunity for much eulogy, on the part of 
 George IV. ? Well, Anthony Careme would have us 
 
118 TABLE TRATTS. 
 
 believe as mucli with respect to himself and the King ; 
 but we do not believe a word of it ; for the royal table 
 was never better cared for by the royal officers, whose 
 duty lay in such care, than at this very period. George 
 lY. is said to have tempted him by offering triple sala- 
 ries ; but all in vain ; for London was too triste an abiding 
 place for a man whose whole soul, out of kitchen hours, 
 was given to study. And so Careme remained with his 
 Jewish patron until infirmity overtook his noble nature, 
 and he retired to dictate his immortal works (like Mil- 
 ton, very !) to his accomplished daughter. Les heaux 
 Testes of Careme were eagerly sought after ; but he would 
 not heed what was no longer a temptation ; for he was 
 realizing twenty thousand francs a year from the book- 
 sellers, besides the interest of the money he had saved. 
 Think of it, shade of Milton! Eight hundred pounds 
 sterling yearly^ for writing on kitchen-stuff! Who would 
 compose epics after that ? But Careme' s books were 
 epics after their sort, and they are highly creditable to 
 the scribe who wrote them from his notes. Finally, even 
 Antony Careme died, like cooks of less degree ; but he 
 had been the imperial despot of European kitchens, had 
 been "beringed" by Monarchs, and been smiled on by 
 Princesses ; he had received Lords in his kitchen, and had 
 encountered ladies who gave him a great deal for a very 
 little knowledge in return ; and finally, as Fulke Creville 
 had inscribed on his tomb that he had been the friend of 
 Sir Philip Sidney, so the crowning joy of Careme' s life 
 might have been chiselled on his monument, indicating 
 that he had been the friend of one whom he would 
 have accounted a greater man than the knightly hero in 
 question, — namely, il Maestro Hossini ! Careme' s cup was 
 thereat full ; and he died, perfectly convinced that para- 
 dise itself would be glad at his coming. 
 
 The celebrated Damvers was chef to the as celebrated 
 
PEN Al^J) INK SKETCH OE CAEEME. 119 
 
 financier Grimaud de la E-eyniere, in the last century. 
 G-rimaud died a martyr to his epicurean tastes. He was 
 dining on a pate de foies gras, when he allowed his appe- 
 tite to overpower his digestion, and he died of the excess. 
 Barthe, the author of "" Les Fausses Injidelites^'' also fell 
 on the field of the dining-room. He was extremely short- 
 sighted, and ate of every thing on the table. He did not 
 consult his appetite, but his servant, asking him, " Have 
 I eaten of that?" "Have I had any of this?" It was 
 after partaking too freely, both of "this" and "that," 
 that poor M. Barthe let his temper get the better of him 
 in an argument, and a stroke of apoplexy sent him under 
 the table. His cook deplored in him the loss of a man 
 of taste. 
 
 The cook of the Count de Tesse, Master of the Horse 
 to Marie Antoinette, was famous for dressing artichokes. 
 The great Morillian surpassed him, however ; but this 
 feat did not save the artist from ending his days in 
 poverty. The elder Bobert was, perhaps, equal to either 
 of them, in this or in any other respect connected with 
 his art. The great Careme, ignorant of every thing 
 else, was at least an accomplished cook. There is, as I 
 have said, a tradition that his 'petits pates, w^hen they 
 left the Regent's table, were sold, like the second-hand 
 pies from the royal table at Versailles, for fabulous prices. 
 As I have before intimated, it was for Leo X. that Careme 
 the First invented those succulent, but orthodox, dishes, 
 which pleased the pontifical palate at a season when 
 gratification by gravy would have been scandalous! 
 It wa's in the Baron Bothschild's household that Careme 
 the Second invented his famous sauce piquante, the result 
 of his studies under Eichaut, Asne, and the elder Robert. 
 It was in and for France that Careme published the 
 learned and curious work of which he is the reputed 
 author, and which he may have dictated, but which he 
 
120 TABLE TBAIT3. 
 
 could not have written. It is marked by philosophical 
 inquiry, instruction, and pleasant trifling; and neither 
 book nor reputed author has been excelled by any artist, 
 or any sample of kitchen literature, that has appeared 
 since that period. 
 
 Before the age of Careme, the popular kitchen in 
 France was not very superior to our own ; and the patrons 
 of tavernes and traiteurs were as coarsely fed as our 
 frequenters of ordinaries. But as royalty fell, the restau- 
 rateurs rose ; and when, in 1786, the cooks of Louis XYI. 
 began to augur badly of their prospects, three provincial 
 brothers, Barthelemy, Mannielles, and Simon, opened 
 their famous restaurant, " Les Trois Freres Trovenqaux^"* 
 in the Palais Royal, and constituted themselves the cooks 
 of another King, — the sovereign people. The new esta- 
 blishment created an era in the history of cookery, and 
 men of all shades of politics, and Generals of all grades 
 of reputation, resorted to the tables of the Brothers. 
 General Bonaparte and Barras were to be seen there 
 daily, before they took their cheap pleasure at the theatre 
 of Mile. Montansier. During the wars of the Empire 
 it was the chosen stage for the farewell banquets of bre- 
 thren in arms, and at this period the receipts amounted 
 to not less than £500 sterling daily. The triumvirate 
 of proprietors endured longer than any such union in the 
 political world ; and it was not till the reign of Louis 
 Philippe that the establishment of "X«95 Trois Freres'^ 
 descended, under a new proprietary, into a more unpre- 
 tending position than that which it had proudly sus- 
 tained during half a century. The casseroles of the 
 savoury Brothers had remained unshaken, while Kings 
 and constitutions had fallen around them. 
 
 The fortune of the Provincial Brothers tempted another 
 country cook from his obscurity ; and some four years 
 after the former had set up their tables in the Palais 
 
PEI^ AND INK SKETCH OF CAREME. 121 
 
 Royal, the immortal Very thrust his feet into wooden 
 clogs, and trudged from a village on the Meuse up to the 
 capital, to give it a taste of his quality. He enchanted 
 Marshal Duroc with some of his plats, and henceforth 
 his fortune was secure. He married a beautiful woman, 
 whose pen kept his books, whose face attracted customers, 
 and whose heart was devoted to her husband. A quarter 
 of a century sufficed to enable Very to die immensely 
 rich, after working excessively hard, and to be magni- 
 ficently entombed in the Cimetiere 3Iontmartre, under a 
 marble column, which bore the engraved assurance that 
 "his whole life was devoted to the useful arts." 
 
 Beauvilliers appeared in Paris about the same time as 
 "the Three Brothers ;" he made and unmade his fortune 
 three or four times, and died poor, three years after Very 
 died so rich. Beauvilliers was the author of " L'Art du 
 Cuisinier,'^ a book almost as interesting as "The Art of 
 Dining;" and one cannot name either without standing 
 mentally chapeau has ! before the author. 
 
 Beauvilliers was famous for his splendid wines and heavy 
 bill. The Veau qui tette was renowned for its sheep- 
 trotters. The reputation of others was built upon kid- 
 neys ; that of Very, on his entrees truffces. The " Three 
 Provincial Brothers" enjoyed a wide esteem for the way in 
 which they dressed cod with garlic. Baleine kept a 
 house that was crowded by the admirers of fish ; while 
 that of Eobert was distinguished for the graceful atten- 
 tion with which previously ordered dinners were served ; 
 and that of Henneveu for the splendid boudoirs in which 
 shy couples, too modest to encounter the public gaze, 
 could dine in private, and cease to find their modesty 
 oppressive. Beauvilliers', as I have intimated, was a 
 costly house ; but it was not therefore the most excel- 
 lent in Paris. The excellence of a dinner is not to be 
 determined by its price. Four years ago an illustrious 
 
122 TABLE TRAITS. 
 
 party dined at Philippe's, in the Eue Montorgueil, at a 
 far lower cost, and after a far more exquisite fashion, 
 than if they had joined the Epicureans of the Clarendon, 
 at £5 per head. The party consisted of Lords Brougham 
 and Dufferin, the Honourable W. Stuart, two other 
 "Britishers," and Count D'Orsay and M. Alexandre 
 Dumas. The dinner on this occasion was a recherchee 
 affair. It had been as anxiously meditated upon as an 
 epic poem ; and it was a far pleasanter thing. " The 
 most successful dishes," says the author of " The Art of 
 Dining," "were the hisques^ ihe fritures a Vltalienne, 
 and the gigot a la Bretanne. Out of compliment to the 
 world-wide fame of Lord Brougham and Alexandre 
 Dumas, M. Philippe produced some Clos de Vougeot, 
 which, (like his namesake in ' High Life Below Stairs,') 
 he vowed, should never go down the throat of a man 
 whom he did not esteem and admire ; and it was voted 
 first-rate by acclamation." 
 
 The French repasts are not always good, even when 
 they are rather costly. In 1807, a party of twenty-two 
 sat down to a repast at the younger " Robert's," in Paris. 
 The Amphitryon of the feast was M. Daolouis ; and the 
 bill, exclusive of wine, amounted to thirty louis. There 
 were but three or four great dishes, and two or three 
 sauces. The discontent of the guests was general, and 
 the giver of the feast allowed that the dinner was not 
 near so good as that of the " Societe des Mercredis,^'* at 
 Le Gacgiue's^ which cost only seven francs per head, ordi- 
 nary wine, liqueurs, and coffee included. " Mais, a dineVy 
 Messieurs, a diner / " 
 
DINNER TRAITS, 
 
 "Foe, these and all His mercies" once began 
 
 Dr. Johnson, whose good custom it was always to thank 
 Heaven for the good things set before him ; but he almost 
 as invariably found fault with the food given. And of 
 this see-saw process Mrs. Johnson grew tired ; and on the 
 occasion alluded to, she stopped her husband by remarking 
 that it was a farce to pretend to be grateful for dishes 
 which, in two minutes, he would pronounce to be as 
 worthless as the worst of Jeremiah's figs ! And so there 
 was no blessing. Mrs. Johnson might have supplied the 
 one employed by merry old Lady Hobart at a dinner 
 where she looked inquiringly, but vainly, for a grace- 
 say er. "Well," remarked the good ancient dame, "I 
 think I must say as one did in the like case, ' God be 
 thanked! — nobody will say grace!'" It is seldom that 
 "grace" is properly said or sung. The last is a terribly 
 melodious mockery at public dinners ; but then every 
 man should silently and fervently make thanksgiving in 
 his own heart. He is an ungracious knave who sits 
 down to a meal without at least a silent acknowledgment 
 of gratitude to Him, without whom there could have 
 been no spreading of the banquet. Such a defaulter 
 deserves to be the bound slave of dyspepsia, until he 
 learn better manners. "Come, gentlemen," Beau Nash 
 used to say, " eat, and welcome !'* It was all his grace ; 
 
124 TAELE TRAITS. 
 
 and had he said, " Come, gentlemen, be thankful and eat," 
 it would have been more like the Christian gentleman, 
 and less like the "beau." 
 
 It was a good old rule that prescribed as a law of num- 
 bers at the dinner table, that the company should not be 
 more than the Muses nor less than the Graces. There 
 was not always unlimited freedom of action in the matter ; 
 for, by the Lex Faunia^ a man was forbidden to invite 
 more than three strangers (not of his family) to dinner, 
 except on market days, (three times a month,) when he 
 might invite five. The host was restricted to spending 
 only two and a half drachmas ; but he might consume 
 annually one hundred and twenty Roman pounds of meat 
 for each person in his house, and eat at discretion of all 
 plants and herbs that grew wild ; and, indeed, little 
 restriction was put upon vegetables at all. One conse- 
 quence was, that this law against luxury begot a great 
 deal of it, and ruined men's stomachs in consequence. 
 When the French Mayor ordered all good citizens in his 
 dark district to carry lanterns at night, he forgot to say a 
 word about candles, and the wits walked about with the 
 lanterns unfurnished. The official rectified the mistake by 
 ordering the candles ; but as he omitted to say that these 
 were to be lighted, the public did not profit by the decree. 
 So the Lex Faunia, when it allowed unrestrained liberty 
 in thistles, forgot to limit sauces ; and vegetables generally 
 were eaten with such luscious aids to which the name of 
 " sauce " was given, that even the grave Cicero yielded to 
 the temptation, spoiled his digestion, and got a liver 
 complaint ! After all, it is said that only three Romans 
 could be found who rigorously observed the Faunia Law, 
 according to their oaths. These were men more easily 
 satisfied than Apicius, who cried like a child, when, of all 
 his vast fortune, he had only about £250,000 sterling 
 that he could devote to gluttony ; or than Lucullus, who 
 
Di:S']S^ER TRAITS. 125 
 
 never supped in the "Apollo" without its costing him 
 at least ten thousand pounds. 
 
 Notwithstanding this, the Faunia Law was an absurd 
 impertinence. It was like the folly of Antigonus, who 
 one day, seeing the poet Antagoras in the camp, cooking 
 a dish of congers for his dinner, asked, " O Antagoras, dost 
 thou think that Homer sang the deeds of heroes while he 
 boiled fish?" "And you, King," returned the poet, 
 " thinkest thou that Agamemnon gained renown for his ex- 
 ploits, by trying to find out who had boiled fish for dinner 
 in his camp ?" The moral is, that it is best to leave men 
 at liberty to eat as they like. Society is strong enough 
 to make laws on these matters for itself; and no one now 
 could commit the crime of the greedy Demylos, who, to 
 secure a superb dish of fish for himself, iueirTvor^v els avT-nv, 
 "spat in it;" and if my readers refer to the chapter 
 illustrating " Their Majesties at Meat," they will find 
 that so dirty a trick was not the reserved privilege of 
 Heathenism. 
 
 The Pythagoreans were clean eaters, and dined daily on 
 bread and honey. On the smell of the latter Democritus 
 did not indeed dine, but died. He had determined to 
 commit suicide, and had cut down his allowance to such 
 small rations, that his death was expected daily. But the 
 fun and the festival of Ceres was at hand ; and the ladies 
 of his house begged him to be good enough not to spoil 
 the frolic by dying at such a mirthful moment. He con- 
 sented, asked for a pot of honey, and kept himself alive 
 by smelling at it, till the festival was over, when his 
 family hoped that he would die whenever he found it con- 
 venient. He took one sniff more at the pot, and in the 
 effort his breath passed away for ever. There was 
 nothing reprehensible in the conduct of those ladies. 
 They did not outrage the spirit of their times. I think 
 worse of Madam du Deffand, who went out to dine on the 
 
126 TABLE TEAITS. 
 
 day her old lover died, remarking, as she entered the 
 room, how lucky it was that he had expired hefore six 
 o'clock, as otherwise she would have heen too late for 
 the gay party expecting her. The hrilliant society who 
 played cards hy the side of the hed of the dying Mile, de 
 I'Espinasse, and counted their tricks while they com- 
 mented upon her "rattles," may he pronounced as heing 
 twice as Pagan as the ladies of the household of Demo- 
 critus. 
 
 A small portion of soup is a good preparative to excite 
 the digestive powers generally for what is to follow. 
 Oysters form a far less commonly safe introduction to the 
 more solid repast, their chill, which even Chablis cannot 
 always rectify, paralysing rather than arousing the sto- 
 mach. The French houilli after soup is a dangerous 
 vulgarity ; for it is simply, as a distinguished professor 
 has styled it, "meat, all but its nourishing juice." 
 
 " Poultry," says M. Brillat, " is to the sick man who has 
 been floating over an uncertain and uneasy sea, like the 
 first odour or sight of land to the storm-beaten mariner." 
 But a skilful cook can render almost any dish attractive 
 to any and every quality of appetite. In this respect, 
 the French and Chinese cooks are really professional bre- 
 thren ; much more so than a general practitioner and a 
 veterinary surgeon ! 
 
 The Chinese are exceedingly skilful cooks, and exhibit 
 taste and judgment in the selection of their food. With 
 a few beans, and the meal of rice and corn, they will 
 make a palatable and nutritious dish. They eat horse- 
 flesh, rats, mice, and young dogs. Why not ? All these 
 are far cleaner feeders than pigs and lobsters. A tho- 
 rough-bred horse is so nice in his appetite, that he will 
 refuse the corn which has been breathed upon by another 
 horse. The Tonquin birds' nests eaten in China may 
 be described as young Mr. Fudge describes the Paris 
 
DINNEK TRAITS. 127 
 
 grisettes : " Rather eatable things, those grisettes, by 
 the bye !" So are the birds' nests, composed as they are 
 of small shell-fish and a glutinous matter, supplied by the 
 plumed inhabitant of the edible houses. Bears' paws, 
 rolled in pepper and nutmeg, dried in the sun, and subse- 
 quently soaked in rice-water, and boiled in the gravy of a 
 kid, form a dish that would make ecstatic the grave 
 Confucius himself. 
 
 There are some men for whom cooks toil in vain. The 
 Duke of Wellington's cook had serious doubts as to his 
 master being a great man, — he so loved simple fare. 
 Suwarrow was another General who was the despair of 
 cooks. His biographer says of him, that he was at din- 
 ner when Col. Hamilton appeared before him to announce 
 an Austrian victory over the French. The General had 
 one huge plate before him, a sort of Irish stew, with 
 every thing for sauce, from which he ate greedily, spitting 
 out the bones, " as was his custom." He was so delighted 
 with the message and the messenger, that he received 
 him as Galba did Icelus, the announcer of Nero's death : 
 with his unwiped mouth, he began kissing the latter, (as 
 the half-shaven Duke of Newcastle once did the bearer of 
 some welcome intelligence,) and insisted on his sitting 
 down and eating from the General's plate, "without cere- 
 mony." The great Coligny was, like Suwarrow, a rapid 
 eater ; but he was more nice in his diet. The charac- 
 teristic of Coligny was, that he always used to eat his 
 tooth-picks ! 
 
 According to ancient rule, an invifcation not replied to 
 within four-and-twenty hours was deemed accepted ; and 
 from an invitation given and accepted, nothing releases 
 the contracting parties but illness, imprisonment, or death ! 
 Nothing suffers so much by delay as dinner ; and if punc- 
 tuality be the politeness of Kings, it should also be the 
 policy both of guests and cooks. Lack of [punctuality on 
 
128 TABLE TRAITS. 
 
 the part of tlie former has heen illustrated in the eases of 
 men, of whom it is said that they never saw soup and 
 fish hut at their own tables. The late Lord Dudley 
 Ward used to cite two brothers as startling examples of 
 want of punctuality : "If you asked Kohert for Wednes- 
 day, at seven, you got Charles on Thursday, at eight!'*' 
 On the other hand, an unpunctual cook is scarcely to he 
 accounted a cook ; and an unpunctual master is not 
 worthy of a cook whose dinner is ready to be served at 
 the moment it has been ordered. The great " artiste ^^ 
 who dismissed his patron because he never sat down to 
 dinner until after he had kept it waiting for an hour, was 
 thoroughly acquainted with the dignity of his profession. 
 
 At the beginning of the present century, it was the 
 custom in France to serve the soup immediately before 
 the company entered the dining-room. The resulting 
 advantage was a simultaneous operation on the part of 
 the guests. The innovation was introduced by Mile. 
 Emilie Contat, the actress ; but it was tolerated only for 
 a season. It was, at the same period, of rigorous neces- 
 sity, when eggs were eaten at dinner, to crush the empty 
 shell. To allow the latter to leave the table whole was a 
 breach in good manners ; but the reason of this prandial 
 law I have never been able to discover. Mile. Contat 
 was almost as famous for her love of good cheer as our 
 own Foote, and both were, equally often, " on hospitable 
 thoughts intent." 
 
 It would appear that in Foote's time Scotland was not 
 famous for a lavish hospitality. The old actor gave some 
 glorious dinners to the first people in the city, and his 
 preliminary proceedings thereto were intended to be 
 highly satirical upon what he considered Scottish parsi- 
 mony. Every night, before retiring to bed, he used to 
 paper the curls of his wig with Scotch bank-notes, — pro- 
 missory paper, as he said, of no value. When his cook 
 
BINNER TEAITS. 129 
 
 waited on him at breakfast-time for orders, "Sam'* 
 gravely uncurled his locks, flung the papers to the 
 attendant, as purchase- money for the necessary provi- 
 sions, and sent her to market in a sedan-chair. But the 
 old actor was as eccentric and ostentatious at his own 
 table in London, as he was any where. When the wines 
 were placed on the board, he solemnly, and as it were 
 with a shade of disgust, inquired, "If any body drank 
 port?" As no one dared to answer in the affirmative at 
 his table, (though the owner took it " medicinally,") he 
 w^ould direct the servant to "take away the ink !" 
 
 If Foote disliked port, Bentley, on the other hand, 
 had a contempt for claret, " which," said he, " would be 
 port, if it could!" The latter individual was not like 
 Flood, the Irishman, who used to raise his glass of claret 
 aloft, with a cry, " If this be war, may we never have 
 peace!" 
 
 Comparatively speaking, claret is a very modern wine. 
 Indeed, none of the Boirdeaux wines were fashionable, 
 that is, consumed in large quantities out of the province, 
 before the reign of Louis XV. That Sovereign is said- to 
 have asked Richelieu if Bourdeaux wines were " drink- 
 able." " From father to son the Bourbon race," says 
 Bungener, in his incomparable work, " Trois Sermons sous 
 Louis X/F.," ate and drank with relish; and it was no 
 jest that among the three talents attributed by the old 
 song to Henri IV., (their ancestor,) was numbered that of a 
 "good drinker." " None of them, however, with the ex- 
 ception of the Regent, carried it to excess ; but what was 
 not excess for them, would have been so for many others. 
 Louis XIV., at the summit of his glory, and Louis XVI., 
 surrounded by his jailers, submitted equally to the laws 
 of their imperious appetite." 
 
 When Louis XV. asked Richelieu if Boirdeaux wines 
 were drinkable, the Duke answered him in terms which I 
 
130 TABLE TRAITS. 
 
 may cite, because of their correctness. " Sire," he replied, 
 " they have, what they call, ^ white Sauterne,' which, though 
 far from being so good as that of Monrachet, or that of 
 the little slopes in Burgundy, is still not to be despised. 
 There is also a certain wine from Grave, which smacks 
 of the flint, like an old carbine. It resembles Moselle 
 wine, but keeps better. They have besides, in Medoc and 
 Bazadois, two or three sorts of red wine, of which they 
 boast a great deal. It is nectar fit for the gods, if one is 
 to believe them. Yet it is certainly not comparable to 
 the wine of Upper Burgundy. Its flavour is not bad, 
 however, and it has an indescribable sort of dull, satur- 
 nine acid, which is not disagreeable. Besides, one can 
 drink as much as one will. It puts people to sleep, and 
 that is all!" " It puts people to sleep," said the King: 
 "send for a pipe of it!" This is as just a description of 
 good, healthy Bourdeaux, as was that given by Sheridan, 
 I believe, of Champagne: "It does not enter," he said, 
 " and steal your reason ; it simply makes a run-away 
 knock at a man's head, and there's an end of it !" 
 
 But we are indulging in too much wine at dinner. Let 
 us return to the solids. Of the self-important personages 
 who daily cross our path, perhaps the most important cir- 
 cumstance of their life is, that they have dined every day 
 of it. But it is a necessity. All men must, or should ; 
 and sorrow of the saddest sort is subdued before the 
 anguish of appetite. As Jules Janin says, in his " Gaietes 
 Champetres,''' " Nemorin takes leave of Estelle, and returns 
 home, overcome by hunger. Don Kyrie Eleison de Mon- 
 tauban, after running, all day long, after Mademoiselle 
 Blaisir de-ma-vie, goes and knocks at the door of the 
 neighbouring chateau^ and asks to be invited to supper. 
 Niobe herself, in the ' Iliad,' as afflicted as woman can be, 
 does not forget, when night comes, to take a little refresh- 
 ment." If Seneca derided such doings, it was only after 
 
DINNER TRAITS. 131 
 
 dinner, when appetite failed him. Human nature is made 
 up of sentiment and hunger; and Hood's sentimentalist 
 was not unnatural with his epicurean reminiscences, when 
 he said, — 
 
 " 'T was at Christmas, I think, that I met with Miss Chase, — 
 Yes, for Morris had ask'd me to dine ; 
 And I thought I had never beheld such a face. 
 Or so noble a turkey and chine." 
 
 This conglomeration of feeling and feeding is mixed up 
 with all the acts of most importance in our lives ; and 
 though Bacchus, Cupid, Comus, and Diana be no longer 
 the deities or the heati of the earth, the substantial 
 worship remains ; and, as M. Brillat Savarin asserts, 
 under the most serious of all beliefs, we celebrate by 
 repasts not only births, baptisms, and marriages, but 
 even interments. 
 
 The last-named writer fixes the era of dinners from the 
 time when men, ceasing to live upon fruits, took to flesh ; 
 for then the family necessarily assembled to devour what 
 had been slain and cooked. They know the pleasures of 
 eating, which is the satisfaction of the animal appetite ; 
 but the true, refined pleasures of the table date only from 
 the time when Prometheus fired the soul with heavenly 
 flame, from which sprang intellect, with a host of radiant 
 followers in its train. A good dinner sharpens wit, while 
 it softens the heart. A hungry man is as slow at a joke 
 as he is at a favour. 
 
 Nelson never knew the sensation of "fear," but when 
 he was asked to dine with a Mayor. He had a horror of 
 great dinners generally : and he was right ; for true intel- 
 lectual enjoyment is seldom there. Horace, with his modest 
 repasts and fair wine, was something of the same opinion 
 as Horatio. Where the wine is indifferent, the guests 
 too numerous and ill-assorted, the spirit heavy, the time 
 short, and the repast too eagerly consumed, there is no 
 
 K 2 
 
132 TABLE TBAITS. 
 
 dinner, in the legitimate sense of the word. I never so 
 much admired one of the most hospitable of Amphitryons, 
 my friend M. Watier, as when he once prefaced one of 
 his exquisite dinners by saying, with a solemn smile, 
 " 3fes amis, ne nous pressons pas / " I thought of Talley- 
 rand and his advice to a too willing Secretary : — " Surtout, 
 pas de zelef'' The most accomplished professor of his 
 time has laid down, as rules for securing to their utmost 
 degree the prandial pleasures of table, that the guests do 
 not exceed twelve, so that the conversation be general ; 
 that they be of varied occupations, but analogous tastes ; 
 that the lighting, cheerful cleanliness, and temperature of 
 the dining-room be carefully considered ; that the viands 
 be exquisite rather than numerous, and the wines of first 
 quality, each in its degree ; the progression of the former 
 from the more substantial to the more light; of the 
 latter, from the more brilliant to the more perfumed. It 
 is further enjoined that there be no accelerated move- 
 ment ; all the guests are to consider themselves as fellow- 
 travellers, bound to reach one point at the same time. 
 The rules for the "after-dinner" in the drawing-room are 
 those more commonly observed in this country, with the 
 exception that "punch" expired when lemons ceased to be 
 dear at the Peace ; but the concluding rule is worth 
 noticing : — " That no one withdraw before eleven, and that 
 all be asleep by midnight." 
 
 I have spoken of the aids which the French nobility 
 have given to table enjoyment. To them may be added 
 the innovation introduced by Talleyrand, of offering Par- 
 mesan with soup, and presenting after it a glass of dry 
 Madeira. Talleyrand had one thing in common with St. 
 Peter, — he was hungry at the hour of mid-day, the dinner 
 time of the Jews ; and he would have also come under 
 the anathema in Ecclesiastes which is levelled against 
 the Princes who eat in the morning. 
 
di:n^ner traits. 133 
 
 Plato was rather shocked at those people of Italy who 
 made two substantial meals daily ; and Seneca was satis- 
 fied with one meal, — a dinner of bread and figs. The 
 Eoman Priests of Mars dined jollily and sumptuously in a 
 secret room of the temple, and they would not be dis- 
 turbed. They were like Baillie de Suffren, who, being 
 waited on in India by a deputation, just as he was sitting 
 down to dine, sent out word that his religion would not 
 allow of his interrupting his repast ; and the delegates 
 retired, profoundly struck by the strictness of his con- 
 science. The original dinner hour of the mediaeval ages 
 was, as I have elsewhere stated, ten o'clock, the dixieme 
 heure ; hence the name. It was not till the reign of Louis 
 Xiy. that so late an hour as noon was fixed for the 
 repast. It is clear, however, that we have not so much 
 changed the hours as changed the names of our meals. 
 A French historian shows us how a Dauphin of France 
 dined (at ten o'clock) in the fifteenth century : — 
 
 " As an every-day fare, the Dauphin took for his din- 
 ner rice pottage, with leeks or cabbage, a piece of beef, 
 another of salt pork, a dish of six hens or twelve pullets, 
 divided in two, a piece of roast pork, cheese, and fruit." 
 The supper was nearly as plentiful ; but, on particular 
 days, the bill of fare was varied. It is added, that the 
 Barons of the Court liad always the half of the quantity 
 of the Dauphin ; the Knights, the quarter ; and the Equer- 
 ries and Chaplains, the eighth. " Take pride from Priests, 
 and nothing remains," once remarked an Encyclopaedist 
 to Voltaire. "Umph!" said Yoltaire ; "do you, then, 
 reckon gluttony for nothing ? " Gluttony, at least, does 
 not seem to have characterized the Dauphin's Chaplains, 
 in the fifteenth century, seeing that they took an eighth 
 where a Baron had half. 
 
 But there was a late Prince of Bourbon, who dined 
 after a more singular fashion than that of the Dauphins, 
 
134 TABLE TllAITS. 
 
 his ancestors. I allude to the Prince mentioned hj 
 Maurepas, and whose imagination was so sick, that he 
 fancied himself a hare, and would not allow a bell to be 
 rung, lest it should terrify him into the woods, where he 
 might be shot by his own game-keepers, and afterwards 
 served up at his own table. At another time, he had a 
 fancy that he would look well dished up ; and, dreaming 
 himself a cauliflower, he stuck his feet in the mould of his 
 kitchen-garden, and called upon his people to come and 
 water him ! At length, he pronounced himself dead, and 
 refused to dine at all, as an insult to his spiritual entity. 
 He would have died, had he not been visited by two 
 friends, who introduced themselves as his late father, 
 and the deceased Marechal de Luxembourg ; and who 
 solemnly invited him to descend with them to the shades, 
 and dine with the ghost of Marechal Turenne. The 
 melancholy Prince accepted with alacrity, and went down 
 with them to a cellar already prepared for the banquet of 
 the departed ; and he not only made a hearty meal, but, 
 as long as his fancy made of himself a ghost, he insisted 
 every day on dining with congenial shadows in the coal- 
 cellar ! In spite of this monomaniacal fantasy, he was 
 excessively shrewd in all matters of business, especially 
 where his own interests were concerned. 
 
 Thus much — briefly and imperfectly, I fear — for Dinner 
 Traits. In the next chapter we will put something on 
 them. And as we have been drawing examples from 
 folly, let us end this section by adding a maxim full of 
 wisdom. " Be not made a beggar," says lEcclesiasticus, 
 "by banqueting upon borrowing, when thou hast nothing in 
 thy purse." If this maxim were generally adopted, there 
 might be fewer dinners given, but there would be more 
 dinners paid for. But some people are like the ancient 
 Belgians, who borrowed,, and, indeed, lent, upon promises 
 of repayment in the world to come ! Many a dinner- 
 
DINKEK TEAITS. 135 
 
 giver belongs to the class of the borrowing Belgians of 
 antiquity. After all, there was, perhaps, more intended 
 . honesty in the compact than we can distinguish. A com- 
 pact far less honest was made some years ago by an Irish 
 Baronet, who had given so many dinners for which he 
 had not paid, that he was compelled to pledge his plate 
 in order to raise means to satisfy the most pressing of 
 his creditors. Some time subsequently, he induced the 
 pawnbroker to lend him the plate for one evening, on hire ; 
 the pawnbroker's men were to wait at the dinner in 
 livery, and convey the silver back as soon as the repast 
 was concluded. The dinner was given and enjoyed, and 
 the company made the attendants drunk, helped the 
 Baronet to pack up his forks, spoons, ladles, and epergnes, 
 with which he set off for Paris, where some of them 
 afterwards visited him at the little dinners he used to 
 give in the Rue de Bourbon, and laughed over the matter 
 as a very capital jest. 
 
 I will only add here the record of the fact, that sitting 
 at table to drink, after dinner was over, was introduced 
 by Margaret Atheling, the Saxon Queen of Scotland. 
 She was shocked to see the Scottish gentlemen rise from 
 table before grace could be said by her Chaplain, Turgot ; 
 and she offered a cup of choice wine to all who would 
 remain. Thence the fashion of hard drinking following 
 the "thanksgiving." 
 
THE MATERIALS FOR DINING. 
 
 "All tlesh is oeass;" and grass has been the 
 foundation of all feasts, in a double sense. It was not 
 only a part of the early repast, in some shape or another, 
 by derivation rather than immediately, but it formed the 
 most ancient seats occupied by primitive and pastoral 
 guests in very remote times. Dr. Johnson approved of 
 asparagus being called " grass." Romulus thought grass 
 a sacred emblem, or he would not have suddenly con- 
 verted his twelve lay foster-brothers into a priesthood 
 to look after it. When Baber had defeated the Afghans 
 of Kohat, they approached him in despair, and, accord- 
 ing to their custom when in extremities, with grass 
 between their teeth, to signify, as the imperial autobio- 
 grapher says, " We are your oxen." Baber treated them 
 worse than oxen ; for the amiable savage says, " All that 
 were taken alive were beheaded by my order, and at the 
 next halting-place we erected a minaret of their skulls." 
 And the conqueror dined pleasantly in front of the monu- 
 ment. 
 
 My friend. Captain Lionel da Costa, tells me, that on 
 accompanying {en amateur) a French force on a razzia 
 against an Arab tribe in Algeria, he witnessed the employ- 
 ment of grass as an emblem of defiance rather than of 
 submission. The French officers had assembled the Arab 
 Chiefs, and, telling them that the foreigners had filled up 
 their wells, carried off their cattle, and burned their 
 dwellings, exhorted them to submission, asking them 
 
THE MATEKIALS FOR DINI^^G. 187 
 
 what they would do further agamst a country so powerful 
 as France ? The Arabs, as if impelled simultaneous^, 
 stooped to the earth, plucked some scant blades of grass 
 there growing, and began chewing the same in angry 
 silence : this was all their reply, and by it they intimated 
 tliat they would eat what the earth gave, like the beasts 
 that are upon it, rather than surrender. Their enemies 
 could not refrain from admiring and feeding such adver- 
 saries ; their mute eloquence was worth more than any 
 thing uttered to tyrants by Power's statue of the Greek 
 Slave, which, according to Mrs. Elizabeth Browning, 
 " thunders white silence," — a silence that must have been 
 akin to that in the French Tragedy, " silence qui se fit 
 entendre !^^ 
 
 Soup, as I have remarked, is not a bad preparation for 
 the stomach. Some one calls it the " preface of a dinner," 
 adding, however, that a good work needs no preface. 
 Soup is of very ancient date. Rebecca and Jacob ate of 
 a pottage, in which the meat was cut into small bits 
 hefore the muscular fibres had cooled and become har- 
 dened, and stewed in milk, thickened with meal and herbs. 
 The famous French gastronomist, the Marquis de Cussy, 
 was orthodox in his gastronomy, fed well, but heeded the 
 church. His favourite soup in Lent was an onion soup, 
 composed of a score of small bulbs, well cleaned, sliced, 
 and put into a stew-pan, with a lump of fresh butter and 
 a little sugar. They were turned over the fire till they 
 became of a fine golden colour, when they were moistened 
 with broth, and the necessary quantity of bread added. 
 Before the soup was served, its excellence was perfected 
 by the addition of two small glasses of very old Cognac 
 brandy. This Lent fare was, however, only the preface 
 to salmon and asparagus, with which the orthodox epicure 
 mortified his appetite. 
 
 The famous Careme did with the soups he discovered, 
 
138 TABLE TBAITS. 
 
 what the most famous navigators have done with the 
 new territories on whieh they were the first to land ; 
 namely, give them the names of the most illustrious eon- 
 temporaries then existing. Royalty was honoured in the 
 ^' I^otage Conde ;"" music in that of "Boieldieu;" and 
 the medieal f;\eultv, whieh Carcme generally despised, 
 in the "" Soupcs a la Broussais, Boqucs, and Segalas ;^' 
 poetry was illustrated in the " Lamartinc ; " history in the 
 ^' Dumesnil ;'' and philosophy in the '^ Pofagc Biiflon'' 
 The last name he thus bestowed, was to his last culinary 
 inspiration just before death, when he conferred on a 
 vegetable soup the name of " Victor Hugo." It was after 
 reading the " Messmiennes,^^ that he created the '' Mate- 
 lotte a la Dclavigne ;'' and he paid the doctor who had 
 cured him of an indio-estion, by inventins: the dish of hsli 
 which he called '' Berclic a la Gauhcrt.'' And with this 
 record we will put the fish on our own table. 
 
 " It is only the Ai-abs of the desert that affect to despise 
 fish." This eastern proverb is tantamomit to the more 
 homely one of, " The grapes are sour ;" for the Arabs only 
 affect to despise that which they cannot readily obtain. 
 The Jews were prohibited from eating fishes without 
 scales or fins. The Egyptian Priests cared not for fish 
 of any sort, but they generally allowed the people to eat 
 with what appetite they chose, of what the priesthood 
 declined to taste. It is said in the legend, that St. Kevin 
 lived by the fish he caught in the Lake of Glendaloch ; 
 and that when the celebrated beauty tempted him, she 
 did it by flattery and suggestion : — 
 
 " ' You 're a rare hand at fishing/ says Kate, 
 
 * It 's yourself, dear, that knows how to hook them ; 
 But, when you have caught them, agrah ! 
 
 Dou't you want a young woman to cook them ? ' " 
 
 Gatis, Queen of Spain, was something like Mr. Lover's 
 "Kate;" for, if her subjects caught fish weU, she it was 
 
THE MATERIALS EOE DTXIXG. 139 
 
 who first taught them how to cook what they caught, 
 and how to enjov what they cooked. 
 
 When philosophers were occupied with inquiries touch- 
 ing the soul of an oyster, fish was probahly not a popular 
 diet. It certainly was not so in Greece, until a com- 
 paratively late period. Then fish became fashionable : the 
 legislature secured their freshness by decreeing that no 
 seller should sit down until he had sold his entire stock ; 
 sages discussed their qualities, and tragic writers intro- 
 duced heroes holding dialogues on the qualities of fish- 
 sauce. There was a G-reek society at that day " against 
 cruelty to fish," by devouring what also, allegedly, made 
 the devourer ferocious and inhuman ; but general society 
 did not allow its appetite to be influenced thereby. 
 
 The Romans were enthusiastic for the mullet. It was 
 for them the fish, par excellence. It was sometimes served 
 up six pounds in weight, and such a fish was worth £60 
 sterling. It was cooked on the table, for the benefit and 
 pleasure of the guests. In a glass vessel filled with brine 
 made from water, the blood of the mackerel, and salt, 
 the live mullet, stripped of its scales, was enclosed ; and 
 as its fine pink colour passed through its dying grada- 
 tions, until paleness and death ensued, the convives looked 
 on admiringly, and lauded the spectacle. 
 
 The turbot was next in estimation ; but as, occasionally, 
 ofiending slaves were flung into the turbot preserves for 
 the fish to feed upon, some gastronomists have affected to 
 be horror-stricken at the idea of eating a turbot a la 
 Bomaine ; quite forgetting that so many of our sea-fish, 
 in their own domain, feed largely on the human bodies 
 which accident, or what men call by that name, casts 
 into the deep. Our own early ancestors in Britain were 
 said to have entirely abstained fi-om fish. In later days, 
 however, here as in France, the finny tribes were pro- 
 tected by royal decrees ; and certain fish were named — the 
 
140 TABLE TEATTS. 
 
 sturgeon was one — as to be caught for the royal table 
 alone. In the same days porpoises and seals were devoured 
 by the commonalty, and the latter knew not the art of 
 the cooks of Louis XIV., who could so dress fish as to 
 give it the taste of any flesh they pleased to fix on as an 
 object of imitation. By this means, the King in Lent, 
 while he obeyed the church, enjoyed the gratification of 
 feeling as though he were cheating Heaven, — and with 
 impunity, too ! 
 
 The most curious fish of which I have ever read, were 
 those of a lake attached to a Burgundian convent, and 
 which were always of the same number as the monks. 
 If one of these sickened and died, the same circumstance 
 occurred with the fish ; and if a new brother appeared in 
 the refectory, there was also sure to be found a new 
 denizen in the pond. These fish were, of course, piously 
 inclmed ; but they did not come up, in that respect, to the 
 parrot of Cardinal Ascanius, which could not only repeat 
 the Creed, but could maintain a thesis ! I believe that the 
 Burgundian fish were principally perch ; and they are 
 an eccentric fish. Arthur Young says, that " about the 
 year 1760, perch first appeared in all the lakes of Ireland 
 and in the Shannon at the same time." 
 
 As a singularity with respect to the cooking of fish, I 
 may mention that observed by the Romans with the 
 sej^ia^ or " cuttle-fish." They invariably took out the eyes 
 before boiling it. It is in allusion to this custom that 
 Trachalion says, in the Budens, — 
 
 ^^ Age iiuncjaniy 
 Jube oculos elideret itidem ut sejiiis faciunt coqui'^ 
 
 I think I have read somewhere, that the cuttle-fish 
 was esteemed a fitting sacrifice to the gods ; but I do not 
 know if pious people had their pet se^ice, as they had 
 their pet lambs and pigs, (" &ant domi agni et ;porci 
 
THE MATEETALS EOR DINIXG. 141 
 
 says the orthodox husband in the Rudens^^ 
 reared for the purpose of being offered at the altars. 
 
 The sturgeon is at this day, in China, reserved for the 
 imperial table. At those of Greece it was introduced by 
 sound of trumpet, and it was almost as esteemed a subject 
 at those of Home, until Vespasian condescended not to 
 care for it, and to bring other fish into fashion. " It is 
 caviare to the general," is a proverb which Shakspeare 
 has popularized. The caviare is the roe of the sturgeon 
 dried; that of the larger sturgeon, which produces hundred- 
 weights of eggs, and tons of oil, is cavia^^e for the general, 
 and is not worth eating. The delicate white caviare is the 
 produce of the smaller sturgeon, and it is highly esteemed 
 by gastronomists. It forms a great portion of the food 
 taken by the Greeks during their long Lent. 
 
 We have heard of an American who tried to tame an 
 oyster. The Romans were more successful with their 
 sea-eels, which would come when called, and feed from 
 the hands of men, who occasionally fattened them upon 
 live slaves. Vedius Pollio would have grown sick and 
 disgusted, if he had been asked to eat one of these slaves ; 
 but he was particularly fond of the fish that had been fed 
 upon such fare ; and so he only ate his slaves at second- 
 hand ; for tJieir flesh was declared by him to have greatly 
 improved the taste of the eel. Epicures with less fero- 
 cious appetites preferred the fish that had been fattened 
 upon veal steeped in blood. Vitellius put the fish alto- 
 gether out of fashion by only eating the roes, which were 
 procured for him at a great expense ; and Heliogabalus 
 caused even the roes to cease to be modish, by forcing 
 them upon the Mediterranean peasants, who got as sick 
 of their repasts as English servants in the Scottish High- 
 lands grow weary of the everlasting sameness of their 
 dinners consisting of venison and salmon. The Egyp- 
 tians placed the sea-eel in their Pantheon ; and even the 
 
142 TABLE TRAITS. 
 
 unorthodox cannot deny that he was as good a deity as 
 any to be found there ; and we are told that among the 
 Sybarites, the lishers and vendors of the eel were exempt 
 from taxation ! The origin of these honours is, however, 
 unknown. Nearly as great were offered, even in Rome, to 
 the fish known as the sea-wolf, which abovmded in the most 
 filthy parts of the Tiber, and which some epiciu'es distin- 
 guished by the appellation of " child of the gods." Tlie 
 Bomans paid high prices for it, as they did for the regi- 
 cide lamprey, — a fish which killed our first Henry, and 
 which Italian cooks used to kill, as the nuuxlerers did 
 maudlin Clarence, in his Malmsey butt, by phmging the 
 victim, decked for the sacrifice with a nutmeg in his 
 mouth, and a clove in either gill, into a pan of Candian 
 wine ; after which, covered with almonds, bread crumbs, 
 and spices, he was exposed to a slow lire, and then to the 
 jaws that impatiently awaited him. It was once as 
 popular as the tunn}^ — a fish, by the way, which once so 
 enriched the cit}^ of Sin ope, that the coin minted there 
 bore the figm-e of the fish. Where they are found at all, 
 it is generally in shoals ; but these are never to the 
 extent which Pliny speaks of, when he says that they so 
 obstructed the fleet of Alexander, that the pilots of the 
 Macedonian madman were compelled to shape a different 
 com-se ; and though they are to be found in something 
 like abundance in the Mediterranean, yet tourists who 
 resort thither must not expect to see realized the gay 
 picture of Yernet. It does not appear, however, that the 
 tunny was ever in such favour at ancient tables as the 
 eel, which was greedily eaten where it was not devoutly 
 worshipped, or where medical ordinances had not been 
 directed against it, as unfavourable to the weak of di- 
 gestion, and perilous to those affected by pulmonary 
 diseases. The pike, emblem of fecundity and example of 
 lengthened years, was still less popular. The carp, which 
 
THE MATERIALS EOR DINING, 143 
 
 even surpasses the pike in fecundity, and is a long liver 
 to boot, was, on the other hand, an especial favourite, but 
 it was served up with sauces that would certainly not 
 tempt a modern gastronomist to eat a fish which is 
 seldom worth eating, and which is almost defiant of diges- 
 tion. Carp, reduced to a pulp, and served up with sows' 
 paps, and yolk of egg, must have been as nasty as gold 
 fish with carrots and myrtle leaves, — the delight of the 
 Koman loungers at theii* " Blackwall," on the Tiber. So 
 the Greeks spoiled good cod by eating it with grated 
 cheese and vinegar ; and the Romans made perch more 
 indigestible than it was before, by swallowing Damascus 
 plums with it. But the ancients had strangely accom- 
 modating stomachs : a sauce of honey, could induce them 
 to eat cuttle-fish. G-arlic and cheese made the sword- 
 fish delicacies ; the rhombus floated into G-reek stomachs 
 on a sauce of wine and brine ; the ladies of Eome ate 
 onions with the muzil, and pine-nuts with the pilchard. 
 The more refined Greeks, on the other hand, would not 
 touch the pilchard ; and the same difference of taste existed 
 with regard to the loach ; while, again, both Kome and 
 Greece united in admiration of the gudgeon. To neither 
 of these countries was the herring known. The Scots 
 found the fish, and the Dutch bought, pickled, and sold, 
 or ate them ; and it is said that Charles Y., in 1536, ate a 
 herring upon the tomb of Beuckels, the first salter of that 
 fish, and therewith friend of the poor, and enricher of the 
 State. The profit realized by Holland exceeded two mil- 
 lions and a half sterling, annually. But neither Greece 
 nor Eome felt the want of the herring while there was an 
 abundant supply of the favourite oyster. This shell-fish 
 was easily procured by the Greeks from Pelorus, Abydos, 
 and Polarea ; by the Bomans, from Brindes, the Lake of 
 Lucrinus, Armorica, and even from Britain. The Eomans 
 w^ere hardly worthy of the delicacy, seeing that they 
 
144 TABLE TRAITS. 
 
 abused it by mincing oysters, muscles, and sea hedge- 
 hogs together, stewed the whole with pine-almonds and 
 hot condiments, and devoured the mixture scalding ! 
 Others, however, ate them raw, when they were opened 
 at table by a slave ; and the larger the fish, the more the 
 Roman epicures liked them. They were not only eaten 
 before a feast to stimulate the appetite, but dm-ing a 
 banquet, when the appetite began to be palled. They 
 excited to fresh exertion, and it was a cleaner custom 
 (perhaps) than that imperial one of exonerating the 
 stomach by tickling the throat with a peacock's feather. 
 The Bourdeaux oyster was the favourite fish of most of the 
 Emperors. It is very inferior to the Whitstable oyster, 
 however, and also . to that which goes by the name of 
 " Colchester," and which is not caught there. The pas- 
 sion for the savoury fish is well illustrated in the epitaph 
 which says, — 
 
 " Tom 
 
 Lies buried in these cloisters ; 
 If, at the last trump, 
 He does not quickly jump. 
 Only cry ' Oysters ! ' " 
 
 If the Emperors affected oysters, the gods themselves 
 patronized mussels, a dish of which was contributed by 
 Jupiter to the wedding banquet of Hebe. The mytholo- 
 gical sanction has, however, failed to render the mussel 
 popular, and for good reasons. It is often extremely 
 poisonous, and in certain conditions of the stomach they 
 who eat muscles may reckon upon being attacked by 
 violent cutaneous disorders, painfully participated in by 
 the oppressed intestines. 
 
 It was otherwise with the tortoise, the blood of which 
 was reckoned good in cases of ophthalmia, and the flesh of 
 which was eagerly devoured. The natural history of the 
 products of those early times seems to have been written 
 
THE MATEEIALS EOE DU^IKG. 145 
 
 by philosophers with very poetical imaginations. We 
 read of shells of tortoises being converted into roofs of 
 cottages, as we are told by Pliny of crawfish measuring 
 four cubits in length. It was then that men ate lobsters 
 au naturel, and crabs converted into sausages. But this 
 latter dish was a more dainty one than that afforded by 
 the frog, — the abhorrence of early gastronomists, but the 
 delight of many French and German epicures, who first 
 find delight in angling for these unclean beasts with a 
 bait of yellow soap, and then swallowing, with delight 
 more intense, the hind-quarters of the animal they have 
 caught. But if the moderns swallow frogs, the ancients 
 ate the polypus, — and which were the nastiest even I could 
 not tell ! The Romans were especially fond of fish ; and 
 some " fast" epicures among them not only had preserve 
 ponds of fish on the roofs of their houses, but little rivu- 
 lets stocked therewith around the dinner-table, whence 
 the guests selected their fish, and delivered them to be 
 cooked. 
 
 It was once thought that the prawn, or shrimp, was 
 somehow necessary to the production of soles, acting, 
 it was believed, as a sort of nurse, or foster-parent, to the 
 spawn. But this I suppose to be about as true as that 
 soles always swim in pairs, with .three-pennyworth of 
 shrimps behind them, ready for sauce. 
 
 I remember two anecdotes connected with fish at table, 
 which a guest may retail when he is next at that period 
 of the repast. Talleyrand was dining, in the year 1805, 
 with the Minister of Finance, who did the honours of his 
 house in the very best style. A very fine carp was on 
 the table opposite to Talleyrand, but the fish was already 
 cold. " That is a magnificent carp," said the financier; 
 " how do you like it ? It came from my estate of Yir-sur- 
 Aisne." " Did it ?" said Talleyrand, " but why did you 
 not have it cooked here?^^ This reply was not as fatal to 
 
 L 
 
146 TABLE TEAITS. 
 
 the utterer of it, as a remark once made by Poodle Byng 
 at Belvoir Castle. "Ah, ah!" he exclaimed, as he saw 
 the fish uncovered at the Duke of Eutland's board, " my 
 old friend Haddock ! I have not seen a haddock, at a 
 gentleman's table, since I was a boy." The implication 
 shut the gates of Belvoir on the unlucky Poodle from 
 that day forward. He was never again the Duke's 
 guest. 
 
 Some French writers have asserted, after tracing the 
 " vestiges of creation" according to a fashion of their own, 
 that man originally sprang from the ocean ; and that his 
 present condition is one of development, the consequence of 
 life ashore, and exposure to atmospheric air ! According 
 to this theory, I suppose, Yenus Anadyomene was the Eve 
 of our fishy generation, and mermaids show the transition 
 state, when our ancestors were of both land and sea, and 
 yet properly of neither ! 
 
 As judges of fish, the moderns are inferior to the 
 ancients. A Greek or Roman epicure could, at first 
 sight, tell in what waters the fish before him had been 
 caught. This sort of wisdom is, however, not uncommon 
 to oyster-eaters, who swallow so greedily what contains 
 little nourishment, but what may be easily digested. It 
 was not unusual, some years ago, in France, for a gour- 
 mand to prepare for dinner by swallowing a gross, or a 
 dozen dozen, of oysters ! Twelve of them, including the 
 liquor, will weigh four ounces ; and the gross, four pounds 
 (Troy) ! — a pretty amount of ballast whereupon to take in 
 freight. The skin of such a feeder had need be in a good 
 condition ; but so, indeed, ought that of every one who 
 cares for his digestion. When we remember that a person 
 in health, who takes eight pounds of aliment during 
 twenty-four hours of his wakefulness, discharges five of 
 the eight pounds solely through the pores by perspiration, 
 it will at once be seen that to hold the skin clean, and 
 
THE MATEEIALS TOB DINING. 147 
 
 keep the pores unobstructed, is of first-rate necessity for 
 the sake of digestion and comfort. 
 
 There are sea-board populations who live almost exclu- 
 sively on fish. They feed their domestic animals upon it, 
 and with it manure their ground ; so that the pork they 
 may occasionally indulge in, acquires a fish-like flavour, 
 and their bread is but a consequence of the plentiful rot- 
 tenness of sprats. Such populations are usually lean and 
 sallow, but they are strong-muscled and active-limbed ; 
 and altogether they afford good testimony in favour of 
 the efficacy of a fish diet, when no better is to be had. 
 As a diet, fish is only so far stimulating that it aug- 
 ments the lymph rather than renews the blood. It is a 
 puzzle to many gastronomic philosophers that fish was 
 so constant a diet of the monkish orders. Its heating 
 quality hardly suited men who were required to be ever 
 coolly contemplative. But this matter I leave to the 
 philosophers to determine. One of them, — that is, a gas- 
 tronomic philosopher, — M. Fayot, says, that " if you would 
 have a dinner composed altogether of fish, the meal 
 should consist of " a turbot, a large salmon done in a 
 court 'hoidllon, flanked v/ith aromatic herbs, and coverd 
 with a fresh winding-sheet of delicate seasoning. In such 
 dinners, sea-fish have, undoubtedly, the first rank ; and 
 among them the Cherbourg lobster, the shrimp of Hon- 
 fleur, the cray-fish of the Seine, and the smelts of that 
 river's mouth, and numerous fresh- water fish mingle 
 agreeably. Salmon and turbot should be done briskly ; 
 drink afterwards a glass of those old wines which give a 
 digestive action to the stomach." With M. Fayot, 
 the turbot is " the king of fish, especially in Lent, as it is 
 then of most majestic size. You may serve up salmon 
 with as much ornament as you will, but a turbot asks for 
 nothing but aristocratic simplicity. On the day after he 
 makes his first appearance, it is quite another affair. It 
 
 L 2 
 
148 TABLE TEAITS. 
 
 may be tlien disguised ; and the best manner of effecting 
 this is, to dress him a la BecJiamel^ — a preparation thus 
 called from the Marquis de Bechamel, who, in the reign 
 of Louis Xiy ., for ever immortalized himself by this one 
 ragout.''^ 
 
 The Almanach des Gourmands speaks of a Lorraine carp 
 which was fed on bread and wine, and which was twice 
 sent to the Paris market, in the care of a courier who 
 travelled by the mail. It returned to its native waters in 
 default of a purchaser willing to give thirty louis-d^ors 
 for the monstrous delicacy. This was when fish dinners 
 were much in vogue in Paris. There was then a table- 
 d'^Jiote for a fish repast only, held at a house profanely called, 
 " The Name of Jesus." This house stood in the " Cloitre 
 St. Jacques de I'lTopital," and every Wednesday and 
 Friday it was crowded by the Clergy, who dined mag- 
 nificently on maigre fare, for about 2^. a head. It is of 
 one of these that Fayot recounts a pleasant story, the 
 locality, however, of which was the Rocher de Cancale. 
 A certain Abbe dined there so copiously oft* salmon, that a 
 fit of indigestion was the consequence. Some days after- 
 wards, when celebrating Mass, the savoury memories of 
 the fish flocked into his mind ; and he was heard to 
 murmur, not the med culpa of the " GonjiteoT^' but, as 
 he quietly beat his breast, " Ah ! that capital salmon ! 
 that capital salmon !" 
 
 Of the more nutritive species of fish, turbot, cod, 
 whiting, haddock, flounder, and sole, are the least heat- 
 ing. Of these, the cod is the least easy of digestion, 
 though turbot is quite as difficult of digestion when 
 much lobster sauce is taken with it. The crimping of 
 cod facilitates the digesting of the fish. Sole and whiting 
 are easily digested. Salmon is nutritive, but it is oily, 
 heating, and not very digestible ; far less so than salmon 
 trout. The favourite parts of most of these fish 
 
THE HATEEIALS TOE DIKINa. 149 
 
 are the least fit for weak stomachs, and the most trying 
 to strong ones. Salmon, caught after the spawning season 
 has commenced, is almost poisonous ; and eels are objec- 
 tionable at all seasons, from their excessive oiliness. Shell- 
 fish generally may he put down as "indigestible," parti- 
 cularly the under-boiled lobsters of the London market. 
 The mussel is especially so; and these are not rendered 
 innocuous by the rem-oval of the beard, which is not 
 more hurtful than any other part. Shell-fish, and, indeed, 
 fish generally, affects the skin, by sympathy with the 
 stomach. The effect is, sometimes, as if a poison had been 
 generated : at others it very sensibly affects the odour of 
 the cutaneous secretions. This effect was thoroughly 
 imderstood when the Levitical Priests, like those of Egypt, 
 were prohibited from eating fish. The prohibition was 
 based upon a just principle. 
 
 The Egyptian and Levitical Priests were more obedient to 
 such prohibitions than St. Patrick, who once, overcome by 
 hunger, helped himself to pork chops on a fast-day. An 
 angel met him with the forbidden cutlets in his hand ; but 
 the saint popped them into a pail of water, pattered an 
 Ave-Mary over them, and our indulgent Lad}^ heeded the 
 appeal by turning them into a couple of respectable and 
 orthodox-looking trout. The angel looked perplexed, and 
 went away, with his index finger on the side of his nose. 
 And see what came of it ! In Ireland, meat dipped into 
 water, and christened by the name of "St. Patrick's 
 Pish," is commonly eaten there even on fast-days, and 
 to the great regret of all those who eat greedily enough 
 to acquire an indigestion. 
 
 St. Patrick's fish ought to have fetched as high a price 
 as the four cod which formed the sole supply in Billings- 
 gate-market on one of the great frost-days in January, 
 1809 ; they were sold to one dealer for fourteen guineas. 
 During the same month, salmon was sold at a guinea a 
 
150 TABLE TEAITS. 
 
 pound ! When fish is so high-priced, it is time to have 
 done with it. So, enlevez ! and let us to the succeeding 
 courses of viands more substantial. While the fish is 
 being removed, I will merely relate that it was the prac- 
 tice of Sir Joshua Eeynolds, who gave plentiful dinners 
 to admirable men, in his house in Leicester-square, always 
 to choose his own fish, of which he was a capital judge. 
 He was, on those occasions, ever the first visitor to 
 the fish-shop still existing, in its primitive simplicity, in 
 Coventry -street. He selected the best ; and later in the 
 day, his niece. Miss Palmer, used to call, dispute the 
 price, and pay for the fish. Sir Joshua's table is said to 
 have been too crowded, both as to guests and dishes, 
 while there was scant attendance, and a difficulty of 
 getting served; but the hilarity compensated for all. 
 The guests enjoyed themselves with a vulgar delight that 
 would have very much ruffled the dignity of such a pom- 
 pous president at repasts as the bewigged, bepatched, and 
 bepowdered Sir Peter Lely. 
 
 With the introduction of animal food is dated the 
 era of professional cooks ; and that era itself is set dow^n 
 by M. Soyer, a competent authority, as having com- 
 menced in the year of the world 1656. Other authorities 
 give 2412 as the proper date, when Prometheus, or Fore- 
 thought, as his name implies, taught men the use of fire, 
 and cooked an ox. But I think that both dates and 
 mythology are somewhat loose here, and that the period 
 is easier of conjecture than of determination. Ceres 
 killed the pig that devoured her corn, Bacchus the goat 
 that nibbled at the tendrils of the vine, and Jupiter the 
 ox that swallowed his sacred cakes ; and the animals 
 slain by deities were roasted and eaten by men. Another 
 tradition is, that roast meat originally smoked only on 
 the altars of the gods, and that the Priests lived on the 
 pretended sacrifices, until some lean and greedy heretic, 
 
THE MATEEIALS FOB DINING. 151 
 
 having wickedly pilfered the sacred viands, so improved 
 under the diet, that his example was promptly followed, 
 and men took to animal food, in spite of the thunder of 
 gods and the anathemas of Priests. I need not say where 
 there is better authority than all these pretty tales for 
 man's subduing to his use and service the beasts of the 
 earth, the birds of the air, and the fishes of the sea. 
 
 A rearer of cattle was, in the olden time, an aristocrat 
 in his way. The gods looked after his herds, and the 
 law gave its protection where Olympian divinity so often 
 proved worthless. Bubona sat the watchful goddess of 
 their fattening ; and it was she who blessed the cabbages 
 steeped in vinegar, the straw and wheat-bran, and the 
 bruised barley, wherewith the oxen were prepared for the 
 cattle- show or the market. In the latter, the office of 
 the Eoman Prefect fixed the selling price : the breeder 
 could neither ask more nor take less than according to 
 the official tariff. There was a singular custom at one 
 time in Eome, which proves, however, that the seller had 
 a voice in declaring the value of his stock. Purchaser 
 and vendor simultaneously closed, and then suddenly 
 opened, one of their hands, or some of the fingers. If 
 the number of fingers on both sides was even, the vendor 
 obtained the price which he had previously asked for his 
 meat ; but if the number was uneven, the buyer received 
 the viands for the sum he had just before tendered. This 
 was as singular a custom as, and a more honest one 
 than, that adopted by the first Dutch settlers in America. 
 In their trading with the Indians a Dutchman's fist was 
 established as the standard of weight, with this under- 
 standing, that when a Dutchman was selling to an Indian 
 his fist weighed a pound, but that it should only be half 
 that weight when the Hollander was a purchaser ! 
 
 The Koman markets were well supplied, and the pig seems 
 to have been the national favourite. The Emperors used 
 
152 TABLE TEAITS. 
 
 to distribute thousands of pounds of pork to the poor, 
 as on festive occasions we, less magnificently, divide 
 among the needy our time-honoured English roast beef. 
 There was even an edict against making sausages of any 
 thing hut pork, — an edict which is much needed in some 
 of our suburbs, where "pork sausages" are made of any 
 thing but pig ; — and, after all, they could not be made of 
 a dirtier animal. But the grave Romans strangely reve- 
 renced this unclean beast. Pliny places him only one 
 degree below humanity; and certainly the porcine and 
 human stomachs are very much alike ! In the East, our 
 ancient friend was a Pariah, and his position among the 
 unclean was fixed by a Jewish doctor, who said, that if 
 ten measures of leprosy were flung into the world, nine 
 of them would naturally fall to the execrated pig. There 
 is no doubt that the eating of the flesh of the pig in hot 
 climates would bring on diseases in the human system 
 akin to leprosy ; and this fact may have tended to establish 
 the unpopularity of the animal throughout the East, and 
 to account also for the prohibition. Galen, however, pre- 
 scribed it as good food for people who worked hard ; and 
 there are modern practitioners who maintain that it is 
 the most easily digested of all meats. It is certainly 
 more easy of digestion than that respectable impostor, 
 the boiled chicken, which used so cruelly to test, and 
 defy, the feeble powers of invalids. 
 
 Pigs were fatted, both in Greece and Rome, until they 
 had attained nearly the bulk of the elephant. These 
 fetched prices of the most " fancy" description ; and they 
 were served up whole, with an entire Noah's-ark collec- 
 tion of smaller animals inside, by way of stuffing. A 
 clever cook could so dress this meat as to make it have 
 the flavour of any other viand ; and the first cuHnary 
 artistes of the day prided themselves on the preparation 
 of a ragout composed of young pigs stifled before they 
 
THE MATEEIALS FOE DI:N^ING. 153 
 
 were littered. The mother would have had no difficulty 
 in performing this feat herself for her own young, if sows 
 .generally had heen as huge as the one mentioned by 
 Varro, and which he says was so fat as to be incapable of 
 movement, and to be unconscious that a mouse, with a 
 young family, had settled in the folds of her fat, where 
 they lived like mites in cheese. 
 
 In another page, I have spoken of what were called " the 
 sacred pigs and lambs." Mensechmus, in Plautus, asks 
 the price of the '^ porci sacres, sinceriy ^' Sacres^^ was 
 applied to all animals intended for immolation. The 
 sincei'i porci were the white and spotless pigs offered to 
 the Lares on behalf of the insane. The merchant who 
 gives instruction, in the I^seudolus, to his servant, as to 
 the splendid repast that is to be served up on his birthday, 
 is very particular on the subject of pork ; and he shows 
 us v/hat parts formed a dish that might tempt princes, — 
 the ham, and the head : " I^ernam, callum, glandium, 
 sumsn, facito in agudjaceant.'*^ 
 
 If men were not, anciently, fonder of beef than of pork, 
 the reason, perhaps, was, that the ox was religiously 
 reverenced, because of his use to man, whereas the pig 
 was really of no value at all but for consumption. The 
 excellence of the ox as food was, nevertheless, very early 
 ascertained, and acted on by some primitive people. 
 The Jews were permitted to eat of that of which Abra- 
 ham had offered a portion to angels ; and calf and ox 
 were alike an enjoined food. The Greeks, too, devoured 
 both with much complacency, as they also did tripe, 
 which was deemed a dainty fit for heroes. Indeed, for 
 tripe there was an ancient and long-standing propensity 
 among the early nations. It formed the chief dish at 
 the banquets of men who met to celebrate the victory of 
 mortals and gods over the sacrilegious Titans. 
 
 The lamb and the kid have smoked upon divine altars 
 
154 TABLE TRAITS. 
 
 and humble tables. The Greeks were especially fond of 
 both, and the Romans were like them in this respect ; 
 but the Egyptians religiously abstained from the kid; 
 and more than one Eastern nation held, as of faith, that 
 the lamb was more fitting as an offering to the gods than 
 as a dish for men. On the other hand, there were people 
 who preferred the flesh of the ass, which was not an 
 uncommon dish at Roman tables, where dogs, too, were 
 served as a dainty ; for Hippocrates had recommended 
 them as a refined food; and the Greeks swallowed the 
 diet thus authoritatively described. The Romans, how- 
 ever, are said to have eaten the dog out of vengeance. 
 The curs of the Capitol were sleeping, when the sacred 
 and watchful geese "saved it by their cackling ; and 
 thence arose, it is believed, the avenging appetite with 
 which puppies, dressed like hares, were tossed into the 
 stomachs of the unforgiving Romans. They were also 
 sacrificed to the Dog-star. 
 
 It is worthy of remark, that Mexico was partly con- 
 quered by aid of the pig. Cortez was in need of supplies 
 of fresh meat on his march, and he took with him a large 
 herd of swine, — sows as well as pigs, — "these animals 
 being very suitable for a long journey, on accoimt of 
 their endurance of fatigue, and because they multiply 
 greatly." The Indians, on most occasions, however, 
 appear to have been able to have supplied him plenti- 
 fully : for we read, that at Campeche, for instance, in 
 return for his presents, they placed before him partridges, 
 turtle-doves, goslings, cocks, hares, stags, and other ani- 
 mals which were good to eat, and bread made from Indian 
 corn, and fruits. It was, for all the world, like meeting 
 a burglar at your dining-room door, and asking him to 
 stay and take breakfast, before he went off with the 
 plate ! 
 
 When the uncle of Job entertained his heavenly 
 
THE MATEKIALS FOE DINIl^G. 155 
 
 visitors, the dish he placed before them was "roasted 
 veal," of a freshly killed calf. It was tender, because the 
 muscular fibres had not had time to become stiff; and 
 its pleasant accompaniments were melted butter, milk, 
 and meal-cakes. Veal is the national dish of Germany, 
 where mutton is scarce, and calves abundant. It is poor 
 food at any time ; but the German veal is the most taste- 
 less of meats. There, indeed, is applicable the smart say- 
 ing of that ardent young experimentalist, who declared 
 that eating veal was as insipid an enjoyment as kissing 
 one's sister! Cardinal Zinzendorf used to denounce pork 
 quite as strongly. He deemed pigs to have been of no 
 use but for their blood, of which he himself used to make 
 a bath for his legs, whenever he had the gout. Quixote 
 Bowles, on the other hand, held pig, in any form, to be 
 the divinest of meats, and the animal the happiest of all 
 created things. With true Apician fervour, he would 
 travel any distance to feast on the sight of a fatted 
 porker ; and a view of that prize pig of Prince Albert's, 
 which was so uniformly huge that, at first sight, it was 
 difiicult to distinguish the head from the tail, would have 
 made him swoon with gentle ecstasy. Bowles was an 
 epicure in bacon ; and, whenever he went out to dinner, 
 he took a piece of it, of his own curing, in his pocket, and 
 requested the cook to dress it. The people of fi*? 
 Society Islands carry respect for ^pigs even beyond the 
 compass of Bowles. They believe that there is a distinct 
 heaven for the porcine souls ; and this paradise of pigs 
 is called by them " Ofatuna." The Polynesian pig is 
 certainly a more highly favoured animal than his cousin 
 in Ireland ; for, in a Polynesian farm household, every 
 pig has his proper name, as regularly as every member of 
 the family. Perhaps, the strangest cross of pigs ever 
 heard of, was that- of Mr. Tinney's famous breed for 
 porkers, — Chinese, crossed by a half- African boar: the 
 
156 TABLE TEAITS. 
 
 meat was said to be delicious. Finally, with respect to 
 pigs, they are connected with a popular expletive, with 
 which they have, in reality, nothing to do. " Please the 
 pigs!" is shown, I think by Southey in his " Espriella," 
 to be a corruption of "Please the pyx!" The pyx is 
 the receptacle which contains the consecrated wafer on 
 Eomish altars ; and the exclamation is equal to " Please 
 God!" The corruption is as curious a one as that of 
 "tawdry," from " 't Audrey," or St. Audrey's fair, 
 famous for the sale of frippery, — showy, cheap, and 
 worthless. 
 
 They who are half as particular about mutton as 
 Quixote Bowles was about pork, would do well to remem- 
 ber, that sheep continue improving as long as their teeth 
 remain sound, which is usually six years ; and that, at all 
 events up to this time, the older the mutton, the finer 
 the flavour. A spayed ewe, kept five years before she is 
 fattened, is superior to any wether mutton. Dr. Paris, 
 however, states that wedder mutton is in perfection at 
 five years old, and ewe mutton at two years old ; but he 
 acknowledges that the older is the more digestible. It 
 is the glory of one locality, famous for its sheep, that the 
 rot was never known to be caught upon the South Downs. 
 It is further said, that a marsh, occasionally overflowed 
 with salt water, was never known to rot sheep. A curi- 
 ous fact is stated by Young, in his "Survey of Sussex;" 
 namely, that Lord Egremont had, in his park, three large 
 flocks of the Hereford, South-Down, and Dishley breeds ; 
 and that these three flocks kept themselves perfectly dis- 
 tinct, although each had as much opportunity of mixing 
 with the others as they had with themselves. 
 
 I have alluded, in another page, to a circumstance first 
 noticed, I believe, by Madame Dacier, — that there is no 
 mention of boiled meat, as food, throughout Homer's 
 Iliad. The fair commentator is right; but "boiling" is, 
 
THE MATEBIALS FOE DINIWa. 157 
 
 nevertheless, used loj the poet as a simile. When (in 
 the twenty-first book) Neptune applies his flames to 
 cheek the swelling fury of Scamander, — 
 
 " The bubbling waters yield a bissing sound. 
 As when the flames beneath a caldron rise. 
 To melt the fat of some rich sacrifice. 
 Amid the fierce embrace of circling fires 
 The waters foam, the heavy smoke aspires : 
 So boils th' imprison'd flood, forbid to flow. 
 And, choked with vapours, feels his bottom glow ! " 
 
 This is not a very elegant version of the original, it 
 must be confessed, albeit the translation is Pope's. It 
 is, however, the only reference to boiling to be found in 
 Homer, and here the fat of the sacrifice boiled down is 
 that of a pig. 
 
 ^ KvicTdT) KeXdoiJiefos airaXorp^^ios (XLciXoiO' 
 
 I do not know that I can take leave of mutton and the 
 meats by doing them greater honour than by mentioning 
 that Napoleon ate hastily of mutton before he entered on 
 the contest at Leipsic, and he lost the triumph of the 
 bloody day through a fit of indigestion. 
 
 Before the era of kitchen gardens, scurvy was one of 
 the processes by which the English population was kept 
 down. Cabbages were not known here until, the period 
 of Henry YIII. ; and turnips are so comparatively new to 
 some parts of England, that their introduction into the 
 northern counties is hardly a century old. A diet exclu- 
 sively of animal food is too highly stimulant for such a 
 climate as ours ; and an exclusively vegetable diet is far 
 less injurious in its effects. No meat is so digestible as 
 tender mutton. It has just that degree of consistency 
 which the stomach requires. Beef is not less nutritious, 
 but it is rather less easy of digestion, than mutton : much, 
 however, depends upon the cooking, which process may, 
 
158 TABLE TRAITS. 
 
 really not inaptly, be called the first stage of digestion. 
 The comparative in digestibility of lamb and veal arises 
 from the meat being of a more stringy and indivisible 
 nature. Old laws ordained that butchers should expose 
 no beef for sale, but of an animal that had been baited. 
 The nature of the death rendered the flesh more tender. 
 A coursed hare is thus more delicious eating than one that 
 has been shot ; and pigs whipped till they die, may be 
 eaten with relish, even by young ladies who pronounce 
 life intolerable. A little vinegar, administered to animals 
 about to be killed, is said, also, to render the flesh less 
 tough ; and it is not unusual to give a spoonful of this 
 acid to poultry, whose life is required for the immediate 
 benefit of the consumer. Some carnivorous animals have 
 been very expert at furnishing their own larder. Thus 
 we read, that the eagles in Norway exhibit as much cun- 
 ning in procuring their beef as can well be imagined ; and 
 more, perhaps, than can well be believed. They dive into 
 the sea, we are told, then roll in the sand, and afterwards 
 destroy an ox by shaking the sand in his ejes, while they 
 attack him. I think the French eagle tried a similar 
 plan with the English bull, during the wars of the Empire, 
 and very ineflectually. It dived into the sea, and rolled 
 itself in the sand at Boulogne, and shook abundance of 
 it across the Channel ; but the English bull more quietly 
 shook it ofl" again from his mane, and the eagle turned to 
 an easier quarry in Austria. Animals not carnivorous 
 have sometimes been as expert. There have been horses, 
 for instance, who have had their peculiar appetite also for 
 meat. Some twenty years ago, we heard of one at Brus- 
 sels, which, fond of flesh generally, was particularly so of 
 raw mutton, which it would greedily devour whenever it 
 could get, as it sometimes did, to a butcher's shop. 
 
 The Jews, it is said, never' ate poultry under their old 
 dispensation ; and French gastronomists assert that ' this 
 
THE MATEEIAXiS FOB DINTNa. 159 
 
 species of food was expressly reserved to enrich the ban- 
 quets of a more deserving people. About the merits of 
 the people the poultry, and winged animals generally, 
 would perhaps have an opinion of their own, were they 
 capable of entertaining one ; for nowhere, as in France, 
 have those unfortunate races been so tortured, and merely 
 in order to extract out of their anguish a little more 
 exquisite enjoyment for the palled appetites of epicures. 
 The turkey has, perhaps, the least suffered at the hands 
 of the Grallic experimentalists, though he has not alto- 
 gether escaped. The goose has been the most cruelly 
 treated, especially in the case of his being kept caged 
 before a huge fire, and fed to repletion until he dies, the 
 Daniel Lambert of his species, of a diseased liver, which 
 is the most delicious thing possible in a pie. But it is 
 ignoble treatment for the only bird which is said to be 
 prescient of approaching earthquakes. The goose saved 
 E-ome, and was eaten in spite of his patriotism. He is 
 skilled in natural philosophy, and his science does not 
 save him from death and sage-and-onions. Nay, even a 
 female Sovereign of England could not hear of the defeat 
 of the Spanish Armada without decreeing " death to the 
 geese," until the time comes when Mr. Macaulay's Huron 
 friend shall be standing on a fragment of Blackfriars' 
 Bridge, sketching the ruins of St. Paul's. 
 
 It must be allowed, however, that the scientific ladies 
 of farm-yards have improved upon the knowledge of their 
 ancestresses. Formerly, of turkeys alone, full one-half 
 that pierced the shell perished ; but now we rear more 
 than fifteen out of twenty. I do not know, however, 
 that that fact is at all consolatory to the turkey destined 
 to be dined upon. 
 
 Themistocles ordered his victory over Xerxes to be 
 yearly commemorated by a cock-fight ; and the bird itself 
 was eaten out of honour, as dogs in Eome were for rea- 
 
160 TABLE TEAITS. 
 
 sons of vengeance. At Eome, the hen was the favourite 
 bird; but hens were consumed in such quantities, that 
 Fannius, the Consul, issued a decree, prohibiting their 
 being slain for food, during a certain period ; and, in the 
 mean time, the Eomans "invented the capon." The 
 duck was devoured medicinally, that is, on medical assur- 
 ance that it was good diet for weak stomachs ; and there 
 were great sages who not only taught that duck, as a 
 food, would maintain men in health, but that, if they 
 were ill, the ample feeding thereon would soon restore 
 them again. Mithridates, it is alleged, ate it as a 
 counter-poison ; other people, of other times and places, 
 simply because they liked it. The goose was in as much 
 favour as the duck with the digestion-gifted stomachs of 
 the older races. It was the royal diet in Egypt, where 
 the Monarch did not, like Queen Elizabeth, recommend 
 it to the people, but selfishly decreed that it was only to 
 be served at his own table. Gigantic geese, with ultra- 
 gigantic livers, were as much the delight of epicures in 
 Rome, as the livers, if not the geese, are now the vohtp^ 
 tas suprema of the epicure of France, and of countries 
 subject to the French code of diet. A liver weighing as 
 much as the rest of the animal without it, was a morceau, 
 in Rome, to make a philosopher's mouth water. This 
 was not proof of a more depraved taste than that exhi- 
 bited by a Christian Queen of France, who spent sixteen 
 hundred francs in fattening three geese, the delicate livers 
 of which alone Her Majesty intended to dine upon. The 
 pigeon and guinea-hen never attained to such popularity 
 as the goose and duck ; while the turkey, and especially 
 the truffled turkey-hen, has its value sufficiently pointed 
 out by the saying of the gastronome, that there must be 
 two at the eating of a truffled turkey, — the eater and the 
 turkey! The turkey, originally from the East, was 
 slowly propagated in Europe, and the breed appears to 
 
THE MATEEIALS TOE DININa. 161 
 
 have gradually passed away, like the bustard in England. 
 It was brought hither again from America, and its first 
 re-appearance is said to have been at the wedding-dinner 
 of Charles IX. of France. 
 
 The turkey was not protected, as the peacock was by 
 Alexander, by a decree denouncing death against whom- 
 soever should kill this divine bird, with its devilish note. 
 The decree did not affect Quintus Hortensius, who had 
 one served up at the dinner which celebrated his acces- 
 sion to the office of Augur. Tiberius, however, preserved 
 the peacock with great jealousy, and it was only rich 
 breeders that could exhibit this bird at their banquets. 
 
 A man who passes through Essex may see whole 
 " herds " of geese and ducks in the fields there, fattening 
 without thought of the future, and supremely happy in 
 their want of reflection. These birds are "foreigners;" 
 at least, nearly all of them are so. They are Irish by 
 birth, but they are brought over by steam, in order to be 
 perfected by an English education ; and when the due 
 state of perfection has been attained, they are, like many 
 other young people partaking of the "duck" or the 
 " goose," transferred to London, and " done for." 
 
 Some gastronomic enthusiasts, unable to wait for their 
 favourite birds, have gone in search of them. This was the 
 case with the oily Jesuit, Fabi, who so loved beccaficoes. "As 
 soon as the cry of the bird was heard in the fields around 
 Belley," says the author of the '^ JPhysiologie die GoiU,'' 
 " the general cry was, ' The beccaficoes are come, we shall 
 soon have Father Fabi among us.' And never did he 
 fail to arrive, with a friend, on the 1st of September. 
 They came for the express purpose of regaling them- 
 selves on beccaficoes, during the period of the passage of 
 the bird across the district. To every house they were 
 invited in town, and they took their departure again 
 about the 23rd." This good Father died in our " glorious 
 
 M 
 
162 TABLE TEAITS. 
 
 memory" year of 1688; and one of his choice bits of 
 delirium was, that he had discovered the circulation of 
 the blood before Harvey ! 
 
 And now do I not hear that gentleman-like person at 
 the lower end of the table remark, that the circulation of 
 the blood was a conceived idea long before Harvey ? 
 You are quite right, my dear Sir ; and your remark is a 
 very appropriate one, both as to time and themej for the 
 circulation of the blood is one of the results of cooking. 
 As for preconception of the idea, it is sufficient for Har- 
 vey, that he demonstrated the fact. The Doctors of 
 ancient Roman days supposed that the blood came from 
 the liver ; and that, in passing through the vena cava 
 and its branches, a considerable quantity of it turned 
 about, and entered into the right cavity of the heart. 
 What Harvey demonstrated was, that the blood flows 
 from the heart into all parts of the body, by the arteries, 
 from whence it is brought back to the heart again, by the 
 veins. Well, Sir, I know what you are about to remark, 
 — that Paolo Sarpi, that pleasantest of table-companions, 
 claimed to have made the demonstration before Harvey. 
 True, Sarpi used to say, that he did not dare publish his 
 discovery, for dread of the Inquisition ; but that he con- 
 fided it to brother Fabi da Aqua-pendente, who kept it 
 close for the same reason, but told it in confidence to 
 Harvey, who published it as his own. Well, Sir, Sir 
 Greorge Ent exploded all that, by proving that Sarpi him- 
 self had first learned the fact from Harvey's lips. The 
 Italians have the same right in this case, as they have to 
 their boast of having produced what old Ritson used to 
 style, " that thing you choose to call a poem, ' Paradise 
 Lost.' " It was an invention or discovery at second-hand. 
 
 What conceits Cowley has in his verses on Harvey ! 
 He makes the philosophical Doctor pursue coy Nature 
 through sap, and catch her at last in the human blood. 
 
THE MATERIALS FOR DININa. 163 
 
 He speaks, too, of the heart beating tuneful marches to 
 its vital heat ; a conceit which Longfellow twisted into 
 prettiness, when he sai4, that our " muffled hearts were 
 beating funeral marches to the grave." You will remem- 
 ber, Sir, that Shakspeare makes Brutus sav, that Portia 
 was to him " dear as the drops that visit this sad heart." 
 Brutus himself would, perhaps, have said "liver;" and, 
 by the way, how very much to the same tune is the line 
 in Gray's "Bard," wherein we find, — 
 
 " Dear as the light that visits these sad eyes." 
 
 But there is in tuneful Edmund, in our ever-glorious 
 friend Spenser, a stanza which contains something that 
 may pass for the circulation theory. You remember, in 
 the first canto of the Second Book, where the bleeding 
 lady is found by the good Sir Guy on : — 
 
 " Out of her gored wound the cruel steel 
 
 He lightly snatch'd, and did the flood-gates stop 
 With his faire garment ; then 'gan softly feel 
 
 Her feeble pulse, to prove if any drop 
 
 Of living blood yet in her veynes did hop ; 
 "Which when he felt to move, he hoped faire 
 
 To caU bac^k life to her forsaken shop. 
 So well he did her deadly wounds repaire, 
 That at the last shee 'gan to breathe out living aire." 
 
 And now. Sir, I shall be happy to take a glass of wine 
 with you, obsolete as that once honoured custom has 
 become. And allow me to send you a slice of this 
 venison. A little more of the fat ? Certainly ; but, if 
 you will take currant jelly with it, the sin be upon your 
 own head. It has always been the approved plan, you 
 say. Ah, my dear Sir! think what the approved plan 
 was, for years, in the treatment of small-pox. That was 
 not a gastronomic matter, you say ? I am not so sure 
 of that ; for the patient, swathed in scarlet cloth, had to 
 drink mulled port wine. But, on a question of diet, time 
 
 M 2 
 
164 TABLE TRAITS. 
 
 and numbers, jou think, may be taken for authority. 
 Alas, my dear Sir! did you ever try the once popular 
 receipt of Apicius for a thick sauce to roasted chicken ? 
 Never ! of course you have not ; for, in such case, your 
 young widow would already have touched that pretty 
 life-assurance we wot of. English tastes, you urge ? 
 Ah ! in that case, if old rule be good rule, you must camp 
 in Kensington Gardens, and eat acorns. In Germany, 
 where venison is a national dish, the idea of currant jelly 
 would ruin the digestion of a whole company. But I see 
 you are incorrigible, and William is at your elbow with 
 the doubtful sauce. 
 
 Galen could not appreciate venison as the early Patri- 
 archs and the Jewish people did, and as the Eoman ladies 
 did, who ate of it as a preserver of youth, as well as a 
 lengthener of life. A roebuck of Melos would have 
 brought tears of delight into the eyes of Diogenes. The 
 deer was preferred to the roebuck at Eome ; but the wild 
 boar was also a favourite ; and the Sicilian slave, chef 
 to Servilius Rullus, cooked not less than three of differ- 
 ent sizes in one. The largest had baskets of dates sus- 
 pended to its tusks, and a litter of young ones in pastry 
 lying in the same dish. Within the first was a second, 
 within the second a third, and within the third some 
 small birds. Cicero, who was the guest for whom the 
 dinner was got up, was as delighted with the culinary 
 slave, as Lucullus had been a few days before, when he 
 had eaten a dish of sows' paps prepared b}^ the same 
 artist ; and the enraptured gastronome thought that all 
 Olympus was dissolving in his mouth ! 
 
 A wild boar was at marriage feasts what our wedding 
 cakes are at those dreadful destroyers of time and diges- 
 tion, — wedding breakfasts, — an indispensable accompani- 
 ment. Caranus, the Macedonian, has the reputation of 
 having exceeded all others in his nuptial magnificence ; 
 
THE MATERIALS EOE DIKI2?^a. 165 
 
 for, instead of one boar at his banquet, he had twenty. 
 But I have seen more than that at many a breakfast in 
 Britain. 
 
 The ancient Britons abstained from the hare, like the 
 Jews. Hippocrates held that, as a food, it thickened the 
 blood, and kept people from sleep ; but Galen — and such 
 instances among the faculty are not uncommon — differed 
 from his professional brother. People followed the 
 advice of Galen ; and though few, like Alexander Severus, 
 could eat a whole hare at every repast, yet many ate as 
 plentifully as they well could, accounting such diet 
 profitable both to health and good looks. 
 
 Hares were nearly as injuriously abundant in Greece as 
 rabbits were in Spain, where the latter animals are said 
 to have once destroyed Tarragona, by undermining it in 
 burrowing ! Nay, more : the Balearic Isles were so over- 
 run with them, that the inhabitants, afraid of being 
 devoured, sent an embassy to Rome ; and Augustus 
 dispatched a military force, which not only slaughtered 
 the enemy, but ate the half of them ! The more refined 
 gluttons of Eome did not dine on the rabbit after this 
 fashion. They only picked a little of the young taken 
 alive from the slaughtered mother, or killed soon after 
 birth. They were preferable to the rabbits of the 
 Parisian gargottes^ where fricassee de lapins is invariably 
 made of cats. And these, perhaps, are as dainty eating 
 as the hunch of the camel, or the feet of the elephant, — 
 pettitoes for Brobdignagian lovers to sup upon. 
 
 But we almost as villanously disguise our poultry. 
 The latter, if not now, used — according to Darwin — to be 
 fed for the London market, by mixing gin, and even 
 opium, with their food, and keeping them in the dark ; 
 but " they must be killed as soon as they are fattened, 
 or they become weak and emaciated, like human 
 drunkards." 
 
166 TABLE TEAITS. 
 
 Game was almost as sacred to the Egyptian Priests, as 
 eggs to the sacerdotal gentlemen of some of the modern 
 tribes of Africa. Under the head of "game," we no 
 longer admit the birds which, according to Belon, 
 figured at the gastronomic tables of France in the 
 sixteenth century. These were the crane, the crow, and 
 the cormorant, the heron, the swan, the stork, and the 
 bittern. The last-named bird was in high estimation, 
 although the taste for it was confessedly an "acquired" 
 one. The larger birds of prey were not then altogether 
 despised by epicures, some of whom could sit down with 
 an appetite to roast vulture, while they turned with 
 loathing from the plump pheasant. 
 
 This eastern bird, however, has, with this exception, 
 enjoyed a deserved reputation from the earliest ages. 
 The Egyptian Kings kept large numbers of them to 
 grace their aviaries and their triumphs. The Greeks 
 reared them for the less sentimental gratification of the 
 stomach ; and a simple Athenian republican, when giving 
 a banquet, prided himself on having on his board as many 
 pheasants as there were guests invited. 
 
 Pheasants' brains were among the ingredients of the 
 dish that Vitellius invented, and which he designated by 
 the name of " Shield of Minerva." They were greedily eaten 
 by many other of the Csesars ; and an offering of them to 
 the statue of Caligula was deemed to be propitiatory 
 of that very equivocal deity. The Emperors generally 
 esteemed them above partridges, which were trained for 
 fighting, as well as fattened for eating. Roman epicures 
 fixed on the breast as the most " eatable " portion of the 
 gallant bird. The Greeks thought of it as we do of the 
 woodcock ; and with them the leg of the partridge was 
 the part the most highly esteemed. At a Greek table 
 would not have occurred the smart dialogue which is said 
 to have taken place at an English dinner. " Shall I send 
 
THE MATEEIALS FOB DINING. 167 
 
 you a leg or a wing?" said a carver to a guest lie was 
 about to help. " It is a matter of perfect indifference to 
 me," was the reply ; and it is not a courteous one. " It 
 is a matter of equal indifference to me," said the first 
 speaker, at the same time resuming his own knife and 
 fork, and going on with his dinner. 
 
 Quails are variously said either to have recalled Hercules 
 to life, or to have cured him of epilepsy. The Eomans, 
 however, rather feared them, as tending to cause epileptic 
 fits. Galen thought so ; Aristotle took a different view, 
 and the Greeks devoured them as readily as though they 
 had Aristotle's especial authorization ; and the Romans 
 were only slowly converted to the same way of thinking. 
 Quails, like partridges and the game-cock, were long reared 
 for the arena ; and legislators thought that youth might 
 learn courage from contemplating the contests of quails ! 
 
 The thrush was perhaps the most popular bird at deli- 
 cate tables in Greece. They were kept from the young, 
 lest the taste should give birth to permanent greediness ; 
 but when a girl married, she was sure of a brace of 
 thrushes, for her especial eating at the wedding-feast. 
 They were still more popular in Rome, where patrician 
 ladies reared thousands yearly for the market, and made 
 a further profit by selling the manure for the land. The 
 thrush aviary of Varro's aunt was one of the sights of 
 Rome, where men ruined themselves in procuring dishes 
 composed of these birds for their guests. Greatly, how- 
 ever, as they abounded, there was occasionally a scarcity 
 of them ; for when the physician of Pompey prescribed a 
 thrush, by way of exciting the wayward stomach of the 
 wayward soldier to enjoyment, there was not one to be 
 found for sale in all Rome. LucuUus, indeed, had scores 
 of them ; but Pompey, like many other obstinate people, 
 chose rather to suffer than put himself under an obliga- 
 tion ; and he contrived to get well on other diet. 
 
168 TABLE TEAITS. 
 
 The diet was, nevertheless, held to be exceedingly 
 strengthening ; and' blackbirds, also, were prescribed as 
 fitting food for weak digestions. It was perhaps for this 
 reason that the celebrated 
 
 " Four- and- twenty blackbirds baked in a pie," 
 
 were the dainty dish set before the legendary and, pre- 
 sumedly, dyspeptic King ! In later times, we have had 
 as foolish ideas connected with them. The oil in which 
 they were cooked was said to be good for sciatica, or hip- 
 gout ; and Yieillot says that freckles might be instantane- 
 ously removed from the skin, if but ladies would 
 
 never try what Yieillot recommends. 
 
 The blackbird was not imperially patronized. The 
 stomachs of the gastronomic Ca3sars gave more greedy 
 welcome to the flamingo. Caligula, Yitellius, and Helio- 
 gabalus ruined their digestions by ragouts of this bird, 
 the tongues of which were converted into a stimulating 
 sauce. Dam pier ate the bird, when he could get nothing 
 else; and thought the Csesars fools for doing so when 
 they could get any thing beside. The ancients, whether 
 Greeks or E-omans, showed more taste in eating becea- 
 ficoes, — that delicate little bird, all tender and succulent, 
 the essence of the juice of the fruits (especially the fig) 
 on which it feeds. The only thing to be compared with 
 it is the ortolan. Had Heliogabalus confined him- 
 self to these more savoury birds, instead of acquiring 
 indigestion on ostrich brains and flamingoes, his name 
 would have held a more respectable place in the annals of 
 gastronomy. But master and people were alike barbarous 
 in many of their tastes. Who now would think of killing 
 turtle-doves for the sake of eating their legs " devilled ? " 
 And yet we eat the lark, that herald of the skies, and 
 earliest chorister of the morn. We eat this ethereal bird 
 with as little compunction as we do tKe savoury, yet 
 
A LiailT DICKER FOR TWO. 169 
 
 unclean, of tlie earth, eartliy, duck. And this thought 
 reminds me of a story, for which I am indebted to a 
 ■friend, himself the most amiable of Amphitryons, the 
 good things at whose table have ever wit, wisdom, mirth, 
 and good-fellowship attendant, as aids to digestion.* 
 
 A LIGHT DINNEE FOE TWO. 
 
 Many years ago, when railways were things undreamt 
 of, and when the journeys from Oxford to the metropolis 
 were inevitably performed on that goodly and pleasant 
 high road which is now dreary and forlorn, a gentleman 
 and his son, the latter newly flushed with College fame 
 and University honours, rode forth over Magdalen Bridge 
 and the Cherwell, purposing to reach London in a leisurely 
 ride. A groom, their only attendant, carrying their 
 scanty baggage with him on a good stout cob, had been 
 sent on in advance to order dinner at a well-known road- 
 side hostelry, where Oxford nags baited, and where their 
 more adventurous riders frequently caroused, out of reach 
 of any supervision by Principals or Pro-Proctors. 
 
 Pleasant is the spot, well approved by pas^ generations 
 of Freshmen, picturesque and charming to an eye content 
 with rich fields, luxuriant meadows, and pretty streams, 
 tributaries of the now adolescent Thames, whose waters 
 had not at that date been polluted by barge or lighter at 
 that point of its course. The neighbourhood is famous 
 for its plump larks ; and whether in a savoury pudding, 
 swimming with beef-steak gravy, or roasted, a round half- 
 dozen together, on an iron skewer or a tiny spit, those 
 little warblers furnished forth a pretty adjunct on a well- 
 spread table, tempting to an appetite somewhat appeased 
 by heavier and more substantial viands. Mine host at 
 our road-side quarters had a cook who dressed them to a 
 nicety; contriving to produce or develope a succulency 
 
 * Henry Holden TVankum, Esq. 
 
170 ' TABLE TKAITS. 
 
 and flavour which meaner practitioners would scarcely 
 have deemed practicable. Now Martin, pursuant to his 
 master's instructions for securing a repast of ducks and 
 the dainty lark, finding the landlord brought out from his 
 shady porch by the clatter of the horse's hoofs on the 
 well-beaten road, announced the approaching arrival, and 
 ordered dinner. " My master wishes to find a couple of 
 larks, and a dozen of ducks, well roasted, on his arrival at 
 four o'clock." "Did I understand you rightly, young 
 man?" said Boniface. '^0!" said the varlet, pettishly, 
 " in Oxford no landlord needs twice telling ;" — and betook 
 himself to the stables, looking forward to the enjoyment 
 of a tankard of good house-brewed ale, — no brewer's ini- 
 quitous mixture, — and the opportunity of shining with 
 some lustre in the tap, or the kitchen, before country 
 bumpkins, eager to listen to a man like himself, who had 
 seen racing at Newmarket and Doncaster, and high hfe 
 at Bath and Cheltenham. Meantime, his masters came 
 leisurely along the road, nor thought of applying a spur, 
 until the craving bowels of the younger horseman, whose 
 digestive organs were unimpaired by College theses and 
 examinations, suggested a lack of provender ; and, their 
 watches, when consulted, indicating th.e near approach of 
 the dinner hour, they broke off their chat, and soon drew 
 rein at their place of temporary sojourn. 
 
 Finding the cloth laid, and the busy waiter's prepara- 
 tions nearly complete, they glanced with satisfaction at a 
 table of somewhat unnecessary dimensions, considering 
 the limited extent of the party, which our young 
 Hellenist would have described as a "duality." Just as 
 our travellers were growing impatient, the landlord, hav- 
 ing previously satisfied himself, by obsequious inquiry, 
 that his guests were quite ready, re-entered, bearing a 
 dish with bright cover, and heading as good a procession 
 of domestics, each similarly laden, as the limited resources 
 
A LIGHT DIKN-EE FOE TWO. 171 
 
 of his modest establisliment admitted. The large number 
 of dishes rather surprised the elder of the twain, whose 
 'mind was less absorbed by the suggestions of appetite ; 
 and, having dispatched the sole attendant left for a 
 bottle of the best Madeira the cellar coilld supply, and a 
 jug of that malt liquor for w^hich the house had obtained 
 some notoriety, he proceeded to look under the formidable 
 range of covers. Seeing under the first a couple of ducks, 
 he said, " Come, this is all right ! " but finding the next, 
 ^and the next, and still the next, but a repetition of the 
 same, either with or without the odour of seasoning, he 
 fairly stood aghast, when six couple of goodly ducks stood 
 revealed before him. The young collegian's mirth was 
 great, his laugh hearty, at the climax of two pretty little 
 chubby larks which closed the line of dishes. Apple 
 sauce and gravy, broccoli and potatoes, stood sentries, 
 flanking the array. Upon his ringing the bell with no gen- 
 tle hand, the landlord himself stepped in from the passage, 
 where he appeared to have awaited a summons; and, in 
 answer to a question the reader may easily anticipate, 
 replied that the servant's order was precise, and that it 
 was impatiently repeated upon his oWn hesitation in 
 accepting it. The respectability of the landlord, and the 
 evident truthfulness of his manner, stayed all further 
 questions. But the elder gentleman said firmly, that he 
 should not pay for what had been so absurdly provided ; 
 alleging, that no two, or even three, persons could be 
 found who would do justice to such provisions. The 
 landlord, like Othello, "upon that hint spake;" for he 
 saw a faint chance of righting a somewhat difficult mat- 
 ter. " O, Sir," said he, " I think I could find a man hard 
 by, who would not consider the supplies too much for his 
 own appetite." "Produce him," said the guest, "and 
 settle the point ; for, if you do, I will pay for the whole." 
 The anxious landlord said no more; but, bowing, left in 
 
172 TABLE TllAITS. 
 
 search of a neiglibouring cobbler, whose prowess with the 
 knife and fork was pre-eminent in the vicinity. Meantime, 
 our hungry travellers sat down to dinner with such good 
 will, that each of them disposed of one of the regiment ; 
 and, in a joint attack, a third fell mutilated, leaving but 
 fragmentary relics. A lark a-piece was a mere practical 
 joke ; and cheese, with celery, left nothing farther wanting 
 to appease those cravings which had prompted them to 
 action. While these little matters were in progress, the 
 landlord had found the ..shoemaker, and told his story. 
 "Well," said Lapstone, "this is plaguy unlucky, for I've 
 just had a gallon of broth 1 Such a famous chance, too ; 
 for if there is any thing I am particularly fond of, cer- 
 tainly ducks is a weak point. Sir." Boniface, thinking it 
 his only chance, urged him to try ; and the man of bris- 
 tles, nothing loth, consented. On being duly introduced, 
 orders were given for setting-to on the spot, to insure 
 fair play, and defeat any supplementary aid, or a deposit 
 in any other pocket, save that with which the savage in 
 a nude state finds himself provided, — the stomach. While 
 the travellers sipped their wine, and trifled with their 
 dessert, the voracious cobbler fell heartily to work on the 
 row of eight ducks before him : one having been sent 
 down for the undeserving groom, whose blunder had 
 proved a godsend to the man of leather. Wisely eschew- 
 ing vegetables, and eating scantily of bread, the disjecta 
 memlra of the doomed ducks rapidly yielded up their 
 savoury integuments. But flesh is weak, and cobblers' 
 appetites are not wholly unappeasable ; so that while the 
 fifth victim was under discussion, a stimulant, in the 
 shape of " a little brandy," was requested ; and when the 
 sixth was but slowly and more slowly disappearing, poor 
 Lapstone, who began to think farther progress impossible, 
 was seen whispering to the landlord. The gentleman 
 loudly demanded what the fellow was saying. "Sir," 
 
THE MATEEIALS TOR DIN^ING. 173 
 
 said the landlord, promptly and cunningly, " he says, he 
 wishes there were half-a-dozen more ; for he is just begin- 
 •ning to enjoy them." " Confound the rascal's gluttony," 
 cried the travellers ; " not a bit more shall he have. Put 
 the remaining couple by for our supper ; for we shall not 
 leave your house till to-morrow:" — an arrangement 
 affording much relief to the shoemaker, and entire satis- 
 faction to the innkeeper. 
 
 To return to the lark. It is worthy of notice, that 
 London is annually supplied, from the country about 
 Dunstable alone, with not less than four thousand dozen 
 of these succulent songsters. At Leipsic, the excise on 
 larks, for that single city, amoimts to nearly £1,000 ster- 
 ling yearly. The larks of Dunstable and Leipsic are, I 
 presume, "caught napping." They are not, then, like 
 the nightingale, who is said to sing all night, to keep 
 herself awake, lest the slow-worm should devour her. 
 
 And this reminds me of a remark which I once heard 
 made by one who disputed the fact, that every thing had 
 its use. Mr. Jerdan could not conjecture what use there 
 could be in the cimex, that domestic " B flat," which 
 may be found in old beds and old parchments. So my 
 friend could not divine the utility of a slow- worm, or of 
 that unclean parasite, the "louse," which, by the way, 
 infects birds as well as dirty humanity, and even reaches 
 these same aspiring larks. For the use of the slow-worm 
 I referred him to natural history ; for that of the pedictt- 
 lus, I could only state that it is swallowed by some 
 country-people as a cure for jaundice ! At Hardenberg, 
 in Sweden, it held a position of some importance. When 
 a Burgomaster had to be chosen, the eligible candidates 
 sat with their beards upon the table, in the centre of 
 which was placed a louse ; and the one in whose beard he' 
 took cover was the Magistrate for the ensuing year. 
 
17^ TABLE TRAITS. 
 
 After the ceremony, the company supped upon ducks, 
 and sang like larks. 
 
 The household of Joh was of a hospitable cast. " His 
 sons went and feasted in their houses, every one on his 
 day ;" (which is explained as being the hirth-dsij ;) " and 
 sent and called for their three sisters to eat and drink 
 with them." We know what materials the joyous family 
 had to make a superb feast ; and doubtless he who pre- 
 sided thereat was as proud as the Knight who, by virtue 
 of triumphing in the tournament, alone had the right to 
 carve the peacock which was placed before him — plumage, 
 tail, and all — by the fairest "she" to be found in the 
 vicinity. After all, the peacock was inferior to the sue* 
 culent and sweet-throated thrush. The proper time for 
 eating thrushes, and, indeed, much other of the small 
 game of the bird species, is towards the end of November. 
 The reason assigned by a French epicure is, that, after 
 they have been fattened in the fields and vineyards, they 
 then give a biting, bitter aroma to their flesh by feeding 
 on juniper-berries. The Romans fed them on a paste 
 made up of figs, wheat, and aromatic grains. The Eoman 
 epicures were as fond of them as the Marquis de Cussy 
 was of red partridges, one of which he ate on the day of 
 his death, and after a six months' illness. It was his last 
 act ; and, in gastronomic annals, it is recorded, as Nel- 
 son's calling for sealing-wax amid the thunders of Copen- 
 hagen, or his writing to Horatia before he went to meet 
 death at Trafalgar, is noticed by the biographers of our 
 naval heroes. Statistics, which are as pleasantly void of 
 truth as poetry, generally speaking, set down the enor- 
 mous total of nearly fifty-two millions of francs as the 
 sum expended yearly in France for fowls of all species. 
 Taking the amount of population into consideration, this 
 would prove that France is a more fowl-consuming nation 
 than any other on the face of the globe. 
 
THE MATEEIALS FOR DINING. 175 
 
 In a dietetic point of view, it would be well for weak 
 stomachs to remember, that wild birds are more nutri- 
 tious than their domesticated cousins, and more digesti- 
 ble. But tlie white breast or wing of a chicken is less 
 heating than the flesh of winged game. Other game — 
 such as venison, which is dark-coloured, and contains a 
 large proportion of fibrine — produces highly stimulating 
 chyle ; and, consequently, the digestion is an easy and 
 rapid affair for the stomach. But, though the whiter 
 meats be detained longer in the stomach, furnish less 
 stimulating chyle, and be suffered to run into acetous fer- 
 mentation, their lesser stimulating quality may recom- 
 mend them v/hen the general system is not in want of 
 a spur. Meats are wholesome, or otherwise, less with 
 reference to themselves than to the consumer. "To 
 assert a thing to be wholesome," says Van Swieten, 
 " without a knowledge of the condition of the person for 
 whom it is intended, is like a sailor pronouncing the wind 
 to be fair, without knowing to what port the vessel is 
 bound." 
 
 Cardinal Fesch would have made an exception in the 
 case of " blackbirds." His dinners at Lyons were reve- 
 renced for the excellence and variety of these dishes. 
 The birds were sent to him weekly from Corsica; and 
 they were said to incense half the archiepiscopal city. 
 They were served with great form ; and none who ate 
 thereof ever forgot the flavour which melted along his 
 palate. The Cardinal used to say that it was like swal- 
 lowing paradise, and that the smell alone of his blackbirds 
 was enough to revivify half the defunct in his diocese. 
 
 Quite as rich a dish may be found in the pheasant 
 which has been suspended by the tail, and which detaches 
 himself from his caudine appendage, by way of intimation 
 that he is ready. It is thus, we are told, that a pheasant 
 hung up on Shrove Tuesday is susceptible of being spitted 
 
176 TABLE TRAITS. 
 
 on Easter- day ! It is popularly said in France of the 
 pheasant, that it only lacks something to be equal to the 
 turkey ! A wise saying, indeed ! but, the truth is, the 
 two cannot be compared. Our own popular adage regard- 
 ing the partridge and woodcock has far better grounds 
 for what they assert : — 
 
 " If the partridge kad but the woodcock's thigh, 
 'T would be the best bird that ever did fly. 
 If the woodcock had but the partridge's breast, 
 'T would be the best bird that ever was di'ess'd." 
 
 The partridge is much on the ground, the woodcock ever 
 on the wing ; and these parts, and the immediate vicinity 
 of them, acquire a muscular toughness, not admired by 
 epicures. 
 
 The vegetarians may boast of a descent as ancient as 
 that claimed by the Freemasons. In ancient days, if, 
 indeed, flesh meat was not denounced, unmeasured honour 
 was paid to vegetables. Monarchs exchanged them as 
 gifts, wise men and warriors supped on them after stud}^ 
 and battle. Chiefs of the noblest descent prepared them 
 with their own hands for their own tables, agricultural 
 chy mists tended their planting, and pious populations 
 raised some of them to the rank of gods. 
 
 The Licinian Law enacted their use, while it restricted 
 the consumption of meat ; and the greatest families in 
 Home derived their names from them. Fabius was but 
 General JBean, Cicero was Yice-Chancellor Fea, and the 
 house of Lentulus took its appellation from the slow- 
 growing Lentil. 
 
 The kitchen-garden of Henry YIII. was worse supplied 
 than that of Charlemagne, who not only raised vegetables, 
 but, as Gustavus Yasa's Queen did with her eggs and 
 milk, made money by them. He was a royal market- 
 gardener, and found more profit in his salads than he did 
 
THE MATERIALS TOR DINING. 177 
 
 in his sons. A salad, by the way, was so scarce an article 
 during the early part of the last century, that George I. 
 was obliged to send to Holland to procure a lettuce for 
 his Queen; and now lettuces are flung by cart-loads to 
 the pigs. Asparagus and artichokes were strangers to us 
 until a still later period. 
 
 The bean has, from remote times, held a distinguished 
 place. Isidorus asserts that it was the first food used by 
 man. Pythagoras held that human life was in it. By 
 others the black spot was accounted typical of death ; and 
 the Flamen of Jupiter would neither look upon it nor 
 pronounce its name. The Priests of Apollo, on the other 
 hand, banqueted on a dish of beans at one of the festivals 
 of their god. Those of ^sculapius taught that the smell 
 of beans in blossom was prejudicial to health ; and far- 
 mers' wives, in the days of Baucis and Philemon, main- 
 tained that hens reared on beans would never lay eggs. 
 
 The "bean" was once the principal feature in the 
 Twelfth-Night cake ; and he to whose share fell the 
 piece containing the vegetable was King for the night. 
 The last Twelfth Night observed, with ancient strictness, 
 at the Tuileries, was when Louis XVIII. was yet reign- 
 ing. Among his guests was Louis Philippe, Duke of 
 Orleans, who was lucky enough to draw the bean, and 
 thereby became Monarch for the nonce. " My cousin," 
 said Louis XYIIL, "is King at last!" "I will never 
 accept such title," answered the over-modest Duke; 
 "I acknowledge no other King in France but your 
 Majesty, and will not usurp the name even in jest!" 
 Excellent man ! he was at that very moment intriguing 
 to tumble from his throne that very King, loyalty for 
 whom he expressed with so much of unnecessary and 
 enforced ceremony. 
 
 The haricot hianc, or white kidney bean, deserves to be 
 introduced more generally into our kitchens. There are 
 
178 TABLE TRAITS. 
 
 various methods of dressing them ; but the best is to 
 have them softened in the gravy of a leg of mutton ; 
 they are then a good substitute for potatoes. They are 
 nearly as good, dressed with oil or butter; and Napoleon 
 was exceedingly fond of them, dressed as a salad. Of 
 course, we allude here to the bean which, in full maturity, 
 is taken from the pod, and eaten in winter. In England 
 we eat the pod itself, (in summer,) split, and served with 
 roast mutton and venison. The mature bean, however, 
 makes an excellent dish. 
 
 And, a-propos to Monarchs, it is to Alexander that 
 we are indebted for the Indian "haricot ;" and the vege- 
 table had a fashion in Greece and Rome worthy of its 
 distinguished introducer. But this fashion was not a 
 mere consequence ; for grey peas were as universally 
 eaten. The people were so fond of these, that political 
 aspirants bought votes of electors in exchange for them. 
 They formed the principal refreshment of the lower citi- 
 zens at the circus and the theatre, where, instead of the 
 modern cry of " Oranges, biscuits, porter, and bill of the 
 play !" was to be heard that of " Peas ! peas ! ram peas ! 
 grey peas ! and a programme of the beasts and actors !" 
 
 G-reen peas were not known in France until the middle 
 of the sixteenth century. They were grown, but people 
 no more thought of eating them than we do the sweet 
 pea. The gardener Michaux was born, and he it was 
 who first sent green peas to a Christian table. 
 
 When Alexander, son of Pyrrhus, wished to keep all 
 the beans that grew in the Thesprotian Marsh for his 
 own eating, the gods dried up the marsh, and beans 
 could never be made to grow there again. So, when 
 King Antigonus put a tax on the healing spring that 
 flowed at Edessa, the waters disappeared ; and the people 
 were not, in either case, benefited. What lumbering 
 avengers were those heathen deities ! 
 
THE MATEEIAL9 FOR DINIKG. 179 
 
 The cabbage has bad a singular destiny, — in one 
 country an object of worship ; in another, of contempt. 
 The Egyptians made of it a god ; and it was the first dish 
 they touched at their repasts. The Greeks and Romans 
 took it as a remedy for the languor following inebriation. 
 Cato said that in the cabbage was a panacea for the ills 
 of man. Erasistratus recommended it as a specific in 
 paralysis ; Hippocrates accounted it a sovereign remedy, 
 boiled with salt, for the colic ; and Athenian medical 
 men prescribed it to young nursing-mothers, who wished 
 to see lusty babies lying in their arms. Diphilus pre- 
 ferred the beet to the cabbage, both as food and as medi- 
 cine, — in the latter case, as a vermifuge. The same phy- 
 sician extols mallows, not for fomentation, but as a good 
 edible vegetable, appeasing hunger and curing the sore- 
 throat at the same time. The asparagus, as we are 
 accustomed to see it, has derogated from its ancient mag- 
 nificence. The original "grass" was from twelve to 
 twenty feet high ; and a dish of them could only have 
 been served to the Brobdignagians. Under the Romans, 
 stems of asparagus were raised of three pounds' weight, — 
 heavy enough to knock down a slave in waiting with. 
 The Greeks ate them of more moderate dimensions, or 
 would have eat them, but that the publishing doctors of 
 their day denounced asparagus as injurious to the sight. 
 But then it was also said, that a slice or two of boiled 
 pumpkin would re-invigorate the sight which had been 
 deteriorated by asparagus. " Do that as quickly as you 
 should asparagus!" is a proverb descended to us from 
 Augustus, and illustrative of the mode in which the vege- 
 table was prepared for the table. 
 
 The gourd does not figure at our repasts as commonly 
 as it did in the east of Europe in mythological times, 
 when it was greedily eaten, boiled hot, or preserved in 
 pickle. The readers of Athenseus will remember, how 
 
 N 2 
 
180 TABLE TEAITS. 
 
 a party of philosophers lost their temper, in a discussion 
 as to whether the gourd was round, square, or ohlong, — 
 how a coarse-minded doctor interrupted the discussion hy 
 a very incongruous remark, — and how the venerable sage 
 who was in the chair called the rude man to order, and 
 then bade the disputants proceed with their argument. 
 
 A still more favourite dish, at Athens, was turnips, 
 from Thebes. Carrots, too, formed a distinguished dish 
 at Greek and Roman tables. Purslain was rather 
 honoured as a cure against poisons, whether in the blood 
 by wounds, or in the stomach from beverage. I have 
 heard it asserted in France, that if you briskly rub a 
 glass with fingers which have been previously rubbed 
 with purslain, or parsley, the glass will certainly break. 
 I have tried the experiment, but only to find that the 
 glass resisted the pretended charm. 
 
 Broccoli was the favourite vegetable food of Drusus. 
 He ate greedily thereof; and, as his father, Tiberius, was 
 as fond of it as he, the master of the Roman world and 
 his illustrious heir were constantly quarrelling, like two 
 clowns, when ' a dish of broccoli stood between them. 
 Artichokes grew less rapidly into aristocratic favour ; the 
 dictum of Gralen was against them ; and, for a long time, 
 they were only used by drinkers, against head-ache, and 
 by singers, to strengthen their voice. Pliny pronounced 
 artichokes excellent food for poor people and donkeys ! 
 For nobler stomachs he preferred the cucumber, — the 
 Nemesis of vegetables. But people were at issue touch- 
 ing the merits of the cucumber. Not so, regarding the 
 lettuce, which has been universally honoured. It was 
 the most highly esteemed dish of the beautiful Adonis. 
 It was prescribed as provocative to sleep ; and it cured 
 Augustus of the malady which sits so heavily on the soul 
 of Leopold of Belgium, — hypochondriasis. Science and 
 rank eulogized the lettuce, and philosophy sanctioned the 
 
THE MATEEIALS TOR DINING. 181 
 
 eulogy in the person of Aristoxenus, who not only grew 
 lettuces as the pride of his garden, but irrigated them 
 with wine, in order to increase their flavour. 
 
 But we must not place too much trust in the stories 
 either of sages or apothecaries. These Pagans recom- 
 mended the seductive, but indigestible, endive, as good 
 against the headache, and young onions and honey as 
 admirable preservers of health, when taken fasting ; but 
 this was a prescription for rustic swains and nymphs, — the 
 higher classes, in town or country, would hardly venture 
 on it. And yet the mother of Apollo ate raw leeks, and 
 loved them of gigantic dimensions. For this reason, 
 perhaps, was the leek accounted, not only as salubrious, but 
 as a beautifier. The love for melons was derived, in 
 similar fashion, probably, from Tiberius, who cared for 
 them even more than he did for broccoli. The Grerman 
 Caesars inherited the taste of their Eoman predecessor, 
 carrying it, indeed, to excess ; for more than one of them, 
 as may be seen in another page, submitted to die after 
 eating melons, rather than live by renouncing them. 
 
 I have spoken of gigantic asparagus : the Jews had 
 radishes that could vie with them, if it be true that a fox 
 and cubs could burrow in the hollow of one, and that it 
 was not uncommon to grow them of a hundred pounds in 
 weight. It must have been such radishes as these that 
 were employed by seditious mobs of old, as weapons, in 
 insurrections. In such case, a rebellious people were always 
 well victualled, and had peculiar facilities, not only to beat 
 their adversaries, but to eat their own arms. The horse- 
 radish is, probably, a descendant of this gigantic ancestor. 
 It had, at one period, a gigantic reputation. Dipped in 
 poison, it rendered the draught innocuous, and, rubbed on 
 the hands, it made an encounter with venomed serpents 
 mere play. In short, it was celebrated as being a cure 
 for every evil in life, — the only exception being, that it 
 
182 TABLE TEAITS. 
 
 destroyed the teeth. There was far more difference of 
 opinion touching garhc, than there was touching the 
 radish. The Egyptians deified it, as they did the leek 
 and the cahbage ; the Gri'eeks devoted it to Gehenna, — 
 and to soldiers, sailors, and cocks that were not "game." 
 Medicinally, it was held to be useful in many diseases, 
 if the root used were originally sown when the moon 
 was below the horizon. No one who had eaten of it, 
 however, could presume to enter the Temple of Cybele. 
 Alphonso of Castile was as particular as this goddess ; 
 and a Knight of Castile, " detected as being guilty of 
 garlic," suffered banishment from the royal presence 
 during an entire month. 
 
 Parsley has fared better, both with gods and men. 
 Hercules and Anacreon crowned themselves with it. It 
 was worn both at j03^ous banquets and funeral feasts ; 
 and not only horses, but those who bestrode them, ate of 
 the herb, in order to find the excitement to daring which 
 otherwise lacked. In contrast with parsley stood the 
 water-cress, a plant honoured and eaten only by the Per- 
 sians. It was, indeed, medically esteemed as curative of 
 consumption, and, by placing it in the ears, of tooth-ache. 
 But the wits and Plutarch denounced its use in any 
 case ; and few cared to affect love for a plant which was 
 popularly declared to have the power of twisting the noses 
 of those who put it into their mouths ! 
 
 Parsley was as popular in what may be called " classi- 
 cal" times, as the asparagus has invariably been with a 
 particular class in France. This vegetable has ever 
 been, I know not wherefore, a favourite vegetable with 
 the officials of the Grallican Church. One day, Mon- 
 seigneur Court ois de Quincy, Bishop of Belley, was 
 informed that an asparagus head had just pierced the soil 
 in His Eminence's kitchen-garden, and that it was worth 
 looking at. Cardinal and convives rose from table, 
 
THE MATERIALS FOE DIKINa. 183 
 
 visited tlie spot, and were lost in admiration at what 
 they saw. Day by day the Bishop watched the growth of 
 the delicious giant. His mouth watered as he looked 
 at it, and happy was he when the day arrived in which 
 he might with his own hands take it from the ground. 
 When he did so, he found, to his disappointment, that he 
 held a wooden counterfeit, admirably turned and painted 
 by the Canon E-osset, who was famous for his artistic 
 abilities, and also for his practical jokes. The joke on 
 this occasion was taken in good part, and the counterfeit 
 asparagus was admitted to the honour of lying on the 
 Bishop's table. 
 
 I have noticed, that asparagus has been suggested as 
 one of the substitutes for coffee. In this case, the seeds 
 are taken from the berries, by drying the latter in an 
 oven, and rubbing them on a sieve. When ground, the 
 seeds make a full-flavoured coffee, not inferior, it is said, 
 — ^but that is doubtful, — to the best Mocha. 
 
 It was the opinion of Pliny, that nature intended aspa- 
 ragus to grow wild, in order that all might eat thereof. 
 That was esteemed the best which grew naturally on the 
 mountain-sides. The famous Eavenna asparagus was 
 cultivated with such perfection, that three of them 
 weighed a pound. Lobster surrounded with asparagus was 
 a favourite dish ; and the rapidity with which the latter 
 should be cooked, is illustrated, as I have said, by a pro- 
 verb: " Velocius quam asparagi coquuntur f^ There is 
 a story told of an intrusive traveller forcing his company 
 at supper on another wayfarer, before whom were placed 
 an omelette and some asparagus. The intruder had not 
 before seen any " grass," and inquired what it was. " 0, 
 it is very well in its way," said the other, "and we will 
 divide both omelette and asparagus;" and therewith, 
 after carving the first, he cut the bimch in two, and gave 
 the white ends to the importunate visitor. The greatest 
 
184 TABLE TEAITS. 
 
 indignation ever experienced by Careme, was once at 
 hearing that some guests had eaten asparagus with one 
 of his new entremets, and mixed it ill their mouths with 
 iced champagne. 
 
 There is an opinion current in some parts of England, 
 that they who eat of old parsnips that have been long in 
 the ground invariably go mad ; and on this account the 
 root is called " mad-nip." On some such " insane root," 
 it is said, the Indians, named by Garcilasso, whetted 
 their appetites before they ate their dead parents. Such 
 form of entombment was accounted most dignified and 
 dutiful. If the defunct was lean, the children boiled 
 their parent ; but obesity was always honoured by roast- 
 ing. Fathers and mothers were religiously picked to the 
 very bones, and the bones themselves were then con- 
 signed to the earth. This, however, is not an exclusively 
 Indian custom. The Indians only devoured their de- 
 ceased parents ; but I have seen, in Christian England, 
 many a son devouring father and mother, too, during 
 their lives, swallowing their very substance, and then^ 
 like the Indians, committing their bones to the bosom of 
 a tender mother, — earth. 
 
 Perhaps there is nothing, in the vegetable way, more 
 insipid than parsnips ; but these are sometimes as mis- 
 chievous as insipid persons. This is the case, if the 
 a.bove-named tradition be worthy of credit, wherein we are 
 told, that old parsnips are called " mad-nips," and that 
 the maids who eat of them invariably become more like 
 Salmacis than the youth she wooed, and are as much 
 given to dancing as though they had been bitten by a 
 tarantula. I fear the "mad-nip" is too much eaten in 
 many of our rural districts, and perhaps by the acerha 
 Virgo of metropoHtan towns and episcopal cities also. 
 But let us look at our ancient friend, the potato. 
 
 It has been well said, that the first art in boiling a 
 
THE MATEBIALS FOB DINING. 185 
 
 potato, is to prevent the boiling of the potato. " Upon 
 the heat and flame of the distemper sprinkle cool 
 patience;" for without patience, care, and attention, — 
 extreme vigilance being implied by the latter, a potato 
 will never come out of the pot triumphantly well boiled. 
 
 The potato has been found in ^n indigenous state in 
 ChiH, on the mountains near Valparaiso and Mendoza; 
 also near Monte Video, Lima, Quito, in Santa Fe da 
 Bogota, and on the banks of the Orizaba, in Mexico. 
 Cobbett cursed the root as being that of the ruin of Ire- 
 land, where it is said to have been first planted by 
 Ealeigh, on his estate at Youghal, near Cork. Its intro- 
 duction into England is described as the effect of acci- 
 dent, in consequence of the wrecking of a vessel on the 
 coast of Lancashire, which had a quantity of this " fruit" 
 on board. 
 
 The common potato (solanum tuberosum) was probably 
 first brought to Spain from Quito by the Spaniards, in 
 the early part of the sixteenth century. In both of 
 those countries the tubers are known by the designation 
 of papas. In passing from Spain into Italy, it naturalized 
 itself under the name of " the truffle." In 1598, we hear 
 of its arrival at Vienna, and thence spreading over 
 Europe. It certainly was not known in North America 
 in 1586, the period at which Ealeigh's colonists in Vir- 
 ginia are said to have sent it to England ; and in the 
 latter country it was not known until long after its 
 introduction, as noticed above, into Ireland. In Gerard's 
 Herbal (1597) the Batata Virginiana, as it is called, to 
 distinguish it from the Batata JEdulis, or " sweet potato," 
 is described ; and the author recommends the root, not 
 for common food, but as " a delicate dish." The sweet 
 potato was the "delicate dish" at English tables long 
 before the introduction of its honest cousin. We im- 
 ported it from Spain and the Canaries, and in very consi- 
 derable quantities. It enjoyed the reputation of possess- 
 
186 TABLE TEAITS. 
 
 ing power to restore decayed vigour. This reputation 
 has not escaped Shakspeare, who makes FalstaiF exult- 
 ingly remark, in a fit of pleasant excitement, that " it 
 rains potatoes!" The Eoyal Society of England, in 
 1663, urgently recommended the extensive cultivation of 
 the root as a resource against threatened famine ; hut as 
 late as the end of that century, a good hundred years 
 after its first introduction, the writers on gardening con- 
 tinued to treat its merits with a contemptuous indiffer- 
 ence ; though one of them does " damn with faint 
 praise," hy remarking, that " they are much used in Ire- 
 land and America as hread, and may he propagated with 
 advantage to poor people." As late as 1719, the potato 
 was not deemed worthy of heing named in the " Com- 
 plete Gardener " of Loudon and Wise, and it was not till 
 the middle of the last century that it became generally 
 used in Britain and North America. The " conserva- 
 tives of gulosity" of that day continued long to dispa- 
 ragingly describe it as " a root found in the New World, 
 consisting of little knobs, held together by strings : if 
 you boil it well, it can be eaten ; it may become an arti- 
 cle of food ; it will certainly do for hogs ; and though it is 
 rather flatulent and acid in the human stomach, perhaps, 
 if you boil it with dates, it may serve to keep soul and 
 body together, among those who can find nothing better." 
 Some sixty years since, the Dutch introduced the 
 potato into Bengal. The produce was sold in Calcutta 
 at 5^. a pound. The English tried to raise them, and all 
 their plants grew like Jack's bean-stalk, but lacked its 
 strength. The Hollanders continually cut the swiftly- 
 growing plant, and so compelled it to produce its fruit 
 beneath the ground. The secret was as well worth 
 knowing as that other touching potatoes during frost. 
 The only precaution necessary is, to retain the potato in 
 a perfectly dark place, for some days after the thaw has 
 commenced. In America, where they are sometimes 
 
THE MATEEIALS FOE DINING. 187 
 
 frozen as hard as stones, they rot if thawed in open day ; 
 but if thawed in darkness, they do not rot, and lose very 
 little of their natural odour and properties. So, at least, 
 they assert, who profess to have means of best knowing. 
 The potato is said to have been first planted, in England, 
 in the county of Lancashire, which was once as famous 
 for the plant as Lithuania is for beet-root. It is not 
 much more than a century since cabbages reached us 
 from Holland. They were first planted in Dorsetshire, 
 by the Ashleys ; and I may add here what I have omit- 
 ted in speaking of it in earlier times, namely, that the 
 Athenians administered the juice of it in cases of slow 
 parturition. Let me farther add, that such terms as 
 "cow-cabbage," "horse-radish," "bull-rush," and the 
 like, do not imply any connexion between the article and 
 the animal. The animal prefix is simply to signify 
 unusual size. The prefix was commonly so applied 
 by the ancients : hence the name of Alexander's charger ; 
 and a not less familiar illustration is afforded us in the 
 case of the "horse-leech." Cabbage used to have said of 
 it what Lemery, physician of Louis XIV., more truly said 
 of spinach ; namely, that " it stops coughing, allays the 
 sharp humours of the breast, and keeps the body open." 
 Spinach, to be truly enjoyed, should never be eaten with- 
 out liberal saturation of gravy ; and French epicures say, 
 "Do not forget the nutmeg." This vegetable goes excel- 
 lently with swine's flesh in every shape, but especially 
 ham, the stimulating flavour of which it strongly modifies. 
 Rice, as an article of food, has something remarkable in 
 it. Its cultivation destroys life ; and when the grain is 
 eaten, its value as a supporter of strength is very uncer- 
 tain. The cultivation of this production, where it does 
 not destroy life, does destroy comfort, and slaves may be 
 compelled, but freemen will not go voluntarily, to raise 
 the "paddy crop." In India, where the people of many 
 districts depend upon it entirely as a chief article of food, 
 
188 TABLE TRAITS. 
 
 famine is often the result, simply because the failure of 
 one crop leaves the unenergetic people without any other 
 present resource. 
 
 And now, by way of a concluding word to those who 
 read medicinally, I would say, on the best authority, 
 first, that of the haricot-bean I have nothing to add to 
 what I have already stated. With regard to peas, they 
 are, like many other things, most pleasant and wholesome 
 when young. Old, they are the fathers of gaseous cohc ; 
 and, when swallowed with the additional tenacity of tex- 
 ture derived from being made into pudding, — why, then 
 the unhappy consumer is a man to be pitied. Potatoes 
 are best baked, or roasted lightly. In the latter case, 
 they are scarcely less nutritious than bread; but the 
 potato must be in full health, and the cooking unexception- 
 able. There is many a cook who could execute, to a 
 charm, the fricandeau invented by Leo X., who has not 
 the remotest idea of cooking a potato. When the Flem- 
 ings sent us the carrot, in the reign of Elizabeth, it is a 
 pity they could not have deprived it of its fibrine texture, 
 the drawback to be set against its saccharine nutritive- 
 ness. As the Komans waxed strong upon the turnip, we 
 may allow that it has some virtues, and that Charles the 
 First's Secretary, Lord Townshend, did good service by 
 re-introducing it to his countrymen. Like the Jerusalem 
 artichoke, it requires a strong accompaniment of salt and 
 pepper, to counteract its watery and flatulent influences. 
 As for radishes, he who eats them is tormenting his 
 stomach with bad water, woody fibre, and acrid poison ; 
 and if his stomach resents such treatment, why, it most 
 emphatically "serves him right." As for cucumber, in 
 the days of Evelyn, it was looked upon as only one 
 remove from poison, and it had better be eaten and 
 enjoyed with that opinion in memory. It is a pity that 
 what is pleasant is not always vvrhat is proper. Thus the 
 cucumber is attractive, but not nutritive ; while the onion, 
 
THE MATEEIALS FOB DIKIKG. 189 
 
 at whose very name every man stands with his hand to 
 his mouth, like a Persian in the act of ad-oration, is 
 exceedingly nourishing and wholesome. But I can never 
 think of it, without remembering the story of the man 
 who, having breakfasted early on bread and onions, entered 
 an inn on a bitterly cold morning, with the remark, that 
 for the last two hours he had had the wind in his teeth. 
 " Had you ?" said the unfortunate person who happened 
 to be nearest to him : " then, by Jove, the wind had the 
 worst of it !" 
 
 An onion is all very well as an ingre^lient in a sauce, 
 but to make a meal of it ! Well ! it is on record that 
 a dinner has been made, at which nothing was served but 
 sauces. A dinner of sauces must have been quickly pre- 
 pared ; but, for quick preparation, I know nothing that 
 can vie with a feat accomplished, on the 18th of March 
 of the present year, at the Freemasons' Tavern. The 
 " Eound-Catch-and-Canon Club" were to dine there at 
 half-past five p.m. An hour previously, the active Secre- 
 tary, Mr. Francis, Yicar-Choral of St. Paul's, arrived, to 
 see that " all was right." He found all wrong. Through 
 some mistake, no company was expected ; and, there 
 being no other dinners ordered for that day, the weary 
 proprietors, and their chief " aids," were enjoying a little 
 relaxation. Not only were the high priestesses of the 
 kitchen "out," but the sacred fires of the altars had fol- 
 lowed their example. Great was the horror of the able 
 counter-tenor Secretary ; but the difficulty was trium- 
 phantly met by the accomplished officers of the establish- 
 ment ; and, at six o'clock precisely, forty-two of us sat 
 down to so perfect a banquet, that the shade of Careme 
 might have contemplated it with a smile of unalloyed 
 satisfaction. This house may boast of this tour de force 
 for ever ! 
 
SAUCES. 
 
 The donor of the sauce dinner, mentioned in tlie last 
 page, was an eccentric old Major. He invited three persons 
 to partake of this unique repast. The soup consisted of 
 gravy sauce, and oyster and lobster sauce were handed 
 round instead of filet de sole. Then came the sirloin in 
 guise of Qgg sauce, on the ground, I suppose, that an Q^g 
 is proverbially "full of meat." There was no pheasant, 
 but there was bread sauce, to put his guests in mind of 
 the flavour ; and if they had not plum-pudding, they had 
 as much towards it as coidd be implied by brandy sauce ; 
 just as Heyne says, that Munich is the modern Athens in 
 this far, — that if it has not the philosophers, it has the hem- 
 lock, and has Alcibiades' dog, as a preparation towards get- 
 ting Alcibiades. The sauce-boats were emptied by the guests. 
 The wine was well-resorted to after each boat, and a little 
 brandy settled the viand that was represented by the 
 Qg^ sauce. Half the guests, between excess of lobster 
 sauce and Cognac, were all the worse for the banquet ; but 
 that proved rather the weakness of their stomachs, than 
 the non-excellence of the feast. It is said that the Major, 
 when alone in the evening, wound up with a rump-steak 
 supper, — a process rather characteristic of the " old 
 soldier ;" but I have heard, in a provincial town, of large 
 parties to "tea," followed by a snug family party, when 
 the guests were all departed, to a hot supper, with the 
 usual et cceteras. But let us get back from the supper to 
 the matter of seasonings. 
 
SAUCES. 191 
 
 Seasonings may be said to form an important item in 
 the practice and results of cookery. The first, and most 
 useful and natural, is salt. The ancients did not allow, at 
 one time, of its use in sacrifices ; but Homer called it 
 " divine,'* and Plutarch speaks of it as acceptable to the 
 gods. Its value was not known to men until the 
 Phoenicians, Selech and Misor, — so, at least, says an 
 ancient legend, — taught mankind the real worth of this 
 production as a condiment, and thereby gave to meat 
 increased flavour, and to the eaters of it increased health 
 and improved digestions. 
 
 The Eoman soldiers received their pay in solarium, or 
 " salt -money." The Mexican rulers punished rebellious pro- 
 vinces by interdicting the use of salt ; and Holland, some 
 years since, cruelly took vengeance on the breakers of the 
 law, by serving them with food, without salt, during the 
 term of their imprisonment. The poor wretches were 
 almost devoured by worms, in consequence of this inhuman 
 proceeding. 
 
 Of course, the salt-money of the soldiery was, like the 
 pin-money of a married lady, employed in other ways than 
 those warranted by its appellation. For above three centu- 
 ries, soldiers sevYed gratis, and supported themselves. Then 
 came " salt-money," or salarmm, in the shape of a couple 
 of oboli daily to the foot, and a drachma to the cavalry. 
 This was to the common men. The Tribunes were, how- 
 ever, exorbitantly paid, if Juvenal's allusion may be 
 trusted, wherein he says that, — 
 
 " alter enim, quantum in legione Trihuni 
 
 Accipiu7it, donat Calvince vel Catience ; " 
 
 or, as it may be translated, — 
 
 " Such sums as a fuU Coloners coffers swell, 
 He flings to Lola, or to Laura Bell ! " 
 
 But this must have been in very late times, previous to 
 
192 TABLE TEAITS. 
 
 which frugality, modesty, and indifferent pay were ever 
 the Tribune's share of the national virtues and their con- 
 sequences, lauded by Livy. The first Csesar doubled the 
 salarium of the army, and decreed that it should never be 
 reduced. His successors followed the example of increase. 
 Augustus fixed the salt-money at ten asses a day, and by 
 the time of Domitian it was considerably more than 
 double that amount. From that period, the soldiery fed 
 better, and fought worse, than ever. Up to the time of 
 the Empire they had been frugal livers, and were not 
 above preparing the rations of corn allowed them with 
 their own hands : some ground it in hand-mills, others 
 pounded it between stones, and the hastily-baked cakes 
 were eaten contentedly upon the turf, with nothing better 
 to wash them down than pure water, or, at best, posca, 
 which was water mixed with vinegar, — and a very whole- 
 some beverage, too, in hot weather. 
 
 The Jewish dispensation, unlike that of the early 
 Olympian theology, enforced the use of salt in all sacri- 
 ficial ceremonies. That of the Dead Sea was abundant ; 
 and Gralen pronounced it as the most favourable for 
 seasoning, and for promoting digestion. The Greeks 
 learned to call it " divine," and at last consecrated it to 
 their gods. Spilling salt was accounted as unlucky in 
 the days when " young Time counted his birthdays by the 
 sun," as in these modern times when the schoolmaster 
 is abroad, — sometimes too much abroad. 
 
 Ancus Martins was the first of the Eoman Kings who 
 levied a duty on salt. He was not visited by the gods 
 — as legends say other Kings were who created such 
 imposts — by some dire calamity. The bad example of 
 Ancus Martins has continued over nearly the whole of 
 Europe ; and a slave cannot eat salt to his bread without 
 paying tribute to the King. 
 
 The word " salt " was often used for life itself. When 
 
SAUCES. 193 
 
 Dordalus says to Toxilus, in the '^ Persa,^' '^ Eodem mihi 
 jpretio sal prcshibetur quce tihi,^'' — " I get my salt at the 
 same price as you do," — he simply means that his man- 
 ner of life is as good as that of Toxilus, and that a slave- 
 merchant is as respectable as the very best-fed of slaves 
 themselves. Catullus employs the word to denote 
 beauty ; other poets use it to signify virtues of various 
 kinds ; and in Terence we find a man without salt to 
 mean a man without sense. Plutarch was not wrong 
 when he styled salt "the condiment of condiments." I 
 do not know that it has ever been used to point a pro- 
 verb with a contemptuous meaning, except in Greece, 
 where he who had nothing to dine upon was called a 
 " salt-licker." Rome, where it was of such commercial 
 importance, honoured it more by giving to the road 
 along which it was conveyed the name of " the Salarian 
 Way." 
 
 There were people who never knew its use, as in 
 Epeiros ; some who have steadily rejected it, as the 
 Bathurst tribe in Australia. The Peruvians delighted in 
 it, and ate it mixed with hot pepper and bitter herbs, as a 
 sort of "sweetmeat." How sacred it is in Arabia, we all 
 know ; and, in illustration of it, I have heard of an Arab 
 burglar accidentally letting his tongue come in contact, as 
 he was plundering a house by night, with a piece of salt. 
 He instantly deemed he had partaken of the owner's 
 hospitality, and he departed without booty. Could 
 Christian thieves be so influenced, we should salt our 
 plate-baskets and cash-boxes nightly ! 
 
 In Sicily a salt is spoken of that melts only in fire, and 
 hardens in water. At XJtica, one of the great salt 
 suppliers of the ancient world, it lay about in such huge 
 mounds, hardened by the sun and moon, that the pickaxe 
 would scarcely penetrate it. In Arabia whole cities were 
 once built of it, the blocks of salt being cemented by 
 
 o 
 
194 TABLE TRAITS. 
 
 water. It is still procured with most difficulty in 
 Abyssinia, where the clouds are supposed to deposit 
 the crystal in sandy plains, of heat so furious, that it 
 is only during one or two hours of the night that the 
 seekers of it dare dash into the locality, and carry off, as 
 hastily as possible, what they seek. It is procured far 
 more pleasantly in those parts of Chili where it is found 
 deposited on the leaves of plants. Off the warmer coasts 
 of South America, and the still hotter shores of Africa, 
 blocks weighing from one to two hundred weight have 
 been picked up. Some writers tell us that lakes are nothing 
 more than salt plains in solution ; and others, that salt 
 plains are merely lakes congealed. However this may be, 
 it is known that generally four gallons of water produce 
 one of salt ; but there is great difference of result in 
 various localities, some water yielding a sixth, other only 
 a sixteenth. The deep sea- water is the most highly pro- 
 ductive. There are various strange ingredients, too, 
 used in different places to make the salt "grain" 
 properly. White of egg, butter, ale, and even blood, are 
 employed to produce the desired result. In its fossil or 
 mineral state it is nowhere seen to such great advan- 
 tage as in the mines of Williska, in Poland. I have seen 
 those near Salzburg, in southern Austria ; bub these are 
 mere salt-cellars, compared with the Polish mine, which 
 forms a large subterranean city, has its streets, citizens, 
 and coteries, and is an underground republic, many of 
 the natives of which die without seeing a blade of grass, 
 or a gleam of sunlight, upon the bosom of the upper 
 earth. 
 
 Finally, salt is the most natural stimulant for the 
 digestive organs ; but it shoTild be remembered that too 
 much of it is almost as bad as too little. The lowering 
 of the price of salt, a consequence of the abolition of the 
 duty, was beneficial to the poor, and ruinous to the 
 
SAUCES. 195 
 
 worm-doctors. It is a singular production. In small 
 quantities it is a stimulating manure ; in large quantities 
 it begets sterility. A little of it accelerates putrefaction, 
 ' while a large quantity prevents it. Farther, it is to be 
 remembered, — and I have mentioned the fact in another 
 page, — that the salt in salted meat is not (whatever it 
 may once have been) the table salt, the use of which is so 
 favourable to digestion. In the meat it undergoes a 
 chymical change, by which it deteriorates itself as well as 
 the object to which it is applied. " Sweet salt " was the 
 name once given to sugar ; and in reference to this latter 
 production, it may be safely averred, that its introduction 
 worked a considerable change in society. And it appears 
 to have been early added to that " significant luxury," 
 wheat. In Isaiah xliii. 24 there is an allusion made to 
 it in these words : " Thou hast bought me no sweet cane 
 with money, neither hast thou filled me with the fat of 
 sacrifices." And again, in Jeremiah vi. 20: " To what 
 purpose Cometh there to me incense from Sheba, and 
 sweet cane from afar country?" It would seem, how- 
 ever, that though the sweet cane may have been known, 
 its uses were not very speedily appreciated, or, if they 
 were, that they were for a long time forgotten. Thus, 
 as late as the thirteenth century of our era, a writer 
 speaks of a novel sort of salt that has been discovered, 
 the flavour of which was sweet, and, as he suggests, 
 might be found acceptable to sick persons, because of its 
 soothing and cooling properties. " Honey out of the 
 rock," which was the sweetener most early noticed in 
 Scripture, fell into comparative disuse, after sugar had 
 become a necessary of life, after being first a medicine, 
 and then a luxury. The Spaniards received it from the 
 Arabs, and familiarized it in Europe. Its first settlement 
 beyond the Continent was in Madeira, and at length it 
 found a congenial soil in the islands of the Western 
 
 o 2 
 
196 TABLE TRAITS. 
 
 Indies. God gave the gift, but man has discovered how 
 to abuse it to his own destruction ; and, from the sweet 
 food offered by an angel, he has distilled the fire-water, 
 which slays like the pestilence. But to return, for a 
 moment, from the sweets to the salts, and especially to 
 the latter in the form of brine. 
 
 The Romans were fond of brine, — water in which bay- 
 salt had been dissolved, — as a seasoning ; and after dinner, 
 those who could not guess the riddles that were put to 
 them, were punished, like the refractory gentlemen at the 
 Nightingale Club, by being compelled to swallow a cup- 
 full, without drawing breath. Apicius invented a com- 
 position made up of salt, pepper, ginger, thyme, celery, 
 rocket, and anise-seed, w^ith lamoni, wild marjoram, holy 
 thistle, spikenard, parsley, and hyssop, as a specific to be 
 taken, after heavy dinners, against indigestion. They 
 who could digest the remedy need not have been afraid 
 of the dinner. 
 
 That universal seasoning of the classical world, the 
 Cfarum, was originally a shrimp sauce ; but it was subse- 
 quently made of the intestines of almost any fish, mace- 
 rated in water, saturated with salt ; and when symptoms 
 of putrefaction began to appear, a little parsley and 
 vinegar were added ; and there was the famous gariim, 
 of which the inventors were so proud, — and particularly 
 of a garum which was prepared in Spain. Flesh instead 
 of fish was occasionally used, with no difference in the 
 process of preparation ; and it would be difficult to say 
 which was the nastier. But, perhaps, if we could see 
 the witchery of preparing any of our own flavouring 
 sauces, we should be reluctant ever to allow a drop of the 
 polluted mixture to pass our lips. There is a bliss in 
 ignorance. 
 
 Pythagoras showed better taste in the science of 
 seasonings, when he took to eating nothing but honey 
 
SAUCES. 197 
 
 wherewith to flavour his bread. Hybla sounds sweet, 
 the very word smells sweet, from its association with 
 honey. Aristseus, who is said to have discovered its use, 
 merited the patent of nobility, whereby he was declared 
 to have descended from the gods; and the placing the 
 honeycomb and its makers under the protection of Mel- 
 lona, expressly made by men for this purpose, was a proof 
 of the value in which they were held. Theophrastus 
 placed sugar among the honeys, — the honey of reeds, — 
 or the "salt of India," as some strangely called it. The 
 Greek physicians recommended its use, both as food and 
 as flavourer. It was at one time as scarce as cinnamon, 
 — that precious bark of which the phoenix made its nest, 
 and which the Caesars monopolized. Cinnamon and cloves 
 were not employed in seasoning until a comparatively 
 modern period. The good people of earlier days pre- 
 ferred verjuice, in certain cases prescribed by Galen. 
 They seemed to have a taste for acids : hence the admira- 
 tion, both in Greece and Rome, for vinegar and pickles. 
 Yinegar figured in the army statistics of Home especially ; 
 but it once, at least, figured in a still more remarkable 
 way in the statistics of the French army, in the time 
 of Louis XIII., when the Due de la Meilleraye, Grand 
 Master of the Artillery of France, put down £52,000 
 as the sum expended by him in cooling cannons. How 
 hot the war must have been, and at what a price 
 the fever must have been maintained, when the merely 
 refrigerating process cost so much ! 
 
 French epicures maintain that the pig was born to be 
 "ringed," and that his mission was to rout at the foot of 
 the yoke-elm trees, and turn up trufiles 1 Pliny gravely 
 looked upon the trufile as a prodigy sown by the thunder- 
 bolt in autumnal storms. However this may be, all 
 lovers of good things eat the trufile with a sort of 
 devout ecstasy, in spite of the wide differences of opinion 
 
198 TABLE TKAITS. 
 
 which exist among the faculty of guessers, as to whether 
 the truffle be nutritious or poisonous, fit for food, or 
 monster sire of indigestion. The fact is, that they 
 should be delicately dealt with, like mushrooms ; of which 
 he who eats little is wise, and he who eats not of them 
 at all is safe from blaming them for bringing on indiges- 
 tion — as far as he is concerned. 
 
 The truffle is thus elaborately, yet not verbosely, 
 described by Archimagirus Soyer : " The truffle is a very 
 remarkable vegetable, which, without stems, roots, or 
 fibres, grows of itself, isolated in the bosom of the earth, 
 absorbing the nutritive juice. Its form is round, more or 
 less regular ; its surface is smooth, or tuberculous ; the 
 colour, dark brown outside, brown, grey, or white within. 
 Its tissue is formed of articulated filaments, between which 
 are spheric vesicles, and in the interior are placed repro- 
 ductive bodies, small brown spheres, called ' truffinelles.^ 
 Truffles vegetate to the depth of five or six inches in the 
 high sandy soils of the south-west of France, Piedmont, 
 &c. Their mode of vegetation and reproduction is not 
 known. (?) Dogs are trained to find them, as well as 
 pigs, and boars also, who are very fond of them. They 
 are eaten cooked under the ashes, or in wine and water. 
 They are preserved when prepared in oil, which is soon 
 impregnated with their odour. Poultry is stuffed with 
 them ; also geese's livers, pies, and cooked pork, besides 
 numerous ragouts. They possess, as it is said, exciting 
 virtues." The latter, we suppose, is a paraphrase for the 
 sentiment of " Falstaff," before cited, "It rains pota- 
 toes!" Shell-fish had the same reputation in the olden 
 time. " Tene marsupium,^^ says Italius to Olympio, in 
 the JRudens : — 
 
 " jibi atque ohsonia propera ; sed lepide volo 
 Molliculas escas, ut ipsa mollicula est^ 
 
 As for the mushroom, if it be not in itself deadly, 
 
SAUCES. 199 
 
 it has been made the vehicle of death. Agrippina poisoned 
 Claudius in one, and Nero, his successor, had a respect 
 for this production ever after. Tiberius, in Pagan, and 
 Clement VII., in Papal, Eome, as well as Charles VI. of 
 France, are also said to have been "approximately" 
 killed by mushrooms. Seneca calls them " voluptuous 
 poison," and of this poison his countrymen ate heartily, 
 and suffered dreadfully. The mushroom was not ren- 
 dered harmless by the process of Nicander, — raising them 
 under the shadow of a well-irrigated and richly-manured 
 fig-tree. 
 
 One of the most perfect illustrations of "sauce," in 
 its popular sense, with which I am acquainted, is con- 
 veyed in the reply once given by a French Cure to his 
 Bishop. It is a regulation made by canonical law, that 
 a Priest cannot keep a female servant to manage his 
 household, unless she be of the assigned age of, at least, 
 forty years. It once happened that a Bishop dined with 
 a Cure^ at whose house the Prelate had arrived in the 
 course of a visitation tour. On that occasion he found 
 that they were waited on at dinner by two quietly pretty 
 female attendants, of some twenty years each. When 
 diocesan and subordinate were once more alone, the 
 former remarked on the uncanonical condition of the 
 household, and asked the Cure if he were not aware that, 
 by rule of church, he could maintain but one menagere, 
 who must have attained, at least, forty years of age ? 
 " I am quite aware of it, Monseigneur^'' said the rubicund 
 Cure ; " but, as you see, I prefer having my housekeeper 
 in two volumes !" 
 
 With respect to the use of spices, it may be safely said, 
 that the less they are used, the better for the stomach. 
 A soupqon of them in certain preparations is not to be 
 objected to ; but it must be recollected that in most 
 cases, however pleasant they may be to the palate, the 
 
200 TAELE TEAITS. 
 
 apparent vigour which they give to the stomach is at 
 the expense of the liver, and the reaction leaves the 
 former in a worse condition than it was in before. 
 
 The world probably never saw a second time such a 
 trade in spices as that which was carried on of old 
 between Canaan and Egypt. The Dutch and Amboyna 
 was a huckstering matter compared with it. Egypt sent 
 Canaan her corn, wine, oil, and linen ; and Canaan sent, 
 in return, her spicery, balm, myrrh, precious woods, and 
 minerals. The Ishmaelites were the carrying merchants ; 
 and, while each class of them had its especial article of 
 commerce, they all dabbled a little in slave-dealing. 
 Thus, the men of the tribe that purchased Joseph dealt 
 in spicery only, — a term including balm and myrrh. The 
 Egyptian demand for the article was enormous. At the 
 period of the sale of Joseph, spicery was most extensively 
 used, not only for the embalming of men, but of sacred 
 animals. In after times, this practice ceased to a great 
 extent, on account of a large failure in the supply. 
 
 There is something very characteristic of the " ancient 
 nation" in the transaction of the brethren with respect 
 to Joseph. The general proposal was to slay him ; but 
 it was Judah, first of his race, who, with a strong eye to 
 business, exclaimed, "What profit to slay our brother, 
 and conceal his blood ? Come, let us sell Mm to the 
 Ishmaelites." The opposition to fratricide, on the part 
 of Judah, was not on the principle that it was a crime, 
 but that it brought nothing. But, no sooner had he 
 pointed out how they might get rid of the troublesome 
 brother, and put money in their purses to boot, than the 
 profligate kinsmen adopted the project with alacrity, pre- 
 ferring lucrative felony to downright profitless murder. 
 - — Do I hear you remark. Sir, that it has ever been thus 
 with this rebellious Jewish people ? Well, let us not be 
 rash in assertions. Judah was a very mercenary fellow, 
 
SAUCES. 201 
 
 no doubt ; but it was better to sell a live brother into a 
 slavery which gave him the chance of sitting at the table 
 of Pharaoh Phiops, than to murder one for the mere sake 
 of making money by the sale of the body, as was done by 
 a Christian gentleman of the name of Burke. 
 
 There are some plants used in seasoning which have 
 been esteemed for other virtues besides lending a fillip to 
 the appetite. Others of these seasoning plants have 
 acquired an evil reputation. Thus orach was said to 
 cause pallor and dropsy. Eocket had a double use : it 
 not only was said to remove freckles, but an infusion of it 
 in wine rendered the hide of a scourged convict insensible to 
 the whip. Fennel was, unlike asparagus, held to be good 
 for the sight. Dill, on the other hand, injured the eyes, 
 while it strengthened the stomach. Anise-seed was in 
 great favour with the medical philosophers, who pre- 
 scribed it to be taken, fasting, in wine ; and hyssop wine 
 was a specific for cutaneous eruptions, brought on by 
 drinking wine of a stronger quality. Wild thyme cm^ed 
 the bite of serpents, — if the sufierer could only collect it 
 in time ; and pennyroyal was sovereign for indigestion. 
 E/ue cured the ear-ache, and nullified poisons ; for which 
 latter purpose it was much used by Mithridates. Mint 
 was gaily eaten, with many a joke, because it was said to 
 have been originally a pretty girl, metamorphosed by 
 Proserpine. The Eomans, now and then, ate camomile 
 at table, just as old country ladies, when tea was first 
 introduced, and sent to them as a present, used to boil 
 the leaves, and serve them, at dinner, like spinach. 
 Capers, in the olden time, were vulgar berries, and left 
 for democratic digestion. " I once saw growing in 
 Italy," said an Irish traveller, fit to be "own correspond- 
 ent" to one of the morning papers, "the finest anchovies 
 I ever beheld !" A Hstener naturally doubted the alleged 
 fact ; and the ofiended Irishman not only called him out, 
 
202 TABLE TRAITS. 
 
 but shattered his knee-cap by a pistol-shot. As he was 
 leaping about with intensity of pain, the Irishman's 
 second remarked to his principal, that he had made his 
 adversary cut capers, at any rate. "Capers!" exclaimed 
 the Hibernian, " capers ! 'faith, that 's it. Sure, Sir," he 
 added, advancing to his antagonist, " you were right ; it 
 was not anchovies, but capers, that I saw growing. I 
 beg pardon: don't think any more about it." Let us 
 add, that, if the aristocratic ancients deeply declined 
 capers, they were exceedingly fond of assafoetida, as a 
 seasoning ingredient. Green ginger was also a popular 
 condiment ; and it is commonly eaten in Madagascar at 
 this day. I suppose that, in former times, Hull imported 
 this production in large quantities, and that therefore one 
 of her streets is called "the Land of Green Ginger." 
 The Komans gave wormwood wine to the charioteers, 
 perhaps considering that the stomachic beverage would 
 secure them from dizziness. 
 
 I have mentioned above that Mithridates patronized 
 rue as a nullifier of poisons. He was in the habit of 
 swallowing poisons, as people in the summer swallow 
 ices ; and he was famous for inventing antidotes, to 
 enable him to take them with impunity. One conse- 
 quence is, that he has gained a sort of immortality in our 
 pharmacopoeia; and " Mithridate," in pharmacy, is a 
 compound medicine, in form of an electuary, serving 
 as either a remedy or a preservative against poisons, being 
 also accounted a cordial, opiate, sudorific, and alexiphar- 
 mic. "Mithridate" is, or rather, I suppose, was, one of 
 the capital medicines in the apothecaries' shops. The 
 preparation of it, according to the direction of the Col- 
 lege, is as follows ; and I request my readers to peruse it 
 attentively, and to get it by heart, in case of necessity 
 supervening. Here is the facile recipe : " Take of cinna- 
 mon, fourteen drachms ; of myrrh, eleven drachms ; aga- 
 
SAUCES. 203 
 
 rick, spikenard, ginger, saffron, seeds of treacle-mustard, 
 frankincense, Ohio turpentine, of each ten drachms ; 
 camel's hay, costus, Indian leaf, French lavender, long 
 pepper, seeds of hartvvort, juice of the rape of cistus, 
 strained storax, opopanax, strained galbanum, balsam of 
 Gilead, or, in its stead, expressed oil of nutmegs, Eussian 
 castor, of each an ounce ; poly-mountain, water german- 
 der, the fruit of the balsam tree, seeds of the carrot of 
 Crete, bdellium strained, of each seven drachms ; Celtic 
 nard, gentian root, leaves of dittany of Crete, red roses, 
 seed of Macedonian parsley, the lesser Cardanum seeds 
 freed from their husks, sweet fennel seeds, gum Arabic, 
 opium strained, of each five drachms ; root of the sweet 
 flag, root of wild valerian, anise-seed, sagapenum strained, 
 of each three drachms ; spignel, St. John's wort, juice of 
 acacia, the beUies of scinks, of each two drachms and a 
 half ; of clarified honey, thrice the weight of all the rest : 
 dissolve the opium first in a little wine, and then mix it 
 with the honey made hot. In the mean time, melt toge- 
 ther, in another vessel, the galbanum, storax, turpentine, 
 and the balsam of Gilead, or the expressed oil of nutmeg," 
 (I have no doubt that one will do quite as well as the 
 other ; and this must be highly satisfactory for sufferers 
 to know,) " continually stirring them round, that they 
 may not burn ; and, as soon as these are melted, add to 
 them the hot honey, first by spoonsful, and afterwards 
 more freely. Lastly, when this mixture is nearly cold, 
 add by degrees the rest of the spices reduced to pow- 
 der," and, as the French quack used to say of his 
 
 specific for the toothache, if it does you no harm, it will 
 certainly do you no good. For my own part, I think the 
 remedy worse than the disease ; but a gentlejnan just 
 poisoned may be of another opinion ; and I can only say, 
 that if, with prussic acid knocking at his pylorus, he has 
 leisure to wait till the above prescription is made up for 
 
204} TABLE TRAITS. 
 
 him, — till the bellies of scinks and the camel's hay are 
 procured, and till the ingredients are amalgamated " by 
 degrees," — he will, if he survive the poison, the waiting, 
 and the remedy, have deserved to be called, /car i^oxhv, 
 the "patient." But here are the pastry and the fruits; 
 and there are people who are given to believe that pastry 
 and poison are not very wide asunder. 
 
 When Murat wished to instigate the Italians to labour, 
 he cut down their olive-trees. The Jews were forbidden 
 to destroy fruit-trees, even in an enemy's country ; and it 
 used to be a law in France, and may be so still, that when 
 an individual had received permission to cut down one of 
 his trees, it was on condition of his planting two. The 
 planters of vineyards enjoyed many privileges under the 
 Jewish dispensation, and heathen governments placed 
 both vineyards and orchards under the protection of the 
 most graceful of their deities, and these deities were sup- 
 posed to have an especial affection for particular trees. 
 The K-omans were skilled in forcing their fruits, which 
 w^ere produced at the third course, and not, as with the 
 Greeks, at the second. 
 
 Minerva is popularly said to have given birth to the 
 olive, which was the emblem of Peace, the latter being 
 naturally born of Wisdom. But the poisoned shafts of Her- 
 cules were made of the olive, perhaps to symbolize those 
 armed neutralities which are generally so fatal to powers 
 with whom the neutrals affect to be at peace. The Auto- 
 crat of Eussia, for instance, has been dealing very largely 
 in olive shafts, tipped with death. But the olive was 
 known to the world before Wisdom, taking flesh, sprang 
 in her bright panoply from the brain of her sire, and was 
 called Minerva. From Judea the olive was taken into 
 Greece ; it was not planted within the territory of Rome 
 until a later period ; and, finally, in Spain it found a soil 
 as favourable to cultivation as that of Decapolis, on holy 
 
rEuiTS. 205 
 
 ground. The Ancona olives were the most highly 
 esteemed by the Roman Patricians, at whose tables they 
 opened and closed the banquet. While the olives were 
 greedily swallowed, the expressed oil was distributed by 
 way of largess to the people. It was declared to possess, 
 if not a vital principle, something that stimulated and 
 maintained vitality. Augustus, who was for ever whin- 
 ingly hoping that he might die easily, and for ever 
 chanting the prayer, "Euthanasia!" asked Pollio how 
 he might best maintain his health and strength in old 
 age. " You have nothing in the world to do," said Pollio, 
 " but to drink abundance of wine, and lubricate your impe- 
 rial carcase with plenty of oil!" — a prescription which 
 does not say much for the medical instruction of Pollio. 
 Olive oil was so scarce at one time, in Europe, that 
 in 817 the Council of Aix-la-Chapelle authorized the 
 priests to manufacture anointing oil from bacon. With 
 regard to the fruit itself, it has not even yet undisputed 
 possession of the public approval ; and I am very much of 
 the opinion of the farmer who, having taken some at his 
 landlord's table, expressed his indignation on reaching 
 home, that he had been served with gooseberries stewed 
 in brine. 
 
 The palm-tree wine of the Hebrews inspired song, 
 and thence, perhaps, did the palm itself pass into the 
 possession of the mythological Muses. The palm-tree 
 deserved to be a popular tree : its wood furnished man 
 with a house, its branches with fuel ; its leaves afforded 
 him garments, and a bed ; and from them he could manu- 
 facture baskets, wherein to carry the fruit, bread, and 
 cakes which he could make from its dates. I am only 
 astonished that tradition has not made the palm, rather 
 than the beech or the oak, the original tree which first 
 fed, clothed, and sheltered man. 
 
 The cherry, compared with the palm, is but as a rustic 
 
206 TABLE TRAITS. 
 
 beauty, compared witli Cleopatra. Mitliridates and Lu- 
 cullus share the glory of making men acquainted with its 
 fruit. From Cerasus, in Asia, Lucullus, no doubt, trans- 
 planted a cultivated fruit-tree, of a peculiarly fine sort ; 
 but the fruit itself was not unknown to the Eomans long 
 anterior to the time of Lucullus. It was slow in acquiring 
 an esteem in Italy. The most extraordinary species of 
 cherry with which I am acquainted, is the Australian 
 cherry, which grows with the stone on the outside. But 
 Nature, in Australia, is distinguished for her freaks. 
 There the pears are made of wood, and salt-water fish 
 abound in the fresh-water rivers ! The nastiest species I 
 know of, grows in the vicinity of, and some of them 
 within, the cemetery of Pere-la-Chaise, at Paris. They 
 are magnificent to the eye, and are not ill-flavoured ; 
 but, at the heart of each there is a maggot, as fat as 
 one of Eubens's Cupids, and, saving a slight bitterness, 
 wnth as much of the taste of the cherry in him as a 
 citizen of ripe Stilton has of the cheese of which he is so 
 lively a part. There is not "a bad story told of an old 
 and poor Spanish Grandee, who used to put on spectacles 
 when he sat down to his modest dinner of bread and 
 cherries, in order that the fruit might gain, apparently, 
 in magnitude. There was philosophy in this pleasant 
 conceit ! If the poor nobleman had had a dish of our 
 cherries, from Kent, Berks, or Oxfordshire, he would not 
 have stood in need of his merry delusion. 
 
 How grateful to the palate is the Armenian apricot, 
 blushing, in its precocity, like a young n^^mph ; or the 
 Persian peach, for a couple of which the E-omans would 
 give a score of pounds 1 The peach has an evil tradition 
 with it. It is said to have been originally poisonous, but 
 to have lost its deadliness when it was transplanted. 
 Perhaps the peculiarly peachy odour of prussic acid may 
 have contributed to give currency to a very long-lived, 
 
FRUITS, 207 
 
 but entirely fonndationless, tradition, — except, indeed, 
 that poison may be extracted from the kernel ; but so may 
 arsenic from a Turkey carpet, and, indeed, from apple- 
 pips also, as Sir Fitzroy Kelly told the jury, when endea- 
 vouring to save from the gallows a man who had mur- 
 dered his mistress, in order that he might not put in peril 
 his respectability ! Perhaps the plum-tree, whether of 
 Africa or Asia, from Egypt or Damascus, has been more 
 fatal to health, if not to life, than any other of the stone- 
 fruits. When Pliny complained of their superabundant 
 propagation in Italy, he probably had in view the usual 
 consequences of a very plentiful plum season. 
 
 The apricot was not known in France till the eleventh 
 century, and then they were accounted dear at a farthing 
 each. In the same century cherries used to appear at the 
 royal table in May. To effect this, lime was laid at the 
 roots of the tree, which was irrigated with warm water ! 
 Louis XIII. was fond of early fruit, and he had strawberries 
 in March, and figs in June : this is more than the most 
 expert fig-rearers in Sussex* ever accomplished ! The fig 
 used to be esteemed as only inferior to that compound of 
 luscious savours, the pine, — a fruit which, in the seven- 
 teenth century, was religiously patronized by the Jesuits. 
 The same sort of sanction was given in the East to dates, 
 though these were fashionable in Kome, after a basket of 
 them had been sent from Jericho to Augustus. The 
 Tunis dates are the best ; but indulgence in them is said 
 to loosen the teeth, and produce scurvy. The Tunisian 
 ladies, however, were as fond of them as the French 
 ladies were of sweet citrons, before oranges were patron- 
 ized by Louis XIY. The ladies used to carry them 
 about, and occasionally suck them, the operation being 
 considered excellent to produce ruby lips. The citron was 
 hardly less popular than the Eeine Claude plum, which 
 received its pretty name from the Queen of Francis I., and 
 
208 TABLE THAITS. 
 
 daughter of Louis XII. I have noticed the Sussex fig : 
 the white fig of the Channel Islands is also highly prized ; 
 and there is a tree at Hampton Court renowned for its 
 fruit, but they who eat had better not too curiously 
 inquire as to where the root of that productive tree pene- 
 trates, in order to accomplish its productiveness. In Sicily, 
 they acupuncture the tree, and drop into it a little oil, 
 and this is said to improve the flavour of the fruit. To 
 what I have previously said of the peach, I may add here 
 what the Chinese say of it; namely, that it produces 
 eternity of life, and prevents corruption until the end of 
 the world. This species would be a popular one in 
 England. 
 
 Some writers assert that the apple was originally an 
 African ; but a Negro with a red nose would be an 
 anomaly ; and the apple-tree does not look as if it came 
 from the country of the children of the sun. Neverthe- 
 less, historians assert that it crossed the Mediterranean, 
 and reached Normandy through Spain and France. The 
 apple has been as productive of similes as of cider ; and 
 perhaps the prettiest is that of Jeremy Taylor, who says, 
 in his Sermon on the "Marriage Ring," that the "celi- 
 bate, like the fly in the heart of an apple, dwells in a per- 
 petual sweetness ; but sits alone, and is confined, and dies 
 in singularity." — a figure of speech, by the way, not 
 highly calculated to frighten a bachelor. But, after all, 
 the sentiment of Jeremy Taylor is preferable to that of 
 Gregory of Nazianzum, who calls a wife " an acquired evil ; 
 and, what is worse, one that cannot be put away." How- 
 ever this may be, apples were once productive of matri- 
 mony in Wales. When the fruit-dealers there could not 
 find a market, they proclaimed a dance. The revellers 
 paid entrance-money, and received apples in return. 
 These meetings were called "apple lakings;" and the 
 fruit was sauce for many a consequent wedding dinner. 
 
FRUITS. 209 
 
 The finest used to be kept for accompaniment to the 
 roast goose eaten on St. Crispin's Day. Brides, in remote 
 times, used to carry a love-apple in their bosoms ; as 
 fond thereof as the pitman's wife of Northumberland was 
 of the two lambs which she suckled, after their dams had 
 been killed in a storm. This was a more creditable affec- 
 tion than that of Marc Antony's daughter for a lam- 
 prey, which she adorned with ear-rings, and which she 
 exhibited at dinner ; as Lord Erskine did the leeches 
 which had cured him of some complaint, and which, 
 enclosed in a bottle, he sent round with the wine. He 
 called one " Cline" and the other " Home," from the great 
 surgeons of those names ; and noble guests, before filling 
 their glasses, gravely inspected the leeches, and then duly 
 passed on the reptiles and the wine. 
 
 This is what a Frenchman would have called a " triste 
 plaisanterie, a V Anglaise ;''^ and, by the way, I may 
 remark, that Theophile de Garancieres imputes the alleged 
 melancholic nature of Englishmen to the great use which 
 we make of sugar. Our sires used to make one curious 
 use of sugar, undoubtedly ; namely, when they put it into 
 the mouth of the dying, in order that their souls might 
 pass away with less bitterness ! 
 
 There is a German proverb which says, that "it is 
 imadvisable to eat cherries with potentates." In English 
 this might mean, " Do not make too free with your 
 betters." Few royal families, however, have given their 
 inferiors more frequent opportunities to "eat cherries" 
 with them, than that of Prussia. I am reminded of this 
 while upon the subject of pine-apple, a slice of which was 
 once given by Frederick William III. to a lad employed 
 in the gardens at Sans Souci. "Here," said the King, 
 pleasantly, " eat, enjoy, and reflect while thou art eating. 
 Now, what does it taste like ?" The boy looked puzzled, 
 as he munched the pine ; thought of all the most delight- 
 
 P 
 
210 TABLE TRAITS. 
 
 ful things that had ever passed over his palate and clung 
 to his memory, and, at last, with a satisfied expression, 
 exclaimed, " I think, — yes, it does, — it tastes like sau- 
 sage ! " The courtiers laughed aloud; and the King, 
 philosophizing on the boy's answer, said, " Well, every 
 one has his own standard of taste, guiding his feelings 
 and judgment, and each one believes himself to be right. 
 One fancies he discovers in the pine-apple the flavour of 
 the melon ; another, of the pear ; a third, the plum. Yon 
 lad, in his sphere of tastes, finds therein his favourite 
 food — the sausage." 
 
 The lad's answer was as much food for mirth at Sans 
 Souci, as was that of the Eton boy who was invited by 
 Queen Adelaide to dine at Windsor Castle, and who was 
 honoured with a seat at Her Majesty's side. The boy 
 was bashful, — the Queen encouraging ; and, when the 
 sweets were on the table, she kindly asked him what he 
 would like to take. The Etonian's eyes glanced hur- 
 riedly and nervously from dish to dish ; pointing to one of 
 which, he, in some agitation, exclaimed, " One of those 
 twopenny tarts!" His young eye had recognised the 
 favourite " tuch " he was in the habit of indulging in at 
 tlie shop in Eton, and he asked for it according to the 
 local phrase in fashion. Reverting to the lad who com- 
 pared pine-apple to German sausage, I may remark, that 
 pine-apple is most to be enjoyed when the weather is of 
 that condition which made Sydney Smith once express a 
 wish, that he could " slip out of his fat, and sit in his 
 bones." 
 
 The quince is a native of Cydon, in Crete ; and first 
 Greece, and then Rome, Gaul, and Spain, learned to love 
 the fruit, and drink a quince wine, which was said to be 
 excellent either as a stomachic or as a counter-poison. 
 
 Galen recommended the pear as an astringent, which is 
 more than a modern practitioner will do. St. Francis de 
 
TBUITS. 211 
 
 Paul introduced one sort into France when lie paid a 
 medical visit to Louis XI. The species was named from 
 the saint, " le bon Chretien, ^^ 
 
 The apple may lay fair claim to antiquity of birth. 
 
 The fruit has been diversely estimated by divers nations ; 
 
 but the general favour has usually awaited it. In ancient 
 
 times, both in Greece and Persia, it was the custom for a 
 
 bridegroom at his nuptial feast to partake of a single 
 
 apple, and of nothing else. The origin of the custom is 
 
 said to arise from a decree issued by Solon. It was the 
 
 sight of an apple that always put Yladislas, King of 
 
 Poland, into fits. It is the best fruit that can be taken 
 
 as an accompaniment to wine ; and the best sorts for 
 
 such a purpose are the Ribstone Pippin and the Coster 
 
 Pearmain. The golden apples stolen by Hercules were 
 
 lemons ; and they are suspected to have been the " Median 
 
 apples " of Theophrastus. The Eomans, at first, employed 
 
 this Asiatic fruit only as a means for keeping moths out 
 
 of garments ; from this household use it passed into the 
 
 ancient pharmacopoeia, and it took rank among the 
 
 counter-poisons. Its acknowledged reputation in scurvy 
 
 and punch, if I may so express myself, was not made 
 
 until a much later period of civilization. The orange 
 
 disputes with the lemon the honour of being the " Hes- 
 
 perides apples," — which is a dispute of a very Hibernian 
 
 character. China was probably its native place ; and 
 
 the Portuguese oranges are merely descendants of the 
 
 original "Chinaman." It was not known in France 
 
 until introduced there by the Constable de Bourbon. In 
 
 England, an orange, stuck full of cloves, was a fitting 
 
 New Year's present from a lover, — being typical of 
 
 warmth and sweetness. 
 
 The fig-tree appears to have been, like the vine, very 
 early used as a symbol of peace and plenty. It was a 
 tree of Eden ; yet the Athenians claimed it as a native 
 
 p 2 
 
212 TABLE TEAITS. 
 
 tree, asserting, by way of proof, that it had been given 
 them by Ceres, — not reflecting that Ceres may have 
 brought it from a region farther east. If it be com- 
 monly employed in Scriptm-e as a symbol, so an American 
 poet has taken it, with its scriptm-al allusions, to illus- 
 trate worldly marriages, of which he says, that — 
 
 « they are like unto 
 
 Jeremiah's iigs : 
 The good are very good indeed ; 
 The had, not fit for pigs. 
 
 The authorities of Attica were so fond of their figs, that 
 they passed a law against the exportation of the fruit. 
 The advocates of free trade in figs broke the law when 
 they could do so with profit ; and the men who afiected 
 to be on friendly terms with them, in order to betray 
 their proceedings to the Magistrates, were called by a 
 name which is now given to all fawning traitors, — they 
 were styled, sycophants, or "fig-declarers." Even the 
 philosophers in Grreece became greedy in presence of figs ; 
 and with figs famished armies have been braced anew for 
 the fight. The athletcB ate of them before appearing in 
 the arena ; and more than one invasion has been traced 
 to the taste of the invader for figs. Medical men were 
 divided in opinion as to the merits of this fruit. It was 
 considered indigestible ; but, to remedy that, almonds 
 were recommended to be eaten with it ! The Eomans, 
 perhaps, were wiser, who took pepper with them, as we 
 do with melon; and Dr. Madden says that we should 
 never eat figs at all, if we could only spend half an hour 
 in Smyrna, and see them packed. So, as I have before said, 
 a sight of the kitchen, just before dinner, would take away 
 appetite ; but as people do not commonly go to Smyrna, 
 or sit with their cooks, why, figs and dinners will continue 
 to be eaten. Modern professors have resembled ancient 
 
FEUITS. 213 
 
 philosophers in an uncontrollable appetite for figs. Who 
 has not heard of the famous Oxford fig, which, in its 
 progress to luscious maturity, was protected by an inscrip- 
 tion appended to it, conveying information to the effect 
 that "this is the Principal's fig!" which a daring 
 Undergraduate one day devoured, and added insult to 
 injury by changing the old placard for one on which was 
 written, "A fig for the Principal?" The felonious fig- 
 stealer must have been more rapid in his sacrilege, than 
 the poet Thomson was in his method of enjoying his own 
 peaches in his garden at Kew. Attired in the loosest 
 and dirtiest of morning-gowns, the author of the " Castle 
 of Indolence " used to watch his peaches ripening in the 
 sun. When he saw one bursting with liquid promise, he 
 was too lazy to take his unwashed hands from his well- 
 worn pockets, and pluck the blushing treasure. No ; 
 " Jamie" simply sauntered up to it, contemplated it for 
 a moment with a yawn, and finished his yawn by biting 
 a piece out of the fruit, — leaving the ghastly remains 
 on the branch for wasps and birds to divide between 
 them. 
 
 As the Athenian rulers kept their figs, so did the Per- 
 sian Kings their walnuts, — and more selfishly ; for no one 
 but their most sacred Majesties dared eat any ; but one 
 would think that even they would find it hard to digest 
 all the walnuts that the country could produce. It is 
 averred, that walnuts entered largely into the Mithrida- 
 tic recipe against poison. The modern recipe, called 
 " Mithridate," I have given elsewhere ; but that which 
 Pompey is said to have found in the palace of the King 
 whom he had overthrown, was as follows : " Pound, with 
 care, two walnuts, two dried figs, twenty pounds of rue, and 
 a grain of salt^ Yes, we should say it must be taken 
 cum grano. Howbeit, the royal physician goes on to say, 
 " Swallow this mixture, — precipitate it with a little wine, 
 
214 TABLE TRAITS. 
 
 — and you have nothing to fear from the action of the 
 most active poison, for the space of four-and-twentj 
 hours." There would, probably, be less to fear after that 
 time had elapsed than before. 
 
 Nuts have not had respectability conferred on them, 
 even by Nero, who was wont to go incog, to the upper 
 gallery of the theatre, and take delight in pelting them 
 on the bald head of the Prsetor, who sat below. That 
 official knew the offender, and was rewarded for bearing 
 the attack good-humouredly ; and thence, perhaps, the 
 proverb which characterizes something falling, at once 
 sudden and pleasant, by the term, "That 's nuts!" Of 
 course, nuts were in fashion ; not so chestnuts, — these 
 were as much disliked by the Patricians as the filbert and 
 hazel were said, in France, to be hated by the sun. 
 When they were ripening, the inhabitants used to issue 
 forth at sunrise, and endeavour to frighten the luminary 
 out of the firmament, by making a horrid uproar, with 
 pots, pans, and kitchen utensils generally. And this was 
 done under a Christian dispensation. The people were 
 not heathen Chinese, trying to cure an eclipsed planet 
 by attacking the dragon that was supposed to be swallow- 
 ing it, with a tintamarre of caldron, kettle, tongs, and 
 trivet. 
 
 The Athenians were great hands at dumplings, consist- 
 ing of fruit, covered with a light and perfumed paste ; 
 and Ehodes, verifying the proverb, that " extremes meet," 
 was as famous for its gingerbread as for its Colossus. 
 The Eoman wedding-cake was a simple mixture of sweet 
 wine and flour; and the savilum pie, made of flour, 
 cheese, honey, and eggs, was a dish to make all sorts of 
 guests jubilant. It was, in short, the national pie ; and 
 if there were a dish that was more popular, it was the 
 artocreas, a huge mince-pie, and the imperial pie of 
 Verus, compounded of sow's flank, pheasant, peacock, 
 
PASTRY. 215 
 
 ham, and wild boar, all hashed together, and covered with 
 crust. If Emperors invented pies, so did philosophers 
 create cakes ; and the lihuna of Cato was a real cheese- 
 cake, that gave as much delight as any of the same 
 author's works in hterature. Cheese was a favourite 
 foundation for many of the Roman cakes ; but he was a 
 bold man who added chalk, and so invented the placenta. 
 Yet the placenta was eaten as readily as Charles XII. 
 swallowed raspberry-tarts, Frederick II. Savoy cakes, or 
 Marshal Saxe — who loved pastry, pastrycooks, and pastry- 
 cooks' daughters — macaroons. 
 
 The Church honoured pastry, — or would so pious a King 
 as St. Louis have raised the pastrycooks to the dignity of 
 a guild ? The Abbey of St. Denis, long before this, 
 stipulated with the tenant-farmers, that they should 
 deliver a certain quantity of flour, to make pastry with ; 
 and, in some cases, in France, portions of the rent for 
 lands was to be paid in puff pastry. This was at a time 
 when fennel-root tooth-picks used to appear at table, 
 thrust into the preserved fruits, and every one was 
 expected to help himself. Certainly our refined neigh- 
 bours had some questionable customs. See what L'Etoile 
 says : (1596 :) " Les confitures seches et les inassepains y 
 etaient si peu epargnes que les dames et demoiselles etaient 
 contraintes de s'en decharger sur les pages et laquais, 
 auxquels on les haillait tout entiersP 
 
 Prince G-eorge of Denmark, the consort of Queen 
 Anne, was never suspected of intermeddling with the 
 foreign policy of the kingdom ; but he was something 
 renowned for his appetite, and for the bent of it towards 
 pastry. I think it is Archdeacon Coxe, in his " Life of 
 the Duke of Marlborough," who says of this illustrious 
 Prince, that he would leave the battle-field, in the very 
 heat of action, and come into camp, with the hungry 
 inquiry, if it were not yet dinner-time. This was some- 
 
216 TABLE TEAITS. 
 
 thing worse than drawing off the hounds, or unloading 
 the fowling-pieces, because the " Castle bell" was peremp- 
 torily ringing to luncheon. Prince George was just the 
 sort of man — fond of good living, and able to entertain 
 others with the same predilection — who was likely to be 
 surrounded by parasites ; and the remembrance of this 
 fact suggests that, while the wine is passing round, I 
 may venture to give a sketch of that ancient and remark- 
 able gentleman, "the Parasite." It is better than 
 getting upon controversial subjects, which are productive 
 of any thing but unanimity. I remember one of the very 
 pleasantest of "after-dinners" being marred by a guest, 
 who, having slipped into the assertion that the Jews 
 were the earliest of created people, was indiscreet enough 
 to try to maintain what he had asserted, and weak 
 enough to be angry at finding it summarily rejected. 
 Why, Father Abraham himself was but a foreign Heathen, 
 from Ur of the Chaldees ; and to claim primeval antiquity 
 for the Jews is only as absurd as if one were to say, that 
 Yankees and mint julep were anterior to Alfred's cakes 
 and the Anglo-Saxons. 
 
 But many a hasty assertion has been simply the effect 
 of an antagonism between imperfect chymification and 
 the oppressed intellect. Mind and matter have much 
 influence on each other ; and, for the guidance of those 
 interested in such questions, I may, while on the subject 
 of dinner, notice, that from Dr. Beaumont's " Table," 
 drawn out to show the mean time of digestion in the 
 stomach (or chymification) of various articles of food, we 
 learn that boiled tripe ranks first in amiable facility, being 
 disposed of in about one hour. Venison steak requires 
 some half-hour more. Boiled turkey and roast pig are 
 classed together, as requiring two hours and twenty-five 
 miimtes for the process of digestion ; while roast tiirkey 
 and hashed meat demand five minutes more. Fricasseed 
 
DE. POEBES wiisrsLow. 217 
 
 chicken is not more facile of digestion than boiled salt 
 beef, both requiring two hours and three-quarters. 
 Boiled mutton, broiled beefsteak, and * soft-boiled eggs, 
 take three hours ; while roast beef and old strong cheese 
 trouble the stomach for some three hours and a half. 
 E-oast duck, and fowls, whether boiled or roasted, are 
 alike slow of digestion : they require four hours as their 
 mean time of chymification, and are only exceeded by 
 boiled cabbage, which requires full half-an-hour more. I 
 borrow these details from an article in the " Journal of 
 Psychological Medicine," for January, 1851, a periodical 
 edited by Dr. Forbes Winslow. I believe I do not err in 
 attributing the article in question (" Mental Dietetics") to 
 the able pen of the accomplished Editor himself, than 
 whom no man has a better right to speak ex cathedra 
 on the subject in question. It will be seen, by the 
 following extract from this article, that diet influences 
 the mind as well as the body. " The nutritive particles 
 of the food," says Dr. Winslow, "being in the form 
 of chyle, mixed with the blood, and supplying it with the 
 elements which enable it to repair the waste of the ani- 
 mal system, it is obvious that the health, both of the body 
 and of the mind, must depend on the quality and quan- 
 tity of the vital stream. According to Lecanu, the pro- 
 portion of the red globules of the blood may be regarded 
 as a measure of vital energy ; for the action of the serum 
 and of the globules on the nervous system is very dif- 
 ferent. The former scarcely excites it, the latter do so 
 powerfully. Now those causes which tend to increase 
 the mass of blood, tend also to increase the proportion of red 
 globules ; whilst those which tend to diminish the mass 
 of blood, tend to diminish the proportion of the globules. 
 The result is obvious. A large quantity of stimulating 
 animal food, without a proper amount of exercise, aug- 
 ments the number of the red globules, and diminishes 
 
218 TABLE TRAITS. 
 
 the aqueous part of the blood. Hence the nervous sys- 
 tem becomes oppressed, the brain frequently congested, 
 and the intellectual faculties no longer enjoy their wonted 
 activity. In the mean time, the system endeavours to 
 relieve itself by throwing a counter-stimulus upon certain 
 other organs, the functions of which are morbidly 
 increased. The blood, in such cases, becomes preternatu- 
 rally thickened, and its coagulum unusually firm. On 
 the other hand, if the system be not supplied with the 
 requisite amount of nutrition, the blood becomes, by the 
 loss of its red corpuscles, impoverished in quality, and, 
 in cases of extreme abstinence, diminished in quantity. 
 In these cases the powers of the mind soon become 
 enfeebled." 
 
 But we will pass from these scientific matters, to seek 
 the company of one who, if ignorant of science, was, 
 generally, a great man in the profession of his peculiar 
 art, — the ancient parasite, 
 
THE PARASITE. 
 
 " Pity those whose flanks grow great, 
 
 Swell'd by the lard of others' meat."— Herrick. 
 
 Paea, "near," and sitos, "corn," pretty well explain 
 what the Greeks understood by the word " parasite." 
 As the worthless weed among the wheat, so was this 
 classical Skimpole in the field of society. As the weed 
 hung for support to the substance that promised to yield 
 it, so did the parasite cling to the side of those who kept 
 good tables, and lacked wit to enliven them. 
 
 The parasite was too delicate a fellow to allow of invi- 
 dious distinctions. He supped or dined wherever he was 
 invited, and at marriage-feasts waited for no invitation 
 at all. There he was in his glory. He was the cracker 
 of jokes, and of the heads of those who did not agree 
 with every word that fell from the lips of the Amphi- 
 tryon of the hour. He usually, however, got his own skull 
 bruised by the watch, when staggering home through the 
 dark, "full of the god," and without a slave to direct his 
 steps. But it was only with the morning that he 
 became conscious at once of pain from the bruises, and 
 the necessity of providing, at the cost of others, for his 
 own breakfast. 
 
 These professional "livers out" were, however, not 
 always unattended. The victims whom they flattered 
 sometimes lent them a slave. Their wardrobe seldom 
 extended beyond two suits, one for the public, and one 
 for wear at home. They looked abroad for dupes, just as 
 
220 TABLE TRAITS. 
 
 our ring-droppers used to do, and for the same purpose. 
 The parasite generally attached himself to the first simple- 
 looking personage he encountered, provided he bore with 
 him proofs of being a man who could afford to live well. 
 Simplex usually swallowed with complacency all the 
 three-piled flattery with which the parasite troubled him ; 
 and if he were expecting friends to dinner, the gastro- 
 nome, who wanted one, was probably invited. But there 
 was always an understanding, that, in return for the 
 invitation, he was to maintain, for the diversion of the 
 company, a continual fire of jokes. If he proved but a 
 sorry jester, he was promptly scourged into the street, 
 down which he ran, nothing abashed, to look for hearers 
 whom indifferent jests could move to ready laughter. 
 
 The parasite looked upon the fortune and table of 
 others as a property which was properly to be held in 
 common. Monsieur Prudhon really started a parasitical 
 precept, when he tried to establish, that what belonged 
 to one man belonged to a great many others besides. 
 But if, as regarded his own share in property that was 
 not his own, the parasite was so far a Communist, he 
 was the most charitable of fellows, his earnest prayer 
 being, that none of his patrons might ever fall into such 
 distress as to be unable to give good dinners. The 
 dinner-table was his arena. If he got but one meal a 
 day, he consumed enough thereat to satisfy half-a-dozen 
 appetites ; and, as he ate, it was matter of perfect indif- 
 ference to him whether he was called upon to find wit for 
 the guests, or to be the butt of their own. You might 
 buffet him till he were senseless, provided the blows were 
 afterwards paid for in brimming glasses. 
 
 He was always first at. a feast ; and as he was as com- 
 mon an object at a feast as the sauce itself, so "sauce" 
 was the common name for a parasite. There he was not 
 only wit, butt, and bully, but porter also ; and his office 
 
THE PAEASITE. 221 
 
 was not merely to knock down the drunken, but to carry 
 them out when incapable of performing that office for them- 
 selves. The parasites had a dash, too, of the " bravo " in 
 their character, and let themselves out for a dozen other 
 purposes besides dining. The stronger-bodied and the 
 braver-souled let out their strength. " Do you want a 
 wrestler ?" says the parasite, in Antiphseus, " here I am, 
 an Antaeus. If you want a door forced, I have a head 
 like a ram to do it ; and I can scale a wall like Capaneus. 
 Telamon was not stronger than my wrist ; and I can 
 wreathe into the ear of beauty like smoke." Some of 
 these Bobadils are even said to have ventured into battle, 
 and to have especially distinguished themselves in the 
 Commissariat department ! 
 
 Others boasted of their powers of fasting, — always pro- 
 vided good pay assured them of compensating banquets 
 at the end of their service. " I can live on as little as 
 Tithymallus," says one ; and the individual in question is 
 said to have supported life on eight lupines a day, — a 
 hint to Poor-Law Commissioners. Another makes a 
 merit of being as thin as Philippides, who, like Hood's 
 friend, was so thin, that, when he stood side-ways, you 
 could not see him ! The merits of a third are summed 
 up by him in saying, that he can live on water, like a 
 frog ; on vegetables, like a caterpillar ; can go without 
 bathing, like Dirtiness herself, if there be such a deity ; 
 can live in winter with no roof but the sky, like a bird ; 
 can support heat, and sing beneath a noon-day sun, like a 
 grasshopper ; do without oil, like the dust ; walk bare- 
 footed from break of day, like the crane ; and keep wide 
 awake all night, like the owl. 
 
 Of such a profession the parasite was proud, and even 
 declared that its origin was divine ; and that Jupiter 
 Amicalis (Zeus 6 cpixios) was its patron saint ! As Jove 
 entered where he chose, ate and drank of what most took 
 
222 TABLE TEAITS. 
 
 his fancy, and, after creating an atmosphere of enjoyment, 
 retired without having any thing to pay ; just so, it was 
 argued, was it with the parasite. In Attica, parasites 
 were admitted to the commemorative banquets that fol- 
 lowed the sacrifices to Hercules ; proof enough that they 
 were accounted as being of the same kidney as heroes. 
 In later times came degenerate men and manners ; and 
 then, instead of honourable men sitting with gods and 
 heroes, the office of parasite was so degraded, that none 
 but the hungry wits exercised it. Flattery to mortals 
 then took the place of praise to gods. The parasite was 
 ready to laud every act of the master of the feast, — 
 
 " laudare paratiis 
 
 Si bene ructavit, si rectum minxit amicus^"* 
 
 and to eulogize a great number of other acts besides, as 
 may be found noted by those who are very curious, and 
 not over-nice, in the fragments of Diodorus of Sinope. 
 
 The fellows were witty, too, however degraded. When 
 Choerephon had, uninvited, slipped into a vacant position 
 at a wedding-dinner, the gynseconomes, as inspectors of 
 the feast, counting the guests, came upon him last, and 
 said, " You are the thirty-first : it is against the law ; 
 you must withdraw." " I do not dispute the law," said 
 the parasite, " but I object to your manner of counting. 
 Begin the numbering by me, and your conclusions will 
 be indisputable." 
 
 The parasite, Philoxenus, happened to be supping with 
 a host who gave his guests nothing but black bread. 
 " This is not a loaf, but a spectre," whispered the pro- 
 fessional wit : " if we eat any more of it, we shall soon 
 be in the shades." 
 
 There was more wit in Bithys, the parasite of the 
 avaricious King Lysimachus, who one day, at dinner, 
 flung a wooden scorpion at the flatterer. The latter 
 
THE PARASITE. 223 
 
 affected great fright, but afterwards remarked, "I will, 
 in my turn, terrify you, King ; be good enough to give 
 me a talent." 
 
 Clisophus, another of this strange brotherhood, either 
 fooled or flattered King Philip to the very top of his 
 bent. The King having lost an eye, Clisophus always 
 sat down to dinner in his presence with a bandage over 
 one of his own ; and when the Monarch limped, from a 
 wound in the leg, Clisophus went "halting at his side ;" 
 and if, by chance, an ill odour affected the royal nostrils, 
 Clisophus wore, all day long, a grimace upon his features, 
 as if he were sick with disgust. However absurd this 
 may appear, the parasites of Louis XI Y. flattered him as 
 grossly as the original practioners did the early and 
 heathen Kings. People shaved their heads and wore 
 periwigs, because the Monarch, having little hair of his 
 own, wore long locks cropped from other heads. So, 
 when once at dinner he complained of having lost his 
 teeth, a young flatterer who sat next him swore, with a 
 broad smile which displayed his own incisors, that nobody 
 had teeth now-a-days. And again, when the King, on 
 his seventieth birth-day, inquired the age of a person 
 from whom he had received a petition, the reply was, 
 that the person was of everybody's age, — about three- 
 score and ten. Nay, the Court preachers flattered the 
 Sovereign quite as coarsely as the mere courtiers, and 
 would not have received invitations to dinner, if they had 
 not done so. "My brethren," said one of these, "all 
 men must die;" and at that very moment he perceived 
 the eye of the King glaring uneasily upon him : — " that 
 is to say. Sire, almost all men!" and the complaisant 
 preacher was at the royal table that day. The same 
 parasitical spirit prevailed at the English Court, especially 
 when bolster neckcloths were worn, simply because the 
 King was compelled to wear one, in consequence of a 
 
224 TABLE TRAITS. 
 
 disease in the glands of the neck. But, to translate the 
 sentiment of the French poet, — 
 
 " From royal example slaves have never shrunk : 
 When Auguste tippled, Poland soon got drunk. 
 When the great Monarch hreathed the air of love, 
 Hey, presto, pass ! Paris was Venus' grove ! 
 But tum'd a Churchman and devout, alas ! 
 The courtiers ran and beat their breasts at mass." 
 
 It is said by ancient writers that the species of flattery 
 which Clisophus paid Philip, was obligatory on all the 
 guests and officials in the ancient royal Courts of Arabia. 
 There, if the King suffered in any member, every courtier 
 was bound to be in pain in the same limb. This species 
 of flattery was, in fact, a conclusion logically arrived at ; 
 for the Arab lawgivers said that it would be absurd in 
 the courtiers to vie with one another for the honour of 
 being buried alive with the King defunct, if they did not 
 suffer with him in all his bodily pains when living. 
 
 The Celtic King of the Sotians maintained a body of 
 men who were called the " Eucholimes," or the " Death 
 Volunteers." They amounted to six hundred men ; they 
 were lodged, clothed, and tended like the King, with 
 whom they daily sat at meat ; but they were also bound 
 to die with their master ; and it is alleged that the 
 chance was eagerly incurred, and that no man ever failed, 
 when called upon by the King's decease, to accompany 
 His Majesty on a visit to his royal cousin, Orcus. 
 
 But your regular parasite preferred to live and flatter 
 living Monarchs. " See," said Niceas, when he saw 
 Alexander troubled by a fly that stung him, " there is 
 one that will be King over all flies ; for he has imbibed 
 the blood of him who is King over all men." The flat- 
 tery was not more delicate which Chirisophus once paid 
 at dinner to Dionysius the Tyrant. Chirisophus, seeing 
 the King smile at the other end of the table, burst into 
 
THE PARASITE. 225 
 
 a roar of laughter. The King asked, "Wherefore?" 
 seeing that the parasite could not have heard the joke. 
 " True," said Chirisophus ; " but I saw that Your 
 Majesty had heard something worth laughing at, and I 
 laughed in sympathy." This species of parasite is not 
 uncommon in English houses ; but perhaps they do their 
 office more refinedly than Chirisophus. 
 
 The flatterers of the younger Dionysius were far more 
 disgusting in their adulation. They were simply absurd, 
 when they pretended to be short-sighted, like him, and 
 to be unable to see a dish, unless they thrust their 
 noses into it. But they were filthy followers when they 
 offered their faces for the King to "void his rheum" 
 upon, and even went to extremes of nastiness at which 
 human nature shudders, but at which Dionysius smiled. 
 And yet Dionysius was hailed by some of them as a god. 
 It was the custom, we are told, in Sicily, for every indi- 
 vidual to make sacrifices, in his own house, before the 
 figures of the nymphs, to get devoutly drunk before the 
 altar, and to dance round it as long as the pious devotee 
 could keep upon his legs. It was accounted as an 
 exquisite piece of flattery in Damocles, the parasite, that 
 he refused to perform such service before inanimate 
 deities, while he went through the whole duty before 
 Dionysius as his god. The Athenians, it will be remem- 
 bered, were horror-stricken at such impious laudation as 
 this. They fined Demades ten talents for having pro- 
 posed to award divine honours to Alexander ; and Tima- 
 goras, whom they had sent as Ambassador to the King of 
 Persia, they put to death for compromising the Athenian 
 dignity by prostrating himself before that King. And, 
 indeed, let us do justice to Alexander himself. He had 
 more than misgiving touching his own alleged divinity. 
 He had once — " his custom in the afternoon " — eaten and 
 drunk so enormously, that in the evening he was forced 
 
226 TABLE TEAITS. 
 
 to a necessity which compels very mortal people, — take 
 physic. He made as many contortions, on swallowing it, 
 as a refractory child ; and Philarches, his parasite, 
 remarked, with a rascally hypocritical smile, " Ah ! what 
 must be the sufferings of mortal man under such medi- 
 cine, if you, who are a divinity, feel it so much !" The 
 idea of a deity drawing health out of an apothecary's 
 phial, was too much even for Alexander,-, who declined 
 to accept the apotheosis, and called Philarches an ass. 
 
 But Philarches was only giving the King a taste of 
 the parasite's professional craft. The noble Nicostratus 
 of Argos quite as impiously flattered the Sovereign of 
 Persia, when, for the sake of currying favom* with that 
 majestic barbarian, he every night, in his own house? 
 prepared a solemn supper, richly provided, and offered to 
 the genius of the King, (tcD dai/uLovi rod Bao-ix^cos,) for no 
 better reason than that he had learned that such was the 
 custom in Persia. Whether he profited or not by this 
 delicate attention, Theopompus does not inform us. 
 
 The Anactes or Princes of the royal family of Salamis 
 maintained two distinct families, in whom, if I understand 
 Athenseus rightly, the office of flatterer (and of spy, I 
 may add) was hereditary. These were the Gerginoi and 
 the Promalangai. The former did the dirty work of 
 circulating among the people, worming themselves into 
 their confidence, getting invited to their tables, and then 
 reporting to the Promalangai all they had heard. The 
 last-named took such portions of the report as were worth 
 communicating to the Anactes, with whom they sat at 
 table, where such a dish of scandal was daily served as 
 would puzzle the social spies of Paris to set before their 
 lord. 
 
 But the profession was not accounted vile ; and the 
 professors themselves gloried in their vocation. They 
 extolled the easiness of their life, compared, for instance, 
 
THE PAEASITE. 227 
 
 with that of the painter, or the lahourer, or, in fact, with 
 that of any other individual but those of their own guild. 
 "Truly," says one, in a fragment of Antiphanes, "since 
 the most important business in life is to play, laugh, 
 trifle, and drink, I should like to know where you would 
 find a condition more agreeable than ours." 
 
 Once, and once only, a faction of parasites contrived to 
 get possession of a kingdom ; and the dinners they gave, 
 and the government they maintained, are matters to 
 which description can hardly do justice. The faction in 
 question was headed by, and almost solely consisted of, 
 three men in Erythra, who stood, in regard to Cnopus, 
 the King, as " adorers and flatterers" (TrpScrKvj/es koI koXukes), 
 They murdered their Sovereign, and, by a coii/p-d'etat, 
 possessed themselves of his authority. Their names were 
 Ortyges, Irus, and Echarus ; and they ruled with a triple 
 rod of iron, held in very effeminate fingers. They 
 silenced all opponents by slaying them; and, when no 
 one dared utter a breath against them, they vaunted their 
 universal popularity. They administered a ferociously 
 absurd sort of justice at the gates of Erythra, where 
 they sat decked out in purple and gold. They were 
 sandaled like women, wore ornaments only suitable to 
 females, and sat down to dinner in diadems that dazzled 
 the company. 
 
 The guests were once free citizens, who were now com- 
 pelled to bear the litters of their parvenu masters, to 
 cleanse the streets, and then, by way of contrast, to 
 attend the banquet of the Triumvirs, with their wives 
 and daughters. If they objected to drag these latter to 
 the scene of splendid infamy, the objection was only made 
 at the price of death. The unhappy women were nothing 
 the safer from insult by the decease of their natural pro- 
 tectors ; and the scenes at the palace were such as only 
 the uncleanest of demons could rejoice in. If the autho- 
 
 Q 2 
 
228 TAELE TEAITS. 
 
 rities had reason to be grave, the whole city was com- 
 pelled to affect sorrow ; and duly-appointed officers went 
 round, with hard-thonged whips, to scourge a sense of 
 "decent horror" into the countenances of the bewildered 
 inhabitants. Things at last reached such a pitch of 
 extravagant atrocity, that the people took heart of grace, 
 screwed up their courage by Chian wine, and swept their 
 oppressors into Hades ; — and, for years afterwards, com- 
 memorative banquets celebrated the restoration of the 
 people from the oppression of the parasites. 
 
 I would recommend those who would see the parasite 
 in action, to study the comedies of Plautus, wherein he 
 figures as necessarily as the impertinent valet in a Spanish 
 comedy. Plautus calls the parasites poetcB, as being 
 given to lying ; and it is singular that the Gauls called 
 their poets "parasites," as being fond of good living, and 
 not being always in a condition to procure it. They had 
 their "dull season:" it was when the wealthy were at 
 their villas ; at which time the parasites dined upon 
 nothing, in town, with good " Duke Humphrey." When 
 the city was again resorted to by the rich, then the para- 
 site might sometimes be seen purchasing, by order of his 
 patron, the provisions for the evening feast. We find 
 one of these gentry, in Plautus, boasting that he knows a 
 story that will be worth thirty dinners to him. Before 
 the era of printing, the parasite, with his jests and histo- 
 ries, was a sort of living Circulating Library. Saturion 
 (another of Plautus' s pictures of the parasite) is at peace 
 with himself, because, as he says, he can provide for his 
 daughter by bequeathing to her his rich collection of 
 jokes and dinner-stories. " They are all sparkling Attic," 
 he says ; " and there is not a dull Sicilian anecdote 
 among them." 
 
 If the race were, in some sense of the word, "literary," 
 they were not at all in love with science, or the improve- 
 
THE PAEASITE. 229 
 
 ments wrought loj its application. Witness the bitterness 
 with which Plautus makes one denounce the sun-dial, 
 then of recent introduction. Before that tell-tale 
 appeared, dinners used to be served when people were 
 hungry ; but now even hungry people wait for the 
 appointed hour. In short, throughout life, they worked 
 but for the sake of the banquet and wine-pot ; and, 
 even after death, they longed for libations, as appears in 
 the epitaph on the parasite, Sergius of Pola, who is made 
 to say, from the grave, — 
 
 " Si urbani perhiheri vultis 
 Arenti meo cineriy 
 Cantharo piaculum vinariMmfestinate" 
 
 " If you 've any regard for this corpse here of mine. 
 Be so good as to damp it with hogsheads of wine." 
 
 Finally, these diners-out by profession were essentially 
 selfish ; and the fire of their attachment blazed up, or 
 died away, according to that in the kitchen of the 
 Amphitryon by whom they were maintained. 
 
 A good specimen of the parasite of the last century 
 may be found in the Captain Cormorant of Anstey's 
 "Bath Guide;" but the race is by no means extinct, 
 though the individual be more rarely met with ; and, be 
 it said as their due, they execute their office with some- 
 thing more of decency than did their ancient predecessors. 
 Modern flattery, like modern oils, is " double refined." 
 Let us see if we can trace the course of this refinement 
 through the Table Traits of Utopia and the Golden Age. 
 
THE TABLES OF UTOPIA AND THE 
 GOLDEN AGE. 
 
 The good Archbishop Fenelon, in his " Voyage dans 
 Vile des Plaisirs,^^ cites some charming examples of the 
 pleasant way in which people lived in the Utopian Land 
 of Cocagne, which he describes from imagination, and 
 where the laws were characterized by more good sense 
 than distinguishes the legislation of the Utopian authori- 
 ties of More. 
 
 The " Voyage^^ of Fenelon was probably founded on a 
 fragment of Teleclides, who has narrated, in rattling 
 Greek metres, how the citizens of the world lived and 
 banqueted in the golden age of its lusty youth. The 
 poet puts the description into the mouth of Saturn, who 
 says, " I will tell you what sort of life I vouchsafed to 
 men in the early ages of creation. In the first place, 
 peace reigned universally, and was as common as the 
 water you wash your hands with. Fear and disease were 
 entirely unknown ; and the earth provided spontaneously 
 for every human want. The rivers then poured cataracts 
 of wine into the valleys ; and cakes disputed with loaves 
 to get into the mouth of man, as he walked abroad, sup- 
 plicating to be eaten, and giving assurances of excellent 
 flavour and quality. The tables were covered with fish 
 which floated into the kitchens, and courteously put 
 themselves to roast. By the sides of the couches rolled 
 streams of sauces, bearing with them joints of ready- 
 roasted meat ; while rivulets full of ragouts were near the 
 
THE TABLES OF UTOPIA Al^D THE GOLDEN AGE. 231 
 
 guests, who dipped in, and took therefrom, according to 
 their fancy. Every one could eat of what he pleased; 
 and all that he ate was sweet and succulent. There were 
 countless pomegranate-seeds for seasoning ; little 'pdtes 
 and grives, done to a turn, insinuated themselves into the 
 mouths of the banqueters ; and tarts got smashed in try- 
 ing to force their way into the throat. The children 
 played with sow-paps and other delicacies as they woidd 
 with toys ; and the men were gigantic in height, and 
 obese in figure." 
 
 The above is a specimen of the classical idea of that 
 delicious — 
 
 ' " Land of Cocagne, 
 
 That Elysium of all that is friand and nice, 
 Where for hail they have bon-hons, and claret for rain. 
 
 And the skaters, in winter, show off on cream-ice." 
 
 It is a theme with which modern poets have been as fond 
 of dealing as Teleclides and others of the tuneful children 
 of song, in the early period when young Time counted his 
 birth-days by the sun. It has been well treated by 
 Beranger, who thus describes, through my imperfect 
 translation, his own impressions of 
 
 A JOUENEY TO THE LAKD OF COCAaNE. 
 
 Ho, friends, every one ! 
 Let us up, and be gone ; — 
 To where care is not known. 
 
 Let us hasten away ! 
 Yes ; fired with champagne, 
 I reel o'er the plain, 
 And see dear Cocagne 
 
 In its sunny array. 
 
 O \ land full of glee,— 
 Here long may I be. 
 And laugh merrOie 
 
 At Fate's changeable way. 
 
232 TABLE TEAITS. 
 
 For here — what a treat ! — 
 I may love, drink, and eat. 
 And — this makes it more sweet- 
 There is nothing to pay I 
 
 My appetite 's great. 
 And I see the huge gate 
 Of a tower of state 
 
 At my elbow, handy : 
 The tower is a pie ; — 
 And tall guards, standing by. 
 Carry spears ten feet high. 
 
 All in sugar-candy. 
 
 Ah \ banquet of ftm. 
 It will please ev'ry one : 
 Look, there is not a gun 
 
 But of sugar is made ! 
 See the paintings, how grand ! 
 And the statues, they stand, 
 All wrought by the hand 
 
 Out of sweet marmalade. 
 
 Here the people repair 
 
 In gay crowds to the square. 
 
 Where the jests of a fair 
 
 With loud merriment shine ; 
 Where the fountains so gay 
 Not with water do play. 
 But are sparkling away 
 
 With rich, rosy, old wine ! 
 
 Here, the baking 's begun ; 
 There, the baking is done ; — 
 See the folks how they run. 
 
 With beef, mutton, and veal. 
 And the eaters think fit. 
 That the man who lacks wit. 
 Shall be made a " turnspit," 
 
 And be bound to the wheel. 
 
THE TABLES OE UTOPIA AND THE GOLDEN AGE. 233 
 
 To the palace I haste, 
 With two Falstaffs I feast, 
 (Twenty stone weighs the least,) 
 
 And with them hob and nob. 
 And here, too, I 've found, 
 "Where such good things abound. 
 Shy Venus quite round, 
 
 And young Cupid a squab. 
 
 No sadness of brow. 
 No pedantic vain show, 
 No pompous state-bow. 
 
 Can be ever allow'd : — 
 But with feasting and song 
 We carry night on, 
 Drink deep and drink long. 
 
 And toast beauty aloud. 
 
 Now, good-natured lasses. 
 To the music of glasses. 
 As the sweet dessert passes. 
 
 Let 's laugh the time by. 
 Let fools sigh and snuffle. 
 And merriment muffle. 
 But you, dears, shall ruffle 
 
 Our pro — priety. 
 
 So, in this joyous way. 
 With fresh loves ev'ry day. 
 And with no debts to pay. 
 
 We scamper time o'er ; 
 While between drinking deep. 
 And light visions in sleep, 
 Our young years will creep 
 
 To a hundred or more. 
 
 Yes, dear old Cocagne^ 
 It 's with thee, — free from pain, — 
 But who checks my strain. 
 In an accent so shrill ? 
 
234l TABLE TRAITS. 
 
 For, while singing, I thought, — 
 But, my friends, we are caught, — 
 'T is the waiter who 's brought 
 His confounded long bill. 
 
 The fairy-land of Cocagne is said to derive its name 
 from the Latin, coquere,^' to cook." Duehat says, that its 
 flocks and herds present themselves perfectly cooked, and 
 that the larks descend from the skies ready roasted. For 
 it is there alone — • 
 
 " Where so ready all nature its cookery yields, 
 Maccaroni au parmesan grows in the fields ; 
 Little birds fly about with the true pheasant taint, 
 And the geese are all born with a liver complaint." 
 
 The Utopian banquets, which are described by More, 
 present an imaginary view of society in another extreme. 
 The learned Chancellor, amid much invented nonsense, 
 pictures the manners of the citizens of Amaurat after the 
 fashion of those of Crete and Lacedsemonia, especially 
 with regard to their common halls for their repasts, — 
 a fashion, by the way, which was partially followed in the 
 club-rooms of Attica. Others of the author's ideas have 
 been realized since he wrote ; and, in this respect, his 
 Utopia may be said to have done good service ; but there 
 is a woful residue of nonsense, nevertheless, which is 
 neither amusing nor useful. 
 
 Sir Thomas describes the citizens of Amaurat as pos- 
 sessing provision markets abundantly supplied with herbs, 
 fruits, bread, fowl, and cattle. The latter were previously 
 slain in extra-mural slaughter-houses, well furnished with 
 running water, for washing away the filth after killing. The 
 butchers were slaves, (for serfdom " was a pecuhar insti- 
 tution" of this happy republic,) the free citizens not being 
 permitted to kill animals, lest such pursuit should harden 
 their singularly tender characters. "In every street," 
 
THE TABLES OF UTOPIA AND THE GOLDEN AGE. 235 
 
 we are told by the author, " there are great halls that lie 
 at an equal distance from one another, and are marked by 
 peculiar names. The Syphogrants dwell in those, that 
 are set over thirty families, fifteen lying on one side of it, 
 and as many on the other. In these they do all meet 
 and eat. The stewards of every one of them come to the 
 market-place at an appointed hour, and, according to the 
 number of those that belong to their hall, they carry 
 home provisions. But they take more care of their sick 
 than of any others After the steward of the hos- 
 pitals has taken for them whatever the physician does 
 prescribe for them, at the market-place, then the best 
 things that remain are distributed equally among the 
 halls, in proportion to their numbers ; only, in the first 
 place, they serve the Prince, the Chief Priest, the Trani- 
 bors, and Ambassadors, and strangers, if > there are any, 
 which, indeed, falls out but seldom, and for whom there 
 are houses well-furnished, particularly appointed, when 
 they come among them. At the hours of dinner and 
 supper, the Syphogranty, being called together by sound of 
 trumpet, meets and eats together, except only such as are 
 in the hospitals, or lie sick at home. Yet, after the halls 
 are served, no man is hindered to carry provisions home 
 from the market-place, for they know none does that but 
 for some good reason ; for, though any that will may eat at 
 home, yet none does it willingly, since it is both an indecent 
 and foolish thing for any to give themselves the trouble to 
 make ready an ill dinner at home, when there is a much 
 more plentiful one made ready for him so near at hand. All 
 the uneasy and sordid services about these halls are done by 
 their slaves ; but the dressing and cooking of their meat, 
 and ordering of their tables, belong only to the women, 
 which goes round all the women of every family by turns. 
 They sit at three or more tables, according to their num- 
 bers ; the men sit towards the wall, and the women sit on 
 
236 TABLE TRAITS. 
 
 the other side, that if any of them fall suddenly ill, which 
 is ordinary to those expecting to be mothers, she may, 
 without disturbing the rest, rise and go to the nurses' 
 room, who are there with the suckling children, where 
 there is always fire and clean water at hand, and some 
 cradles in which they may lay the young children," &c. 
 But, to return from this public nursery to the public 
 dining-hall, " all the children under five years of age 
 dined with the nurses : the rest of the younger sort of 
 both sexes, till they are fit for marriage, do either serve 
 those that sit at table ; or, if they are not strong enough 
 for that, they stand by them in great silence, and eat 
 that which is given them by those that sit at table, nor 
 have they any other formality of dining." The whole 
 formality was bad enough, and that last-mentioned was 
 a Doric custom prevailing in Crete. As to the personal 
 arrangements at these Utopian tables, the infehcitous 
 guests stood much upon their order of precedence : the 
 syphogrant and his wife, the gnddige Frau Syphograntinn^ 
 presided at the centre of the cross table, at the upper end 
 of the hall. After the Magistrates and their mates, came 
 the Priests and their ladies, — for More placed the Church 
 below the State, and hinted that celibacy in the Clergy 
 was not to be commended. Below these, groups of the 
 young and gay were placed, between flanking companies 
 of the aged and grave, to spoil their mirth, and improve 
 their manners ; and this Spartan custom was occasionally 
 imitated at Athenian feasts, albeit the Athenians looked 
 with something like contempt upon the institutions of 
 old* Laconia. The best dishes were placed before the 
 oldest men, and the latter gave of the dainty bits to the 
 young, if these merited such favour by their behaviour ; 
 if not, they took their chance of what the older gour- 
 mands might leave, or were obliged to be content with 
 the plamer fare allotted to them. 
 
THE TABLES OF UTOPIA AND THE GOLDEN AGE. 237 
 
 During this delectable process, the young could not 
 have offended by their gaiety, nor the old have improved 
 them by conversation, seeing that a reader was appointed, 
 to assist digestion by reading aloud an Essay on Moral- 
 ity. The Eomans had the same office performed at some 
 of their meals by learned slaves. More expressly says 
 that the Utopian lecture was so short, that it was neither 
 tedious nor uneasy to those that heard it ; and that after 
 it, the elders not only wagged their beards by " pleasant 
 enlargements," but encouraged the young to follow them 
 in the same track. This must have been after the supper, 
 when it was the law of Utopia, not to " run a mile," but 
 to "rest awhile." The dinners were dispatched quickly, 
 because work awaited the diners, while the supper-eaters 
 had nothing to do afterwards but sleep. This must have 
 been all terribly dreary, if it had ever been realized. The 
 only pleasant feature in More's Utopian banquets is, that 
 wherein he says that there was always music at supper, 
 and fruit served up after meat, (which, by the way, was a 
 cruel trial for the digestive powers,) and that as the repast 
 proceeded, " some burn perfumes, and sprinkle about 
 sweet ointments, and sweet waters ; and they are wanting 
 in nothing that may cheer up their spirits ; for they give 
 themselves a large allowance in that way, and indulge 
 themselves in all such pleasures as are attended with no 
 inconvenience. Thus," he adds, " do they that are in 
 towns eat together ; but in the country, where they live 
 at a greater distance, every one eats at home, and no 
 family wants any necessary sort of provision ; for it is 
 from them that provisions are sent in to them that live 
 in the towns." 
 
 I have noticed above the slave-readers at Roman din- 
 ners. These were seldom bom slaves ; indeed, of born 
 slaves, among the Greeks or Eomans, the numbers were 
 fewer than might be reasonably imagined. Those who 
 
238 TABLE TRAITS. 
 
 became authors or teachers, were the distinguished and 
 illustrious of their class ; and it was they who reheved 
 the tedium of a Roman repast by reading livelier sallies 
 than Essays on Morality, like the Utopians. If their 
 rank in humanity was low, their ability secured for them 
 many privileges which even freedmen did not enjoy. Of 
 this rank of reading slaves was Andronicus, the inventor 
 of dramatic poetry. Plautus, the witty, but coarse, play- 
 writer, miller, and Jack of all trades, was a slave. 
 Terence was also a dramatist, and not only a slave, but 
 a Negro slave, ^sop the fabulist, Phsedrus, his imi- 
 tator, and the moral philosopher Epictetus, were slaves. 
 The latter, who was as low in condition among bondsmen 
 as he was exalted in his character of teacher of mankind, 
 was the slave of one who had been a slave,^ — a depth of 
 degradation than which there can be none deeper. But 
 his mission was a great one ; for he appears to me to have 
 been an instrument employed to prepare men's minds 
 for a change from the vices of Paganism to the virtues of 
 Christianity. His writings are as stepping-stones across 
 the dark and rapid stream dividing error from truth. 
 They are admirably calculated to enable men to go for- 
 ward ; not only to induce them to make the first step out 
 of infidelity ; but, having made it, rather to make a 
 second in advance towards Christ, than go backward 
 again in the direction of the dazzling unintelligibilities 
 of the Capitoline Jove. 
 
 From slavery, if we turn our eyes towards mere poverty, 
 the next condition to it, we shall see that the poor men 
 characteristically paid their addresses to poetry ; — and 
 they were the "lions'' at the dinners and assemblies of 
 Rome. Such was Horace, who, if he were not in want, 
 was of inferior descent, his father having been a slave, 
 and subsequently, on being enfranchised, a tax-gatherer. 
 Virgil was of equally mean descent on the paternal side ; 
 
THE TABLES OE UTOPIA AND THE aOLDETT AGE. 239 
 
 but he derived some portion of nobility from his mother. 
 Juvenal, too, was not only poor and a poet, — a condition 
 that could draw upon it only a serfs contempt, — ^but he 
 was, moreover, an exceedingly angry poet. In equal pro- 
 portion as he was poor, angry, and satirical in poetry, was 
 Lucian poor, angry, and satirical in prose. 
 
 If the dining-out poets were poor, it was much the 
 same with the philosophers. The proudest walks of phi- 
 losophy were trodden by Demosthenes, the blacksmith. 
 Socrates was the ill-featured, but original-minded, son of 
 a mason and midwife. Epicurus was only rich in a value- 
 less boast of being descended from Ajax ; and Iso orates, 
 whose father manufactured the musical ancestry from 
 which are descended the modern families cf piano-forte 
 and fiddle, was also one of the immortal race of intellec- 
 tual giants Of other writers we may remark, that 
 
 Quintus Curtius, whose "Alexander the, Great" is the 
 first historical romance that ever was written, and con-- 
 tains the best description of a Babylonian banquet that 
 ever was painted in words, was of an ignoble family. 
 Celsus was, at least, not a Eoman citizen, though resident 
 at Eome; and Plutarch was just "respectable," and 
 nothing more ; — though to be worthy of respect, as the 
 term implies, is as high rank as a man need sigh for. 
 
 But though art and science, though the Nine Sisters 
 who made Parnassus vocal, were thus worshipped by the 
 slave and his cousin the beggar ; wealth was by no 
 means a synonymous term for either sloth or incapacity. 
 The opulent Lucretius, who believed nothing ; the two 
 Plinies, the soul of one of whom, "with a difference," 
 entered into Horace Walpole, and who wrote about his slave 
 Zozimus, as Walpole does of his favourite servants ; the 
 tender and chivalrous Tibullus, — a Latin Sir Philip Sid- 
 ney ; the profligate Sophocles ; iEschylus, the bottle- 
 drainer ; and the lofty Euripides : all these mounted 
 
240 TABLE TEAITS. 
 
 Pegasus with golden spurs, and gave glorious dinners 
 to guests with whom they could contend in the battle of 
 brains. Some, like Martial, got their mouths filled with 
 the sugar-candy of imperial recompence. Caesar, the 
 Commentator, was the descendant of the Sabine Kings, 
 and the founder of an empire. In Plato we see the 
 double condition of aristocrat and slave. From the latter 
 condition he was rescued by his noble friends at the cost 
 of three thousand drachmas ; more fortunate in this than 
 Diogenes, who, being friendless, was left to hug his irons, 
 and teach his master's sons to love virtue and liberty. 
 
 And the mention of the name of Plato reminds me of 
 a more modern philosopher, who did not lack reverence 
 for him, — I mean Bacon, — and Bacon naturally brings 
 me from my digression to the subject of "Table Traits" 
 in imaginary Utopias. This philosopher, in his "New 
 Atlantis," is even more infelicitous than More, both in 
 the framing of his fiction, and the extracting from it of a 
 moral. The table laws spoken of in Solomon's house, 
 have more of a jolly aspect than those drawn by Sir 
 Thomas More. For instance, " I will not hold you long 
 with recounting of our brewhouses, bakehouses, and 
 kitchens, where are made divers drinks, breads, and meats, 
 rare and of special effects. Wines we have of grapes, 
 and drinks of other juice, of fruits, of grains, and of roots ; 
 and of mixtures with honey, sugar, manna, and fruits 
 dried and decocted ; also of the tears and woundings 
 of trees, and of the pulp of canes : and these drinks are 
 of several ages, some to the age at least of forty years. 
 We have drinks also brewed of several herbs or roots, 
 and spices, yea, with several fleshes and wine-meats, 
 whereof some of the drinks are such as they are in effect 
 meat and drink both. So that divers, especially in age, 
 do desire to live with them, with little or no meat or 
 bread ; and, above all, we strive to have drinl^s of extreme 
 
THE TABLES OF UTOPIA AND THE GOLDEIS^ AOE. 241 
 
 tliin parts, to insinuate into the body, and yet without 
 all biting sharpness, or fretting ; insomuch as some of 
 them put upon the back of your hand will, with a little 
 stay, pass through to the palm, and yet taste mild to the 
 mouth. We have also waters which we ripen in that 
 fashion as they become nourishing, so that they are, 
 indeed, excellent drink, and many will use no other. 
 Breads we have of several grains, roots, and kernels, yea, 
 and some of flesh and fish dried, with divers kinds of 
 leavenings and seasonings, so that some do extremely 
 move appetites ; some do nourish so as divers do live of 
 them without any other meat, who live very long. So, 
 for meats, we have some of them so beaten and made 
 tender and mortified, yet without all corrupting, as a 
 weak heat of the stomach will turn them into good 
 chylus, as well as a strong heat would meat otherwise 
 prepared. We have some meats, also, and breads and 
 drinks which, taken by some, enable them to fast long 
 after; and some other that will make the very flesh of 
 men's bodies sensibly more hard and tough, and their 
 strength far greater than otherwise it would be." 
 
 In this way could philosophy disport itself, and not 
 with much attendant profit, beyond amusement. Before 
 I conclude this section, I may notice a more graceful 
 fiction touching banquets, than any thing to be met with 
 among the philosophers. The inhabitants of the coast of 
 Malabar believe that the double cocoas of the Moluccas, 
 annually thrown on their shore by the waves, and joy- 
 fully welcomed by the expecting inhabitants, are the 
 produce of a palm-tree growing in the fathomless recesses 
 of the ocean ; and that they arise from among coral-groves 
 endowed with supernatural qualities and attributes. For 
 a detailed account of this supposed phsenomenon, and a 
 very pretty illustration of the theory of seeds transported 
 by winds and currents, I refer all curious inquirers to the 
 
242 TABLE TEAITS. 
 
 " Annals of My Yillage," by a Lady. In the mean time, 
 I venture to put into verse, the supposed scene which 
 occurs at the annual cocoa-banquet in Malabar : — 
 
 'Neath the waves of Mincoy grows a magical tree, 
 
 In the sunless retreat of a dark coral-grove. 
 Where slumher young sprites, — the gay elves of a sea 
 
 Flinging back the bright blue of its heaven above. 
 There they sip the sweet fruit of that palm-tree, and leave 
 
 Of its best and its ripest for maidens who stray, 
 And laugh away time with their lovers at eve. 
 
 And sing to those elves of the deep by the way. 
 
 I to see them at sunset, when down by the shore 
 
 Of their own Malabar in gay clusters they stand, 
 Like spirits of light shedding softness all o 'er 
 
 The broad sea, and its tribute of fruit, from the land ! 
 There troops of young girls, in their light-hearted mirth, 
 Are laughing at youths who, reclined on the earth. 
 Drink the white wine of Kishna ; — while some are at play, 
 
 Flinging glances and handsfuU of roses, in showers. 
 That their lovers can't tell, as they bend 'neath the fray, 
 
 "Which are falling the fastest, — the glances, or flowers. 
 
 And then on the sands where these young people meet. 
 
 What hushing of songs and suppressing of glee, 
 As the waves bring in gently, and waft to their feet. 
 
 The ripe fruit of the palm that lives under the sea ! 
 There, while, half in earnest, fair Malabar's daughters, 
 Half play, dip their white, sandal 'd feet in the waters, 
 To catch the ripe cocoas, and run back again. 
 
 As the wave washes over their small anklet bells. 
 There are some, youths and maidens, who, link 'din a chain. 
 
 Like pearls strung, and mix'd, here and there, with sea-shells. 
 Dash into the flood for the fruit of the palm. 
 
 Which they strive for, and, winning, bring joyously out ; 
 Then lean on their lovers, all panting and warm 
 
 With laughter and splashing the waters about. 
 
 0, who would not like to pass summer away 
 
 Amid scenes such as this ? 0, who would not love 
 
 With Malabar's daughters, at twUight, to play. 
 And taste the ripe fruit of that dark coral-grove?" 
 
THE TABLES OF UTOPIA A^D THE GOLDEN AGE. 243 
 
 The Malabar palm was not the only tree of its kind 
 that used to afford holidays and banquetings to the peo- 
 , pie of the East, that is, according to the poets. The 
 Talipot palm of Ceylon, or, as the natives somewhat 
 unmusically call it, " lanka dwipa,^^ was, in the olden time 
 of pleasant fiction, one of this gifted species. But the 
 banquet it afforded was not of annual occurrence ; for the 
 tree never flowers till it is fifty years old, and dies imme- 
 diately after producing its fruit. The Kings of Candy 
 used to bestow the rich gift of some of its blossoms on the 
 favoured fair one whose head rested on the bosom of the 
 Sovereign at the feast, and who lifted the bowl to his 
 painted lips. It was, however highly esteemed, not such 
 a present as Demetrius Poliorcetes made to Lamia, after 
 that accomplished courtezan had erected at Sicyon a 
 portico so superb, that Polemo wrote a book to describe 
 it ; and poem and portico became the table-talk of all 
 Greece. The gift of Demetrius was a magnificent purse, 
 containing two hundred and fifty talents, which, by the 
 way, he had compelled the reluctant Athenians to contri- 
 bute ; and this he sent to Lamia, saying, that it was 
 merely " for soap." The extravagant lady spent it all in 
 one single, but consuming, feast ! How pleasantly, by 
 contrast, shines that other courtezan, Lesena, whose wit 
 made guests forget that the feast was frugal ; and to 
 whom the Athenians erected a bronze lioness, without a 
 tongue, in honour of the lady who heroically had bitten 
 out her own, that torture might not make her betray the 
 accomplices of her protector Harmodius, in the murder of 
 her tyrant Hipparchus ! 
 
 We have not found much of the refinement we looked 
 for in these remote periods and banquets. Let us see 
 what may be discovered in the Table Traits of England 
 in Early Times. 
 
 B 2 
 
TABLE TRAITS OF ENGLAND IN EARLY 
 
 TIMES. 
 
 Wheis' Diodorus Siculus wrote an account of the 
 aboriginal inhabitants of Britain, some fifty years before 
 the Christian era, he described the island as being thickly 
 inhabited, ruled by many Kings and Princes, and all 
 living peaceably together, — though with war-chariots and 
 strong arms, to settle quarrels when they occurred. But 
 if our ancestors lived peaceably among themselves, they 
 can hardly be said to have lived comfortably. Their 
 habitations were of reed, or of wood ; and they gathered 
 in the harvest by cutting off the ears of corn. These 
 ears they garnered in subterranean repositories, where- 
 from they daily culled the ripest grain; and, rudely 
 dressing the same, had thence their sustenance. Diodorus 
 says that our primitive sires were far removed from the 
 cunning and wickedness of the rest of the world ; and 
 other writers contrast them favourably with the Irish, 
 who are said to have fed on human flesh, to have had enor- 
 mous appetites for such food, and to have been given to the 
 nasty habit of devouring their deceased fathers ; but it is 
 not uncommon for others, as well as for Irish sons, to 
 devour, at least, their parents' substance, even at the 
 present day. The food of an Irish child was certainly 
 illustrative of character, — we should rather say that 
 the solemnity of offering the first food to a child was 
 characteristic. Caius Julius Solinus, a writer of the first 
 
TABLE TEAITS OF ENGLAIS^D IN EAELT TIMES. 245 
 
 century, says, that "when a Hibernian mother gives 
 birth to a male child, she puts its first food on the point 
 of her husband's sword, and lightly inserts this foretaste 
 of meat into the mouth of the infant, on its very tip ; and, 
 by family vows, desires that it may never die but under 
 arms." In other words, the relations wished that the 
 little stranger might never be in want of a row, when 
 disposed to distinguish the family name ! 
 
 In the days of Julius Caesar, our stalwart sires sup- 
 ported their thews and sinews on milk and flesh, — the diet 
 of a pugilist. We see how much progress was made by the 
 time of Constantine, — the Constantine that was crowned 
 in Britain, — "when," says a contemporary writer, "the 
 harvests sufficed alike for the gifts of Ceres and Bacchus, 
 and the pastures were covered with innumerable multi- 
 tudes of tame flocks, distended with milk, or laden with 
 fleeces." 
 
 I very much fear, however, notwithstanding the rather 
 poetical accounts of certain early writers, that our abori- 
 ginal ancestry were very little superior to the New 
 Zealanders. They were, perhaps, more uncivilized, and 
 quite as ignorant ; and their abstinence from the flesh of 
 hares and poultry, and, in the northern parts of the island, 
 from fish, bespeaks a race who lacked, at once, industry 
 and knowledge. Indeed, it is by no means certain, that 
 we do not wrong the New Zealanders by suggesting their 
 possible inferiority to the Britons, seeing that the latter 
 are very strongly suspected of being guilty of the most 
 revolting cannibalism. 
 
 They were clever enough to brew mead and ale ; but 
 wine and civilization were brought to them by their ene- 
 mies, the Bomans, — ^invaders whom, for some reasons, 
 they might have welcomed with a sentiment akin to the 
 line in Beranger ; — 
 
 " Vivent nos amis ! nos amiSy les ennemis I " 
 
246 TABLE TRAITS. 
 
 They ate but twice a day. The last meal was the more 
 important one. Their seats were skins, or bundles of 
 hay, flung on the ground. The table was a low stool, 
 around which British Chiefs sat, and, even in the locality 
 occupied by modern Belgravia, tore their food with teeth 
 and nails, or hacked at it with a wretched knife, as bad 
 as any thing of the sort now in common use in Gaul. 
 In short, they committed a thousand solecisms, the very 
 idea of which is sufficient to make the Sybarites of 
 Belgravia very much ashamed of their descent from the 
 savages of Britain. 
 
 It was characteristic of the sort of civilization which 
 the Anglo-Saxons brought with them to England, that 
 they introduced the rather vulgar custom of taking four 
 meals a-day. Tha custom was, however, one solemnly 
 observed by the high-feeding nobility of the Saxons. 
 They ate good solid joints of flesh-meat, boiled, baked, 
 or broiled. It would seem, that, in those days, cooks 
 were not of such an illustrious guild as that which they 
 subsequently formed. A cook among the Anglo-Saxons 
 was little more accounted of than the calf he cut up into 
 collops. The cook, in fact, was a slave ; and was as 
 unceremoniously bequeathed by his owner, in the latter' s 
 last will and testament, as though the culinary artist had 
 been a mere kitchen utensil. At Saxon tables, both sexes 
 sat together, — a custom refined in itself, refining in its 
 effects, and of such importance, that half-a-dozen nations 
 claim the honour of being the inventors of that excellent 
 custom. In Europe, Turkey alone has obstinately refused 
 to follow this civilizing example ; and Turkey is falling 
 to pieces. It may, therefore, be logically proved, that 
 where table rights are not conceded to the ladies, nations 
 slowly perish ; and — " serve them right." 
 
 It is a mark of Anglo-Saxon delicacy, that table-cloths 
 were features at Anglo-Saxon feasts; but, as the long 
 
TABLE TBAITS OF EKGLAIS^D IN EABLT TIMES. 247 
 
 ends were used in place of napkins, the delicacy would be 
 of a somewhat dirty hue, if the cloth were made to serve 
 at a second feast. There was a rude sort of display upon 
 the board; but the order of service was of a quality 
 that would strike the " Jeameses " of the age of Victoria 
 with inexpressible disgust. The meat was never " dished," 
 and "covers" were as yet unknown. The attendants 
 brought the viands into the dining hall on the spits, 
 knelt to each guest, presented the spit to his considera- 
 tion ; and, the guest having helped himself, the attendant 
 went through the same ceremony with the next guest. 
 Hard drinking followed upon these same ceremonies ; and 
 even the monasteries were not exempt from the sins of 
 gluttony and drunkenness. Notwithstanding these bad 
 habits, the Anglo-Saxons were a cleanly people. The 
 warm bath was in general use. Water, for hands and 
 feet, was brought to every stranger on entering a house 
 wherein he was about to tarry and feed ; and, it is said 
 that one of the severest penances of the Church was the 
 temporary denial of the bath, and of cutting the hair and 
 nails. 
 
 With the Normans came greater grandeur and increased 
 discomfort. They neither knew nor tolerated the use of 
 table-cloths or plain steel forks ; but their bill of fare 
 showed more variety and costliness than the Saxons cared 
 for. Their cookery was such an improvement on that of 
 their predecessors in the island, that Norman French, and 
 Norman dishes, flung the Saxon tongue and table into the 
 annihilating position of "vulgarity." The art was so 
 much esteemed, that Monarchs even granted estates, on 
 condition that the holder thereof should, through his 
 cook, prepare a certain dish at stated periods, and set it 
 before the King. It was under the Normans that the 
 boar's head had regal honours paid it ; and its progress 
 from the kitchen to the banquet was under escort of a 
 
248 TABLE TEAITS. 
 
 guard, and behind the deafening salutes of puffy-cheeked 
 trumpeters. The crane was then what the goose is now, 
 — highly esteemed; yet labouring under the shadow of a 
 suspicion of being " common." The peacock, on the 
 other hand, was only seen, tail and all, at the tables of 
 the wealthy. Their beverage was of a very bilious cha- 
 racter, — spicy and cordialed ; namely, hippocras, piment, 
 morat, and mead. The drink of the humbler classes 
 partook of a more choleraic quality. It consisted of cider, 
 perry, and ale. The Norman maxim for good living and 
 plenty of it, was to " rise at five, dine at nine, sup at five, 
 and bed at nine, if you 'd live to a hundred all but one." 
 Dinner at nine is, however, a contradiction of terms ; for 
 dinner, as I have said, is the abbreviation of dixieme heure, 
 or "ten o'clock," the time at which all people sat down 
 to a solid repast in the days of the first Williams. 
 
 In the two following centuries, cooks and Kings 
 launched into far greater magnificence than had ever^ 
 hitherto, been seen in England. Eichard II. entertained 
 ten thousand guests daily at his numerous tables ; and 
 the exceedingly fast Earl of Leicester, grandson of the 
 equally slow Henry III., is said to have spent twenty-two 
 thousand pounds of silver in one year, in eating, alone. 
 His thirsty household retainers drank no less than three 
 hundred and seventy-one pipes of wine, in the same space 
 of time. At great banquets, the dishes were reckoned by 
 thousands, and Kings in vain dictated decrees denouncing 
 such dinners ; for cooks and convives considered them with 
 contempt. As a show of moderation, the old four meals 
 a-day were now reduced to two ; but these two were 
 connected by such a savoury chain of intermeats and 
 refections, that the board was spread all day long, and 
 guests were never weary : — 
 
 " Their life like the life of the Germans would be, 
 Bu lit a la table ; de la table au lit" 
 
TABLE TEAITS Or EKGLAFD IIS^ EAELT TIMES. 249 
 
 To have things "brennying like wild-fire," was the cha- 
 racteristic of the cookery of the period. Confectionery of 
 the richest sorts were the lighter materials of meals, 
 which were abimdantly irrigated by hippocras, piment, 
 or claret, or the simpler and purer wines of France, Spain, 
 Syria, and Greece. Thus might a host say : — 
 
 " Ye shall have rumney and malespine. 
 Both ypocrasse and vernage wine ; 
 Mountrasse and wyne of Greke, 
 Both algrade and despice eke, 
 Antioche and bastarde, 
 Pyment also and garnarde, 
 Wyne of Greke and muscadell, 
 Both clary, pyment, and RocheUe.'' 
 
 Eicobaldi of Ferrara, writing, about the year 1300, of 
 the Italian social condition in the age of Frederick II., 
 illustrates the former rudeness of the Italian manners, by 
 showing that in those days " a man and his wife ate oif 
 the same plate. There were no wooden-handled knives, 
 nor more than one or two drinking-cups in a house. 
 Candles of wax or tallow were unknown ; a servant held a 
 torch during supper. The clothes of men were of leather 
 unlined ; scarcely any gold or silver was seen on their 
 dress. The common people ate flesh but three times a 
 week, and kept their cold meat for supper. Many did 
 not drink wine in summer. A small stock of corn seemed 
 riches. The portions of women were small ; their dress, 
 even after marriage, was simple. The pride of men was 
 to be well provided with arms and horses ; that of the 
 nobility to have loffcy towers, of which all the cities in 
 Italy were full. But now, frugality has been changed for 
 sumptuousness ; every thing exquisite is sought after in 
 dress, — gold, silver, pearls, silks, and rich furs." 
 
 The Household-Book of the Earl of Northumberland 
 admirably illustrates the interior and table life of the 
 
250 TABLE TRAITS. 
 
 greater nobles of tlie period of Henry YTI. In this well- 
 known and well-kept record, the family is described as 
 consisting of one hundred and sixty-six persons, masters 
 and servants ; and hospitable reckoning is allowed for 
 more than half a hundred strangers who are expected daily 
 to partake of the Earl's good cheer. The cost for each indi- 
 vidual, for board and fuel, is settled at twopence halfpenny 
 daily, about one and sixpence of our present money, if we 
 take into account the relative value of money, and the 
 relative prices of provisions. The Earl allots for his 
 annual expenditure £1178. 17^. Sd. More than two- 
 thirds of this is consumed in meat, drink, and firing ; 
 namely, £797. 11^. 2d. The book carefully states the 
 number of pieces which the carver is to cut out of each 
 quarter of beef, mutton, veal, pork, nay, even stock-fish 
 and salmon ; and supervising clerks were appointed to see 
 that this was carried into effect, and to make due entry of 
 the same in their registers. An absent servant's share is to 
 be accounted for, and not to be divided among the rest. The 
 absentee, if he be on " my Lord's " business, received Sd, 
 per day, board wages, in winter, and 5d. in summer ; 
 with 2d. additional daily for the keep of a horse. A 
 little more than a quarter of wheat, estimated at 5s. Sd, 
 per quarter, is allowed for every month throughout the 
 year ; with this, 250 quarters of malt, at 4^., (two hogs- 
 heads to the quarter,) and producing about a bottle and a 
 third of intermediate beer to each person, does not say 
 much for the liberality of the Lord, though it may for the 
 temperance of his retainers. One hundred and nine fat 
 beeves are to be bought at All-Hallow's Tide, at 13*. 4<d, 
 each ; a couple of dozen of lean kine, at 8^., are to be 
 bought at St. Helen's, to be fattened for service between 
 Midsummer and Michaelmas. All the rest of the year, 
 nine weary months, the family was on salted provisions, 
 to aid the digestion of which, the Earl, so chary of his 
 
TABLE TRAITS OF ENGLAND IN EABLT TIMES. 251 
 
 liquor, allows the profuse aid of one hundred and sixty- 
 six gallons of mustard. 647 sheep at Is, Sd., to be eaten 
 salted between Lammas and Michaelmas ; 25 hogs at 25., 
 28 calves at Is. 8d., 40 lambs at lOd. or 1^., — are other 
 articles which seem to have been reserved rather for the 
 upper table than for the servants, whose chief fare was 
 salted beef, without vegetables, but with mustard a 
 discretion ! There was great scarcity of linen, and the 
 little there was, except that for the chapel, not often 
 washed. No mention is made of sheets ; and though 
 "my Lord's" table had eight "table-cloths" for the 
 year, that of the Knights had but one, and probably 
 went uncovered while the cloth was "at the wash." If 
 the ale was limited, the wine appears to have been m'ore 
 liberally dispensed ; and ten tuns and two hogsheads of 
 Gascony wine, at £4. 135. 4^d. per tun, show the bent of 
 the Earl's taste. Ninety-one dozens of candles for the 
 year, and no fires after Lady-Day, except half-fires in the 
 great room and the nursery ; twenty-four fires, with a 
 peck of coals daily for each, (for the offices,) and eighty 
 chaldrons of coals, at 4^. 10^., with sixty-four loads of 
 wood, at \s. a load, — are the provisions made for lighting 
 and firing. It must have been cold work to live in the 
 noble Earl's house in Yorkshire, from Lady-Day till the 
 warm summer came ; which advent is sometimes put off 
 till next year. The family rose at six, or before ; for 
 Mass was especially ordered at that hour, in order to force 
 the household to rise early. The dinner-hour was ten 
 A.M. ; four P.M. was the hour for supper ; and at nine the 
 bell rang for bed. I have omitted the breakfast, which 
 took place at seven, after Mass ; when my Lord and 
 Lady sat down to a repast of two pieces of salt-fish, and 
 half-a-dozen red herrings, with four fresh ones, or a dish 
 of sprats, and a quart of beer, and the same measure of 
 wine. This was on meagre days. At other seasons, half 
 
252 TABLE TEAITS. 
 
 a chine of mutton, or of boiled beef, graced the board of 
 the delicate Earl and Countess, who sometimes forgot 
 that they had to dine at ten. Capons, at 2d. each, were 
 only on the Lord's table, and plovers, at a penny, (at 
 Christmas,) were deemed too good for any digestion that 
 was not carried on in a "noble" stomach. Game 
 generally is specified, but without intimation as to limit 
 of the board. No doubt the fragments were not rejected 
 at the servants' table ; but much certainly went in doles 
 at the gate. My Lord maintained between twenty and 
 thirty horses for his own use. His mounted servants 
 found their own ; but their keep was at the noble mas- 
 ter's cost. Of mounted servants, not less than three 
 dozen attended their Lord on a journey ; and when this 
 journey was for change of residence from one mansion to 
 another, the illustrious Percy carried with him bed and 
 bedding, household furniture, pots, pans, and kitchen 
 utensils generally. The baggage waggon bore these 
 impedimenta; and before and behind them went chiefs 
 and serving men, including in the array eleven Priests, — 
 two hundred and twenty-three persons in all, — and only 
 two cooks to look after their material happiness ! No notice 
 is taken of plate; but the "hiring of pewter vessels" is 
 mentioned ; and with these rough elements did the Earl 
 construct his imperfect social system, so far taking care 
 for his soul as well as his body, inasmuch as that he 
 contributed a groat a year to the shrine of our Lady of 
 Walsingham, and the same magnificent sum to the holy 
 blood at Hales, on the express condition of the interest 
 of the Virgin for the promotion of the future welfare of 
 the Earl in heaven. Such is an outline of a nobleman's 
 household in the good old days of Henry YII. 
 
 In the reign of the same King, fish was a scarce article, 
 and for a singular reason ; namely, people destroyed them 
 at an unlawful season, for the purpose of feeding their 
 
TABLE TRAITS OF ET^GLAKD IX EARLY TIMES. 253 
 
 pigs or manuring the ground. The favourite wine at 
 table was Malmsey : it came from Candy ; and there was 
 a legal restriction against its costing more than four 
 pounds per butt*. In this reign our cooks wrought at fires 
 made with wood imported from Gascony and Languedoc, 
 whence also much wine was brought, but, by law, only in 
 English bottoms. The richest man of this reign was Sir 
 William Stanley, into whose hands fell nearly all the spoil 
 of Bosworth Field ; and therewith he maintained a far 
 more princely house and table than his master. 
 
 In Pegge's " Cury''^ there is an account of the rolls of 
 provisions, with their prices, in the time of Henry VIII. ; 
 and we find that, at the dinner given at the marriage of 
 Grervase Clifton and Mary Nevile, the price of three 
 hogsheads of wine (one white, one red, one claret) was 
 set down at £5. 6s. 
 
 The dining-rooms — and, indeed, these were the common 
 living rooms in the greatest houses — were still uncom- 
 fortable places. The walls were of stone, partially con- 
 cealed by tapestry hung upon timber hooks, and taken 
 down whenever the family removed, (leaving bare the 
 stone walls,) lest the damp should rot it. It was a 
 fashion that had lasted for centuries ; but it began to dis- 
 appear when mansions ceased to be fortresses. The 
 tapestry, it may be observed, was suspended on a wooden 
 frame projecting from the wall, between which and the 
 hangings there was a passage wide enough to kill a man, 
 as Hamlet did Polonius, "behind the arras." It was not 
 till the reign of Charles I. that houses were built with 
 under-ground rooms ; the pantry, cellars, kitchens, and 
 store-rooms were, previous to this reign, aU on the ground 
 floor; and the officials presiding in each took there, 
 respectively, their solemn post on great days of state- 
 dinners. There were certain days when the contents of 
 these several offices, meat and drink, were bountifully 
 
254 TABLE TRAITS. 
 
 supplied to every applicant. To revert to tapestry : we 
 see the time of its change, in the speech of Falstaff, who 
 wishes his hostess to sell her tapestry, and adopt the 
 cheaper painted canvas which came from Holland. 
 
 At this time, and, indeed, long after, our English 
 yeomanry and tradesmen were more anxious to invigorate 
 their bodies by a generous diet, than to dwell in well-fur- 
 nished houses, or to find comfort in cleanhness and 
 elegance. "These English," said the Spaniards who 
 came over with Philip II., " have their houses made of 
 sticks and dirt ; but they fare commonly as well as the 
 King." 
 
 Previous to the age of Elizabeth, even the Monarch, 
 well as he might fare, and gloriously as he shone in 
 pageants, was but simply lodged. The furniture of the 
 bed-room of Henry VIII. was of the very simplest ; and 
 the magnificent Wolsey was content with deal for the 
 material of most of the furniture of his palace. But the 
 community generally was, from this period, both boarded 
 and bedded more comfortably and refinedly than before. 
 The hours for meals were eight, noon, and six ; but 
 "after-meats," and "after-suppers," filled up the inter- 
 vals. It was chiefly at the "after-supper" that wine 
 was used. The dinner, however, had become the princi- 
 pal meal of the day. It was abundant ; but the jester 
 and harper were no longer tolerated at it, with their 
 lively sauce of mirth and music. It was the fashion to 
 be sad, and ceremonious dinners were celebrated in stately 
 silence, or a dignified sotto voce. Each guest took his 
 place according to a properly marshalled order of prece- 
 dence ; and, before sitting down to dinner, they washed 
 with rose-water and perfumes, like the parochial boards 
 of half a century ago, who used also to deduct the 
 expenses of both dinners and rose-water from the rates 
 levied for the relief of the poor ; this, too, at a time when 
 
TABLE TRAITS OF ENGLAND IN EAELT TIMES. 255 
 
 men who were not parish authorities were being hanged 
 for steaUng to the amoxmt of a few shillings. 
 
 By the reign of Elizabeth, napkins had been added to 
 table-cloths. The wealthy ate the manchet, or fine wheaten 
 bread ; the middle classes were content with a bread of 
 coarser quality called " chete ;''^ and the ravelled, brown, or 
 maslin bread was consumed by those who could afford to 
 procure no better. There was a passion for strong wines 
 at this time. Of this, France sent more than half a 
 hundred different sorts, and thirty-six various kinds were 
 imported from other parts of Europe. About 30,000 tuns 
 were imported yearly, exclusive of what the nobility 
 imported free of duty. The compound wines were in 
 great request ; and ladies did not disdain to put their lips 
 to distilled liquors, such as rosa-solis and aqua-vitcB. Ale 
 was brewed stronger than these distillations ; and our 
 ancestors drank thereof to an extent that is terrific only 
 to think of. Camden ascribes the prevailing drunkenness 
 to the long wars in the Netherlands, previous to which, 
 we had been held, " of all the northern nations, the most 
 commended for sobriety." The barbarous terms formerly 
 used in drinking matches, are all of Dutch, German, or 
 Danish origin, and this serves to confirm Camden's asser- 
 tion. The statutes passed to correct the evil were dis- 
 regarded. James I. was particularly desirous to enforce 
 these statutes ; but his chief difficulty lay in the fact, that 
 he was the first to infringe them. 
 
 In Elizabeth's reign the " watching candles " of Alfred 
 (to mark the time) were in use in many houses. This is 
 a curious trait of in-door Hfe. We have an "exterior" 
 one, in the fact that the Yicar of Hurly, who served 
 Maidenhead, had an addition of stipend on account of the 
 danger he ran, in crossing the thicket, when he passed to 
 or from the church — and his inn. It was not a deHcate 
 period, and if caraways always appeared at dessert, every 
 
256 TABLE TRAITS. 
 
 one knew that they were there for the kind purpose of 
 curmg expected flatulence in the guests. 
 
 In James the First's reign, the fashion of Malmsey had 
 passed away, and the Hungarian red wine (Ofener) had 
 taken its place. It came by Breslau to Hamburg, where 
 it was shipped to England. It is a strong wine, and 
 bears some resemblance to port. 
 
 In country-houses in the seventeenth century, the 
 Knight or Squire was head of a host of retainers, three- 
 fourths of whom consumed the substance of the master 
 on whose estate they were born, without rendering him 
 much other service than drinking his ale, eating his beef, 
 and wearing his livery. Brief family prayers, and heavy 
 family breakfasts, a run with the hounds, and an early 
 dinner, followed by long and heavy drinking, till supper- 
 time, when more feeding and imbibing went on until each 
 man finished his posset, or carried it with him to bed, — 
 such was the ordinary course : but it admitted of excep- 
 tions where the master was a man of intellect, and then 
 the country-house was a temple of hospitality rather than 
 of riot ; and good sense and ripe wit took the place of 
 the sensuality, obscurity, and ignorance that distinguished 
 the boards where the Squire was simply a " brute." 
 
 Of the table traits of this century, the best examples 
 are to be found in Pepys and Evelyn. In the Diary of 
 the former, may be seen what a jolly tavern life could be 
 led by a grave ofiicial, and no scandal given. Evelyn takes 
 us into better company. We find him at the Spanish 
 Ambassador's, when his Excellency, by way of dessert, 
 endeavoured to convert him to the Eoman Catholic 
 Church. We go with him to the feast where the Envoy 
 from the Emperor of Morocco figured as so civilized a 
 gentleman, while the representative of the Czar of Mus- 
 covy comported himself like a rude clown ; and we dine 
 with him at Lady Sunderland's, where the noble hostess 
 
TABLE TRAITS OF ENGLAND IN EAKLT TIMES. 257 
 
 had engaged, for the amusement of the guests, a man who 
 swallowed stones, and who not only performed the feat in 
 presence of the company, but convinced them there was 
 no cheat, by making the stones rattle in his stomach. 
 But, nous avons change tout cela^ and not only changed in 
 taste, but improved in manners. 
 
 Pepys gives a curious account of a Lord Mayor's 
 dinner in 1663. It was served in the Guildhall, at one 
 o'clock in the day. A bill of fare was placed with every 
 salt-cellar, and at the end of each table was a list of " the 
 persons proper" there to be seated. Here is a mixture 
 of abundance and barbarism. " Many were the tables, 
 but none in the hall, but the Mayor's and the Lords' 
 of the Privy Council, that had napkins or knives, which 
 was very strange. I sat at the merchant-strangers' table, 
 where ten good dishes to a mess, with plenty of wine 
 of all sorts ; but it was very unpleasing that we had 
 no napkins, nor change of trenchers, and drank out of 
 earthen pitchers and wooden dishes. The dinner, it 
 seems, is made by the Mayor and two Sheriffs for the 
 time being, and the whole is reckoned to come to £700 
 or £800 at most." Pepys took his spoon and fork with 
 him, as was the custom of those days with guests invited 
 to great entertainments. "Forks" came in with Tom 
 Cory at, in the reign of James I. ; but they were not 
 "familiar" till after the Restoration. The "laying of 
 napkins," as it was called, was a profession of itself. 
 Pepys mentions, the day hefore one of his dinner-parties, 
 that he went home, and " there found one laying of my 
 napkins against to-morrow, in figures of all sorts, which 
 is mighty pretty, and, it seems, is his trade, and he gets 
 much money by it." The age of Pepys, we may further 
 notice, was the great " supping age." Pepys himself 
 supped heartily on venison pasty ; but his occasional 
 "next-morning" remark was like that of Scrub: "My 
 
 S 
 
258 TABLE TRAITS. 
 
 head aches eonsumedly ! " The dashing Duchess of Cleve- 
 land supped off such suhstantials as roast chine of beef; 
 much more solid fare than that of the Squires in a suc- 
 ceeding reign, who were content, with Sir Eoger de 
 Coverley, to wind up the day with " good Cheshire cheese, 
 best mustard, a golden pippin, and a pipe of John Sly's 
 best." 
 
 A few years earlier, Laud had leisure to write anxiously 
 to Strafford on the subject of Ulster eels. " Your Ulster 
 eels are the fattest and fairest that ever I saw, and it 's a 
 thousand pities there should be any error in their salting, 
 or any thing else about them ; for how the carriage 
 should hurt them I do not see, considering that other 
 salted eels are brought as far, and retain their goodness ; 
 but the dried fish was exceeding good." There was a 
 good deal of error in the preserving of other things 
 besides eels, if Laud had only known as much. 
 
 It may be mentioned as something of a " Table Trait," 
 illustrating the popular appetite in the reign of Charles 11. , 
 that he sent sea stores to the people encamped in Moor- 
 fields ; but they were so well provisioned by the liberality 
 of the nation, that they turned up their noses at the 
 King's biscuits, and sent them back, "not having been 
 used to the same." There was some ungrateful imperti- 
 nence in this ; but there was less meanness in it than was 
 shown by the great ladies of Queen Anne's reign, who 
 were curious in old china, and who indulged their passion 
 by " swopping" their old clothes for fragile cups and 
 saucers, instead of giving the former to the poor. 
 
 Dryden speaks, in the Preface to his " Love Trium- 
 phant," of a remarkable trait of the time of William 
 III. " It is the usual practice," he says, " of our decayed 
 gentry, to look about them for some illustrious family, 
 and then endeavour to fix their young darling, where he 
 may be both well educated and supported." " 
 
TABLE TEAITS OF ENGLAND IN EAELT TIMES. 259 
 
 Shaftesbury reveals to us an illustration of George the 
 First's reign. " In latter days," he says, " it has become 
 the fashion to eat with less ceremony and method. Every 
 one chooses to carve for himself. The learned manner 
 of dissection is out of request ; and a certain method of 
 cookery has been introduced, by which the anatomical 
 science of the table is entirely set aside. Ragouts and 
 fricassees are the reigning dishes, in which every thing is 
 so dismembered, and thrown out of all order and form, 
 that no part of the mess can properly be divided or dis- 
 tinguished from another." But we have come to a period 
 that demands a chapter to itself; and even with that 
 implied space, we can hardly do justice to the Table 
 Traits of the Last Century. 
 
 s 2 
 
TABLE TRAITS OF THE LAST CENTURY. 
 
 Wheis^ Mr. Chute intimated to Horace Walpole that 
 his "temperance diet and milk" had rendered him stupid, 
 Walpole protested pleasantly against such an idea. " I 
 have such lamentable proofs," he says, " every day, of the 
 stupifying qualities of beef, ale, and wine, that I have 
 contracted a most religious veneration for yoiu' spiritual 
 nouriture. Only imagine that I here, (Houghton,) every 
 day, see men who are mountains of roast beef, and only 
 seem just roughly hewn out into the outlines of human 
 form, like the giant rock at Pratolino ! I shudder when 
 I see them brandish their knives, in act to carve, and 
 look on them as savages that devour one another. I 
 should not stare at all more than I do, if yonder Alder- 
 man, at the end of the table, was to stick his fork into 
 his jolly neighbour's cheek, and cut a brave slice of brown 
 and fat. Why, I '11 swear I see no difference between a 
 country gentleman and a sirloin : whenever the first 
 laughs, or the latter is cut, there run out just the same 
 streams of gravy ! Indeed, the sirloin does not ask quite 
 so many questions. I have an aunt here, a family piece 
 of goods, an old remnant of inquisitive hospitality and 
 economy, who, to all intents and purposes, is as beefy as 
 her neighbours." 
 
 Certainly, I think it may be considered that, in diet 
 and in principles, we have improved upon the fashion of 
 one himdred and ten years ago ; — and, perhaps, the 
 improvement in principles is a consequence of that in 
 
TABLE TRAITS OF THE LAST CENTURY. 261 
 
 diet. There was a profound meaning in the point of 
 faith of some old religionists, that the stomach was the 
 seat of the soul. However this may be, the "beefy" 
 men of Walpole's time had, occasionally, strange ideas 
 touching honour. Old Nourse, for instance, challenged 
 Lord Windsor, who refused to fight him, either with 
 sword or pistols, on the plea that Nourse was too aged a 
 man. Thereupon Nourse, in a fit of vexation and indi- 
 gestion, went home from the coffee-house and cut his 
 throat ! " It was strange, yet very English," says Wal- 
 pole. Old Nourse must have had Japanese blood in him. 
 At Jeddo, when a nobleman feels himself slighted, he 
 walks home, takes the sharpest knife he can find, and 
 rips himself open, from the umhilicus to the trachea ! 
 
 Quite as certainly, strong diet and weak principles 
 prevailed among our great-grandsires and their dames. 
 Lady Townshend fell in love with the rebel Lord Kil- 
 marnock, from merely seeing him at his trial. She forth- 
 with cast . off her old lover, Sir Harry Nisbett, and 
 became " as yellow as a jonquil" for the new object of her 
 versatile affection. She even took a French master, in 
 order that she might forget the language of " the bloody 
 English!" She was not so afflicted, but that she could 
 bear the company of gay George Selwyn to dine with 
 her ; and he, believing that her passion was feigned, joked 
 with her, on what was always a favourite topic with 
 himself, — the approaching execution. Lady Townshend 
 forthwith rushed from the table in rage and tears, and 
 Mr. Selwyn finished the bottle with " Mrs. Dorcas, her 
 woman," who begged of him to help her to a sight of the 
 execution ! Mrs. Dorcas had a friend who had promised 
 to protect her, and, added she, " I can lie in the Tower 
 the night before !" This is a pretty dining-room interior 
 of the last century. As for G-eorge Selwyn, that most 
 celebrated of the diners-out of a hundred years ago, he 
 
262 TABLE TRAITS. 
 
 said the pleasantest thing possible at dessert, after the 
 execution of Lord Lovat. Some ladies asked him how- 
 he could be such a barbarian as to see the head cut off. 
 *'Nay," said he, "if that was such a crime, I am sure I 
 have made amends ; for I went to see it sewed on again 1" 
 " George," says Walpole, " never thinks but a la tete 
 tranchee ; he came to town t' other day to have a tooth 
 drawn, and told the man that he would drop his hand- 
 kerchief for the signal." 
 
 Selwyn kept his powers bright by keeping good com- 
 pany ; while Gray the poet was but indifferent society, 
 from living reclusely, added to a natural turn for melan- 
 choly, and " a little too much dignity." Young, a greater 
 poet than Gray, was as brilliant in conversation as Selwyn 
 himself, as long as, like Selwyn, he polished his wit by 
 contact with the world. When he dined with Garrick, 
 Quin, and George Anne Bellamy, he was the sprightliest 
 of the four ; but when he took to realizing the solitude 
 he had epically praised. Young, too, became a proser. 
 Quin loved good living as much as he did sparkling con- 
 versation ; and Garrick, the other guest noticed above, has 
 perfectly delineated Quin the epicure in the following 
 epigram, as he subsequently did Quin, the man and 
 brother of men, in his epitaph in Bath Abbey : — 
 
 " A plague on Egypt's art ! I say ; 
 Embalm the dead, on senseless clay 
 
 Rich wines and spices waste ! 
 Like sturgeon, or like brawn, shall I, 
 Bound in a precious pickle, lie, 
 
 Which I shall never taste ? 
 
 " Let me embalm this flesh of mine 
 With tm'tle fat and Bordeaux wine, 
 
 And spoil th' Egyptian trade. 
 Than Humphrey's Duke more happy I ; 
 Embalm'd alive, old Quin shall die, 
 
 A mummy, ready made." 
 
TABLE TRAITS OP THE LAST CENTUEY. 263 
 
 A good many female mummies were prepared during 
 the last century after a similar receipt. Witness Wal- 
 pole's neighbour at Strawberry Hill, " an attorney's wife, 
 and much given to the bottle. By the time she has 
 finished that and daylight, she grows afraid of thieves, 
 and makes her servants fire minute-guns out of the 
 garret windows. The divine Asheton," he proceeds, 
 " will give you an account of the astonishment we were 
 in last night at hearing guns. I began to think that 
 the Duke (of Cumberland) had brought some of his 
 defeats from Flanders." 
 
 Young denounces, in his " Satires," both tea and wine, 
 as abused by the fair sex of the last century. In Mem- 
 mia he paints Lady Betty Germain, in the lines I have 
 quoted under the head of " Tea;" and then, hurling his 
 shafts of satire at that which another poet has described 
 as "cups which cheer, but not inebriate," he adds, — 
 
 " Tea ! how I tremble at thy fatal stream ! 
 As Lethe, dreadful to the love of fame. 
 What devastations on thy banks are seen ! 
 What shades of mighty names which once have been ! 
 A hecatomb of characters supplies 
 Thy painted altar's daily sacrifice. 
 Hervey, Pearce, Blount, aspersed by thee, decay. 
 As grains of finest sugars melt away, 
 And recommend thee more to mortal taste : 
 Scandal 's the sweetener of a female feast." 
 
 And then, adverting to the ladies who, like Walpole's 
 "attorney's wife," were much given to the bottle, the 
 poet exclaims, — 
 
 " But this inhuman triumph shall decline. 
 And thy revolting Naiads call for wine ; 
 Spirits no longer shall serve under thee, 
 But reign in thy own cup, exploded Tea ! 
 Citronia's nose declares thy ruin nigh ; 
 And who dares give Citronia's nose the lie ? 
 
264 TABLE TEAITS. 
 
 The ladies long at men of drink exclaim'd, 
 
 And what impair'd both health and virtue blamed. 
 
 At length, to rescue man, the generous lass 
 
 Stole from her consort the pernicious glass. 
 
 As glorious as the British Queen renown'd, 
 
 "Who suck'd the poison from her husband's wound." 
 
 Maimers and morals generally go hand in hand ; hut 
 those of the ladies satirized hy Yomig were not so bad as 
 those of the French Princesses of a few years before, 
 when they and Duchesses were so addicted to drinking, 
 that no one thought it a vice, since royalty and aristo- 
 cracy practised it. The Dauphine of Burgundy is indeed 
 praised by her biographers as not drinking to any great 
 excess during the three last years of her life. But this 
 was exceptional. The Duchess of Bourbon and her 
 daughters drank like dragoons ; but the latter were 
 unruly in their cups, whereas the old lady carried her 
 liquor discreetly. Henrietta, Madame de Montespan, 
 and the Princess di Monaco, were all addicted, more or 
 less, to tippling. The Duchess de Bourbon and Her 
 Grace of Chartres added smoking to their other boon 
 qualities ; and the Dauphin once surprised them with 
 pipes which had been cullotes for them by common 
 soldiers of the Swiss Guard ! In France, devotion even 
 was made a means towards drunkenness. Bungener tells 
 us, in his " Trois Sermons sous Louis XV,^^' that Mon- 
 sieur Basquiat de la House owned a small estate in Gas- 
 cony, which produced a wine which no one would buy. 
 Being at Home, as Secretary of an Embassy, he procured 
 a body from the catacombs, which he christened by the 
 name of a saint venerated in his part of the country. The 
 people received it with great pomp. Kj^ete was appointed 
 by the Pope, a fair by the Government, and the wine 
 was sold by hogsheads ! It was a wine as thin as the 
 beverage which Mr. Chute lived on when he had the gout, 
 
TABLE TEAITS OF THE LAST CENTUET. 265 
 
 at which time, says Walpole, " he keeps himself very low, 
 and lives upon very thin ink." 
 
 , There was a good deal of latitude of observation and 
 conversation at the dinner-tables of the last century ; and 
 the letter- writer I have just cited affords us ample 
 evidence of the fact. John Stanhope, of the Admiralty, 
 he informs us, " was sitting by an old Mr. Curzon, a nasty 
 wretch, and very covetous ; his nose wanted blowing, and 
 continued to want it ; at last Mr. Stanhope, with the 
 greatest good breeding, said, ' Indeed, Sir, if you don't 
 wipe your nose, you will lose that drop.'" 
 
 A hundred years ago, Walpole remarked that Method- 
 ism, drinking, and gambling were all on the increase. Of 
 the first he sneeringly says, " It increases as fast as any 
 religious nonsense did." Of the second he remarks, 
 "Drinking is at the highest wine-mark;" and he speaks 
 of the third as being so violent, that " at the last New- 
 market meeting, in the rapidity of both gaming and 
 drinking, a bank bill was thrown down, and, nobody im- 
 mediately claiming it, they agreed to give it to a man 
 who was standing by !" 
 
 There was a love of good eating, as well as of deep 
 drinking, even among the upper classes of the last cen- 
 tury. What a picture of a Duchess is that of her Grace 
 of Queensberry, posting down to Parson's Green, to tell 
 Lady Sophia Thomas " something of importance ; " 
 namely, " Take a couple of beefsteaks, clap them together 
 as if they were for a dumpling, and eat them with pep- 
 per and salt : it is the best thing you ever tasted ! I 
 could not help coming to tell you this ;" — and then she 
 drove back to town. And what a picture of a Magis- 
 trate is that of Fielding, seated at supper with a blind 
 man, a Drury-Lane Chloris, and three Irishmen, all 
 eating cold mutton and ham from one dish, on a very 
 dirty cloth, and "his worship " refusing to rise to attend 
 
266 TABLE TRAITS. 
 
 to the administration of Justices' justice ! It is but 
 fair, however, to Fielding to add, that he might have had 
 better fare had he been more oppressive touching fees. 
 And, besides, great dignitaries set him but an indifferent 
 example. G-ray, speaking of the Duke of Newcastle's 
 installation at Oxford, remarks, that " every one was very 
 gay and Yerj busy in the morning, and very owlish and 
 very tipsy at night. I make no exceptions, from the 
 Chancellor to Blewcoat." Lord Pembroke, truly, was 
 temperate enough to live upon vegetables ; but the diet 
 did not improve either his temper or his morals. Ladies 
 — and they were not over delicate a century ago — as 
 much dreaded sitting near him at dinner, as their 
 daughters and grand-daughters dreaded to be near the 
 late Duke of Cumberland, who was pretty sure to say 
 something in the course of dinner expressly to embarrass 
 them. The vegetarian Lord Pomfret was so blasphemous 
 at tennis, that the Primate of Ireland, Dr. George Stone, 
 was compelled to leave off playing with him. For Pri- 
 mates handled the rackets then, as Pope and Cardinals do 
 now the cue. Pio Nono and the expertest of the Sacred 
 College play la poule at billiards, after dinner, with the 
 view of keeping down the good Pontiff's obesity. This is 
 almost as curious a trait as that of Taafe, the Irishman, 
 who, conceiving himself to have been insulted at a dinner, 
 and not being then able, as a Eoman Catholic, to wear a 
 sword, changed his religion, and ran his adversary 
 through the body. The confusion of ideas which 
 prompted a man to follow a particular faith, in order that 
 he might commit murder, was something like that which 
 influenced the poor woman who, suddenly becoming 
 pious, after hearing a sermon from Howland Hill, went to 
 a book-stall, and stole a Bible. 
 
 I have noticed the love of good eating, and the coarse- 
 ness connected with it. There was also a coarse economy 
 
TABLE TEAITS OP THE LAST CENTURY. 267 
 
 attendant on it. The Duchess of Devonshire would call 
 out to the Duke, when both were presiding at supper 
 after one of their assembhes, " Good God, Duke ! don't 
 cut the ham ; nobody will eat any ;" and then she would 
 relate the circumstances of her private menage to her 
 neighbour : " When there 's only my Lord and I, besides 
 a pudding, we have always a dish of roast," — no very 
 dainty fare for a ducal pair. Indeed, there was much 
 want of daintiness, and of dignity, too, in many of those 
 with whom both might have been looked for as a pos- 
 session. Lord Coventry chased his Lady round the 
 dinner-table, and scrubbed the paint off her cheeks with 
 a napkin. The Duke and Duchess of Hamilton were 
 more contemptible in their pomposity than their Graces 
 of Devonshire were in their plainness. At their own 
 house they walked in to dinner before their company, sat 
 together at the upper end of their own table, ate together 
 off one plate, and drank to nobody beneath the rank of 
 Earl. It was, indeed, a wonder that they could get any 
 one of any rank to dine with them at all. But, in point 
 of dinners, people are not " nice " even now. Dukes very 
 recently dined with a railway potentate, in hopes of profit- 
 ing by the condescension ; and Duchesses heard, without a 
 smile, that potentate's lady superbly dismiss them with 
 an ''^ au reservoir V^ — an expression, by the way, which is 
 refined, when compared with that taught by our nobility, 
 a hundred years ago, to the rich Bohemian Countess 
 Chamfelt ; namely, "D — n you!" and, "Kiss me!" 
 but it was apologetically said of her, that she never used 
 the former but upon the miscarriage of the latter. This 
 was at a time when vast assemblies were followed by vast 
 suppers, vast suppers by vast drinking, and when nymphs 
 and swains reached home at dawn with wigs, like Ranger's 
 in the comedy, vastly battered, and not very fit to be seen. 
 Pope, in the last century, moralized, with effect, on the 
 
268 TABLE TEAITS. 
 
 deaths of the dissolute Buckingham and the avaricious 
 Cutler; and the avarice of Sir John was perhaps more 
 detestable than any extravagance that is satirized by 
 Pope, or witticized by Walpole. But Sir John Cutler 
 was ingenious in his thrift. This rich miser ordinarily 
 travelled on horseback and alone, in order to avoid 
 expense. On reaching his inn at night, he feigned indis- 
 position, as an excuse for not taking supper. He would 
 simply order the hostler to bring a little straw to his 
 room, to put in his boots. He then had his bed warmed, 
 and got into it, but only to get out of it again as soon as 
 the servant had left the room. Then, with the straw in 
 his boots and the candle at his bed-side, he kindled a 
 little fire, at which he toasted a herring which he drew 
 from his pocket. This, with a bit of bread which he 
 carried with him, and a little water from the jug, enabled 
 the lord of countless thousands to sup at a very moderate 
 cost. 
 
 Well, this sordidness was less culpable perhaps than 
 
 slightly overstepping income by giving assemblies and 
 
 suppers. At the latter there was, at least, wit, and as 
 
 much of it as was ever to be found at Madame du Def- 
 
 fand's, where, by the way, the people did not sup. " Last 
 
 night, at my Lady Hervey's,*' says Walpole, " Mrs. 
 
 Dives was expressing great panic about the French," 
 
 who were said to be preparing to invade England. " My 
 
 Lady Kochford, looking down on her fan, said, with great 
 
 softness, ' I don't know ; I don't think the French are a 
 
 sort of people that women need be afraid of.'" This was 
 
 more commendable wit than that of Madame du Deffand 
 
 herself, who, as I have previously remarked, made a whole 
 
 assembly laugh, at Madame de Marchais', when her old 
 
 lover was known to be dying, by saying as she entered, 
 
 " He is gone ; and wasn't it lucky ? He died at six, or I 
 
 could not possibly have shown myself here to-night." 
 
TABLE TRAITS OF THE LAST CENTURY. 269 
 
 Our vain lady-wits, however, too often lacked refine- 
 ment. "If I drink any more," said Lady Coventry at 
 Lord Hertford's table, " if I drink any more, I shall be 
 'muckibus.'" '*Lord!" said Lady Mary Coke, "what 
 is that?" "0," was the reply, "it is Irish for senti- 
 mental !'^ In those days there were no wedding break- 
 fasts : the nuptial banquet was a dinner, and bride and 
 bridegroom saw it out. Walpole congratulates himself 
 that, at the marriage of his niece Maria, " there was nei- 
 ther form nor indecency, both which generally meet on 
 such occasions. They were married," he adds, " at my 
 brother's in Pall Mall, just before dinner, by Mr. Keppel ; 
 the company, my brother, his son, Mrs. Keppel and 
 Charlotte, Lady Elizabeth Keppel, Lady Betty Walde- 
 grave, and I. We dined there ; the Earl and new 
 Countess got into their post-chaise at eight o'clock, and 
 went to Navestock alone, where they stay till Saturday 
 night." Walpole gives instances enough — and more than 
 enough — where matters did not go off so becomingly. 
 Lords and Ladies were terribly coarse in sentiment and 
 expression ; and the women were often worse than the 
 men. " Miss Pett," says the writer whom I have so 
 often quoted, " has dismissed Lord Buckingham : tant 
 mieux pour lui! She damns her eyes that she will 
 marry some Captain : tant mieux pour elle.^^ This is a 
 sample of Table Traits in 1760 ; and it was long before 
 manners and morals improved. The example was not of 
 the best sort even in high places. The mistress of Alfieri 
 dined at Court, as widow of the Pretender ; and Madame 
 du Barry was publicly feasted by our potential Lord 
 Mayor. 
 
 Some of the women were not only coarse in speech, but 
 furies in act, and often sharpers to boot. Thus, when 
 "Jemmy Lumley," in 1761, had a party of ladies at his 
 house, with whom, after dinner, he played whist, from six 
 
270 TABLE TRAITS. 
 
 at night till noon the next day, he lost two thousand 
 pounds, which, suspecting knavery, he refused to pay. 
 His antagonist, Mrs. Mackenzie, subsequently pounced 
 upon him in the garden of an inn at Hampstead, where 
 he was about to give a dinner to some other ladies. The 
 sturdy " Scotchwoman," as Gray calls her, demanded her 
 money, and, on meeting with a refusal, she " horsewhipped, 
 trampled, bruised," and served him with worse indigni- 
 ties still, as may be seen by the curious, in Gray's Letter 
 to Warton. Lumley's servants only with difficulty 
 rescued their master from the fury, who carried a horse- 
 whip beneath her hoop. The gentlemen do not appear 
 to have been so generous, in their character of lovers, as 
 their French brethren, who ruined themselves for " les 
 heaux yeux^' of some temporary idol. Miss Ford laughed 
 consumedly at Lord Jersey, for sending her (" an odd first 
 and only present to a beloved mistress") a boar's head, 
 which, she says, " I had often the honour to meet at your 
 
 Lordship's table before and would have eat it, had it 
 
 been eatable." 
 
 The public are pretty familiar with the Household-Book 
 of the Earl of Northumberland ; and have learned much 
 therefrom touching the Table Traits of the early period 
 in which it was written. A later Earl did not inherit 
 the spirit of organization which influenced his ancestor. 
 " I was to dine at Northumberland House," says Wal- 
 pole, in 1765, " and went there a little after hour. There 
 I found the Countess, Lady Betty Mackinsy, Lady Straf- 
 ford, my Lady Finlater, — who was never out of Scotland 
 before, — a tall lad of fifteen, her son. Lord Drogheda, and 
 Mr. Worseley. At five" (which is conjectured to have 
 been the hour of extreme fashion a century ago) " arrived 
 Mr. Mitchell, who said the Lords had commenced to read 
 the Poor Bill, which would take, at least, two hours, and, 
 perhaps, woiild debate it afterwards. We concluded din- 
 
TABLE TRAITS OF THE LAST CENTURY. 271 
 
 ner would be called for ; it not being very precedented 
 for ladies to wait for gentlemen. No such thing 1 Six 
 o'clock came, — seven o'clock came, — our coaches came ! 
 Well, we sent them away ; and excuses were, we were 
 engaged. Still, the Countess's heart did not relent, nor 
 uttered a syllable of apology. We wore out the wind 
 and the weather, the opera and the play, Mrs. Cornely's 
 and Almack's, and every topic that would do in a formal 
 circle. We hinted, represented — in vain. The clock 
 struck eight. My Lady, at last, said she would go and 
 order dinner ; but it was a good half-hour before it 
 appeared. We then sat down to a table of fourteen 
 covers ; but, instead of substantial, there was nothing 
 but a profusion of plates, striped red, green, and yellow, 
 — gilt plate, blacks, and uniforms. My Lady Finlater, 
 who never saw those embroidered dinners, nor dined after 
 three, was famished. The first course stayed as long as 
 possible, in hopes of the Lords ; so did the second. The 
 dessert at last arrived, and the middle dish was actually 
 set on, when Lord Finlater and Mr. Mackay arrived ! 
 Would you believe it ? — the dessert was remanded, and 
 the whole first course brought back again ! Stay — I 
 have not done 1 Just as this second first course had done 
 its duty. Lord Northumberland, Lord Strafibrd, and 
 Mackinsy came in ; and the whole began a third time. 
 Then the second course, and the dessert ! I thought 
 we should have dropped from our chairs with fatigue 
 and fumes. When the clock struck eleven, we were 
 asked to return to the drawing-room, and take tea and 
 €offee ; but I said I was engaged to supper, and came 
 home to bed!" This dinner may be contrasted with 
 another given, at a later period, by a member of the same 
 house. The Nobleman in question was an Earl Percy, who 
 was in Ireland with his regiment, — the Fifth Infantry ; 
 and who, after much consideration, consented to give a 
 
272 TABLE TBAITS. 
 
 dinner to the officers in garrison at Limerick. The gal- 
 lant, but cautious, Earl ordered the repast at a tavern, 
 specifying that it should be for fifty persons, at eighteeii- 
 pence per head. The officers heard of the arrangement, 
 and they ordered the landlord to provide a banquet at a 
 guinea "per head, promising to pay the difference, in the 
 event of their entertainer declining to do so. When the 
 banquet was served, there was but one astonished and 
 uncomfortable individual at the board ; and that was the 
 Earl himself, who beheld a feast for the gods, and heard 
 himself gratefully complimented upon the excellence 
 both of viands and wines. The astonished Earl expe- 
 rienced an easily-understood difficulty in returning thanks 
 when his health was drunk with an enthusiasm that 
 bewildered him ; and, on retiring early, he sought out 
 the landlord, in order to have a solution of an enigma 
 that sorely puzzled him. Boniface told the unadorned 
 and unwelcome truth ; and the inexperienced young Earl, 
 acknowledging his mistake, discharged the bill with a 
 sigh on himself, and a cheque on his banker. 
 
 A host, after all, may appear parsimonious without 
 intending to be so. "This wine," said one of this sort 
 to the late Mr. Pocock of Bristol, who had been dining 
 with him, "costs me six shillings a bottle!" "Does 
 it ?" asked the guest, with a quaint look of gay reproof, 
 " then pass it round, and let me have another six- 
 penn'orth!" 
 
 But, to return to our Table Traits of the Last Cen- 
 tury. In 1753, on the 4th of June, there was an 
 installation of Knights of the Garter, at Windsor Castle, 
 followed by a grand dinner, and a ball. It would seem as 
 if the public claimed the right of seeing the s]pectacle for 
 which they had to pay ; for we read that " the populace 
 attempted several times to force their way into the hall 
 where the Knights were at dinner, against the Guai'ds, 
 
TABLE TEAITS OF THE LAST CENTURY. 273 
 
 on which some were cut and wounded, and the Guards 
 fired several times on them, with powder, to deter them, 
 but without effect, till they had orders to load with ball, 
 which made them desist." This is an ill-worded para- 
 graph from the papers of the day ; but it is a graphic 
 illustration of the manners of the period. 
 
 These few samples of what society was in the last' 
 century, would suffice alone to show that it was sadly out 
 of joint. What caused it ? Any one who will take the 
 trouble to go carefully through the columns of the ill- 
 printed newspapers of the early part of the last century, 
 will find that drunkenness, dissoluteness, and the sword 
 hanging on every fool's thigh, ready to do his bidding, 
 were the characteristics of the period. People got drunk 
 at dinners, and then slew one another, or in some other 
 way broke the law. Lord Mohun and Captain Hall 
 dined together before they made their attempt to carry 
 off Mrs. Bracegirdle ; and when defeated in their Tarquin- 
 like endeavour, they slaughtered poor Will Montford, the 
 player, in the public streets, for no better reason than 
 that Montford admired the lady, and Hall was jealous of 
 the admirer. But neither copious dining, nor copious 
 drinking, could make a brave man of Mohun. In proof 
 of this, it is only necessary to state that before he fought 
 his butchering duel with the Duke of Hamilton, he spent 
 the previous night feasting and drinking at the Bagnio, 
 which place he left in the morning, with his second, 
 Major-General M'Carty, as the "Post-boy" remarks,*' seized 
 w^ith fear and trembling." " The dog Mohun," as Swift 
 styled him, was slain, and so was the Duke ; but it is 
 uncertain whether the latter fell by the hand of his adver- 
 sary, or the sword of that adversary's second. A few 
 years later we read of Fulwood, the law^^er, going to 
 the play after dinner, drawing upon Beau Fielding, run- 
 ning him through, rushing in triumph to another house, 
 
 T 
 
274 TABLE TBAITS. 
 
 meeting another antagonist, and getting slain by him, 
 without any one caring to interfere. 
 
 In one of the numbers of the " Daily Post" for 1726, 
 I find it recorded that a bevy of gallants, havmg joyously 
 dined or supped together, descended from a hackney- 
 coach in Piccadilly, bilked the coachman, beat him to a 
 mummy, and stabbed his horses. Flushed with victory, 
 they rushed into a neighbouring public-house, drew upon 
 the gallants, terrified the ladies, and laughed at the 
 mistress of the establishment, who declared that they 
 would bring down ruin upon a place noted for " its safety 
 and secrecy." The succeeding paragraph in the paper 
 announces to the public that the Bishop of London will 
 preach on the following Sunday in Bow-church, Cheap- 
 side, on the necessity for a reformation of manners ! 
 
 The Clubs, and especially the " Sword Clubs," with 
 their feastings and fightings, were the chief causes that 
 manners were as depraved as they were. After supper, 
 these Clubs took possession of the town, and held their 
 sword against every man, and found every man's sword 
 against them. The " Bold Bucks," and the " Hell-Fires," 
 divided the Metropolis between them. The latter, a 
 comparatively innocent association, found their simple 
 amusement in mutilating watchmen and citizens. The 
 "Bold Bucks" took for their devilish device, "Blind and 
 Bold Love," and, under it, committed atrocities, the very 
 thought of which makes the heart of human nature pal- 
 pitate with horror and disgust. No man could become 
 a member who did not denounce the claims both of 
 nature and God ! They used to assemble every Sunday 
 at a tavern, close to the church of St. Mary-le-Strand. 
 During divine service, they kept a noisy band of horns 
 and drums contiimally at work ; and, after service, they 
 sat down to dinner, the principal dish at which was a 
 " Holy-Ghost pie !" Assuredly the sermon of the metro- 
 
TABLE TEAITS OF THE LAST CENTTJET. 275 
 
 politan Prelate was much needed ; but, when preached, 
 reformation did but very slowly follow, especially in high 
 places. At the very end of the century we hear of the 
 Prince of Wales dining at the Duke of Queensberry's, at 
 Kichmond, with the last mistress of Louis XY. ; and 
 nobody appears to have been scandalized. And this was 
 the characteristic of the time : vice was not only general, 
 but it did not very seriously offend the few exceptional 
 individuals. For the first three quarters of the century the 
 epitaph of that time might have been taken from the 
 eulogium passed by a May-Fair preacher in his Funeral 
 Sermon upon Frederick, Prince of Wales : " He had no 
 great parts, but he had great virtues; indeed, they 
 degenerated into vices : he was very generous ; but I 
 hear his generosity has ruined a great many people ; and 
 then his condescension was such, that he , kept very bad 
 company." 
 
 I have, elsewhere, spoken of some of the roystering 
 Clubs of the last century ; but I cannot refrain from 
 adding two other instances here, as examples of the 
 Table Traits of the same period. The Calves' -Head Club 
 established itself in Suffolk-Street, Charing Cross, on the 
 anniversary ' of the martyrdom of King Charles, in the 
 year 1735. The gentlemen members had an entertain- 
 ment of calves' heads, some of which they showed to the 
 mob outside, whom they treated with strong beer. In 
 the evening, they caused a bonfire to be made before the 
 door, and threw into it, with loud huzzas, a calf's head, 
 dressed up in a napkin. They also dipped their napkins 
 in red wine, and waved them from the windows, at the 
 same time drinking toasts publicly. The mob huzzaed, 
 as well as their fellow brutes of the Club ; but, at length, 
 to show their superior refinement, they broke the win- 
 dows ; and at length became so mischievous, that the 
 Guards were called in to prevent further outrage. 
 
 T 2 
 
276 
 
 TABLE TRAITS, 
 
 The above was, no doubt, a demonstration on the part 
 of gentlemen of republican principles. Some few years 
 later, a different instance occurs. The " Monthly Eeview," 
 May, 1757, mentions, that " seven gentlemen dined at a 
 house of public entertainment in London, and were sup- 
 posed to have run as great lengths in luxury and expense, 
 if not greater, than the same number of persons were ever 
 known to do before at a private regale. They afterwards 
 played a game of cards, to decide which of them should 
 pay the bill. It amounted to £81. Us. 6d. ; besides a 
 turtle, which was a present to the company." This was 
 certainly a heavy bill. A party of the same num- 
 ber at the Clarendon, and with turtle charged in the 
 bill, would, in our days, fmd exceeding difficulty in 
 spending more than £5 each. Their grandsires ex- 
 pended more than twice as much for a dinner not half 
 as good. 
 
 It is only with the present century that old customs 
 disappeared ; and, with regard to some of them, society is 
 all the better for their disappearance. Even plum- 
 porridge did not survive the first year of this half cen- 
 tury ; when the more solid and stable dynasty of plum- 
 pudding was finally established. Brand relates, that on 
 Christmas-Day, 1801, he dined at the Chaplain's table, at 
 St. James's, " and partook of the first thing served and 
 eaten on that festival, at that table, namely, a tureen full 
 of rich, luscious plum-porridge. I do not know," he 
 says, "that the custom is any where else retained." The 
 great innovation, after this, was in the days of the Regent, 
 when oysters were served as a prelude to dinner. This 
 fashion was adopted by the Prince on the recommenda- 
 tion of a gentleman of his household, the elder Mr. 
 Watier, who brought it with him from France, and added 
 an " experto crede " to his recommendation. This fashion, 
 however, like others, has passed away ; and oysters and 
 
TABLE TBAITS OF THE LAST CENTUET. 277 
 
 drams, as overtures to dinner, are things that have fallen 
 into the domain of history. 
 
 There is a custom of these later days, much observed 
 at Christmas time, which deserves a word of notice. I 
 allude to the " Christmas-tree." The custom is one, 
 however novel in England, of very ancient observance 
 elsewhere. Its birth-place is Egypt. The tree there 
 used was the palm ; and the ceremony was in full force 
 long before the days of Antony and Cleopatra. The 
 palm puts forth a fresh shoot every month. Its periodical 
 leaves appear as regularly as those of Mr. Bentley's 
 ^^ Miscellany." In the time of the winter solstice, when 
 parties were given in ancient Misraim, a spray of this 
 tree, with twelve shoots, was suspended, to symbolize the 
 completion of another year. The custom passed into 
 Italy, where the fir-tree was employed for the purposes of 
 celebration ; and its pyramidal tips were decorated with 
 burning candles, in honour of Saturn. This festival, the 
 Saturnalia, was observed at the winter solstice, from the 
 17th to the 21st of December, and, during its continu- 
 ance, Davus was as good a man as Chremes. The SigiU 
 laria, days for interchanging presents of figures in wax, 
 like those on the Christmas-tree, followed ; and, finally, 
 the Juvenalia, when men became "boys with boys," 
 matrons turned children once again, and young and old 
 indulged in the solemn romps with which the festival 
 closed, and which used to mark our own old-fashioned 
 festivities at Christmas time. That the Egyptian tree 
 passed into Germany, may be seen in the pyramids which 
 sometimes there are substituted for the tree. But the 
 antique northern mythology has supplied some of the 
 observances. The Juel Fesi wsls the mid- winter " Wheel 
 Feast ;" and the wheel represented the circling years 
 which end but to begin again. The yule-log, as we call 
 it, was the wheel-shaped log; in front of which was 
 
278 TABLE TRAITS. 
 
 roasted the great boar, — an animal hateful to the god of 
 the sun, but the flesh of which was religiously eaten by 
 his worshippers. At this festival presents were made, 
 which were concealed in wrappers, and flung in at open 
 windows, emblematical, we are told, of the good, but as 
 yet hidden, things which the opening year had in store. 
 
 The Church generally made selection of the heathen 
 festivals for its own holy-days. In the early days, this 
 was done chiefly to enable Christians to be merry without 
 danger to themselves. It would not have been safe for 
 them to eat, drink, and rejoice on days when Pagan 
 Governments put on mourning. They were glad, then, 
 when these were glad, and feasted with them, but holding 
 other celebrations in view. Hence the German tree ; 
 only, for the sun which crowned the Roman tree, in 
 honour of Apollo, the Germans place a figure of the Son of 
 God ; and, for the Phoebus and his flocks at the foot, they 
 substitute " the Good Shepherd." The waxen figures are 
 also the sigillaria, but with more holy impress. The 
 Saturnalia have a place in the table joys that attend the 
 exhibition of the tree, in presence of which joy is sup- 
 posed to wither. 
 
 In conclusion, I cannot but notice one other table 
 custom, which is of Teutonic origin. I allude to the 
 Cabinet dinners given by Ministers previous to the open- 
 ing of ParUament, and at which the Royal Speech is read, 
 before it is declared in the presence of collective wisdom. 
 This, at all events, reminds us of the ancient German 
 custom, mentioned by Tacitus, who tells us, that the 
 Teutonic legislators and warriors consulted twice touch- 
 ing every question of importance : once, by night, and 
 over the bowl ; and once, by day, when they were per- 
 fectly sober. Of course, I would not insinuate that 
 Ministers could possibly indulge too fondly over their 
 cups, like the Senators of the Hercynian forest ; and yet 
 
TABLE TRAITS OF THE LAST CEKTTJRT. 279 
 
 Viscount Sidmouth's vice, as Lord Holland tells us, " was 
 wine ;" and we have heard even of grave Lord-Stewards 
 so drunk as to pull down the Monarchs they held by the 
 hand, and should have supported. The last unfortunate 
 official who so offended, should have craftily qualified 
 his wine with water; and the mention of that subject 
 reminds me of the origin of wine and water, of which I 
 will say a few words, after adding one or two more traits 
 of table manners. 
 
 I have spoken, in another page, of the unlucky excla- 
 mation touching haddock, which caused the perpetual 
 exile of Poodle Byng from Belvoir. There was, however, 
 no offence meant. How different was the case with that 
 impudent coxcomb, Brummell, who managed to be the 
 copper-Captain of fashion in London, when the true Cap- 
 tains were fighting their country's battles ! When Brum- 
 mell was living almost on the charity of Mr. Marshall, 
 he was one of a dinner party at that gentleman's house, 
 whither he took with him, according to his most imperti- 
 nent custom, one of his favourite dogs. The " Beau " had, 
 during dinner, helped himself to the wing of a roasted 
 capon stufPed with truffles. He chose to fancy that the 
 wing was tough, and, delicately seizing the end of it with 
 a napkin- covered finger and thumb, he passed it under 
 the table to his dog, with the remark, " Here, Atout ! try 
 if you can get your teeth through this ; for I '11 be d — d 
 if I can." Not less ungratefully impudent was this 
 gentleman-beggar on another occasion. A French family 
 had given a dinner entirely on his account. It was per- 
 fect in its way. The ortolans came from Toulouse, the 
 salmon was from the waters in the neighbourhood of 
 B/Ouen, and the company most select. A friend, encoun- 
 tering him next day, asked how the dinner had gone off. 
 Brummell lifted up his hands, shook his head in a depre- 
 catory manner, and said, " Don't ask me, my good fel- 
 low ; but, poor man! he did his best." 
 
280 TABLE TRAITS. 
 
 The two most recent examples of Table Traits of the 
 present century, that I have met with, illustrate the two 
 extremes of society ; and as they refer to a period of not 
 above a month ago, they will serve, not inaptly, to close 
 this section of my series. The first example is that 
 afforded by a dinner given at Boston, in Lincolnshire, to 
 twenty aged labourers. At this dinner, one of the gentle- 
 men donors of the feast, gave "the Ladies," and called on 
 the octogenarian Chairman to return thanks. The old 
 President, however, shook his head, with a mixed melan- 
 choly and cunning air, as if he too well knew there was 
 nothing to return thanks for. The venerable "Vice'* 
 was then appealed to ; but his reply was, that the least 
 said about the subject of the toast would be the soonest 
 mended. At length, a sprightly old man of threescore 
 and ten was requested to respond, he having a gay look 
 about him which seemed warranting gallantry ; but he 
 surprised the toast-giver by answering, that " as for 
 t' leddies, he 'd nowt to say ; for his part, he 'd never liked 
 'em.'* This unchivalrous sentiment awoke, at last, the 
 spirit of a strip of a lad who was only sixty -five ; and he 
 responded to the toast, with a touch of satire, however, in 
 his remarks, that left it uncertain whether he w^ere so 
 much a champion of the fair sex, as the company had 
 expected to find in him. The second "Trait" of the 
 customs of this country is presented by the dinner given 
 in February of the present year, by Earl Granville, the 
 guests at which were Lord Aberdeen, the Bishop of 
 Oxford, and Mr. Bright. There were not such startling 
 contrasts at the reconciliation dinner which brought 
 Wilkes and Johnson together, as at Earl Granville's 
 unique banquet. The host and the Premier represented 
 — the first, smiling courtesy ; the second, the most frigid 
 severity of a freezing civility. But the strongest contrast 
 was in the persons of the Bishop and the " Friend : " — Dr. 
 Wnberforce, highest of Churchmen, briefest of Preachers, 
 
TABLE TEATTS OF THE LAST CENTUET. 281 
 
 and twice as much curled as tlie son of Clinias himself; 
 while Mr. Bright, with every hair as if a plummet 
 depended at the end of it, hating the Church, hut not 
 indifferent to petits pates a la braise, must have looked 
 like the vinegar of voluntaryism that would not mingle 
 with the oil of orthodoxy. To have made this banquet 
 complete, there should have been two more guests, — Dr. 
 Gumming and Dr. Cahill, with appropriate dishes before 
 each : — a plate of sweetbreads in front of the gentle apostle 
 of the Kirk ; and a bowl of blood-puddings opposite the 
 surpliced Priest who has gained a gloomy notoriety by the 
 " glorious idea," to which I have referred, of a massacre 
 of English heretic beef-eaters, by the light-dieted holders 
 of Catholic and continental bayonets. But Dr. Cahill, 
 it may be hoped, is something insane, or would he have 
 deliberately recorded, as he did the other day in the 
 " Tablet,*' that it were much better for Romanists to 
 read immoral works than the English Bible ? His excel- 
 lent reason is, that " the Church'* easily forgives immo- 
 rality, but has no mercy for heresy. Well, well ; we 
 should not like to catch a Confessor of this school sitting 
 next our daughter at dinner, and intimating that Holy well- 
 street literature was better reading than the English 
 version of the Sermon on the Mount. — But let us sweeten 
 our imagination with a little Wine and Water, 
 
WINE AND WATER. 
 
 Eaelt ages, and the oldest poets, confessed, that wine 
 was the gift of the gods to men. The latter would 
 appear to have abused the gift, if we may believe Philo- 
 nides the physician, who wrote a treatise " On Perfumes 
 and Grarlands " (riepi yivpcuv kuI '^T€<pdi/(av). In this treatise 
 he asserts, that, when Bacchus brought the vine from 
 the Eed Sea into Greece, men drank to such excess, that 
 they became as beasts, and incapable of performing 
 manly duties. A party of these revellers were once 
 drinking by the sea-shore, when a sudden storm drove 
 them into a cave for shelter. They do not seem, how- 
 ever, to have been inveterate tipplers ; for, according to 
 Philonides, they left their cups on the beach. When the 
 shower had passed, they found the wine in them mingled 
 with rain-water ; and, very much to their credit, they 
 liked the mixture so well, that they solemnly thanked 
 the " good genius" who had sent it. Hence, when wine 
 was served at Grecian repasts, the guests invoked this 
 good genius ; and when the turn came for wine mixed 
 with water, they acknowledged the benevolent inventor 
 by the name of Jupiter Saviour. I may take this oppor- 
 tunity to state, that, at one period, it was the fashion to 
 attend these drinking entertainments in a pair of " Alci- 
 biades," or boots which had been rendered popular by 
 being first worn by the curled son of Clinias. Thus we 
 see, that in our fashion of conferring on boots the authori- 
 
WII^TE AND WATER. 283 
 
 ties of great names, we are doing nothing original ; and 
 that men used to call for their " Alcibiades," as they do 
 now for their " Wellingtons," " Bluchers," or " Alberts." 
 To revert, for a moment, to the question of wine and 
 water, I would state, that it has been discussed in its 
 separate divisions by German writers, the substance of 
 whose opinions I will venture to give in verse, without 
 desiring, however, to be considered as endorsing every 
 sentiment in full. As French music-books say, it is an 
 ^^ Air a faired 
 
 Do you ask what now glows 
 
 In this goblet of mine ? 
 Wine ! wine ! wine ! wine ! 
 
 To the stream, do ye ask, 
 
 Shall my cup-bearer go ? 
 No ! no ! no ! no ! 
 Let water its own frigid nature retain ; 
 Since water it is, let it water remain ! 
 Let it ripple and run in meandering rills, 
 And set the wheels going in brook-sided mills. 
 In the desert, where streams do but scantily run, 
 If so much they 're allow' d by the thirsty old sun. 
 There water may be, as it 's quaff' d by each man. 
 Productive of fun to a whole caravan. 
 
 But ask what now glows, &c. 
 
 Yes, water, and welcome, in billows may rise, 
 Till it shiver its feathery crest 'gainst the skies ; 
 Or in dashing cascades it may joyously leap. 
 Or in silvery lakes lie entranced and asleep ; — 
 Or, e'en better still, in full showers of hope. 
 Let it gaily descend on some rich vineyard's slope. 
 That its sides may bear clusters of ripening bliss, 
 "Which, in Autumn, shall melt into nectar like this. 
 Like this that now glows, &c. 
 
 Let it bear up the vessel that bringeth us o'er 
 Its freight of glad wine from some happier shore. 
 Let it run through each land that in ignorance lies : 
 It the Heathen will do very well to baptize. 
 
284 TABLE TEAITS. 
 
 Yes, water shall have ev'ry due praise of mine, 
 "Whether salt, like the ocean, or fresh, like the Rhine. 
 Yes, praised to the echo pure water shall be. 
 But wine, wine alone is the nectar for me ! 
 
 For 't is that which now glows 
 
 In this goblet of mine. 
 
 "Wine ! wine ! wine ! wine ! 
 
 No attendant for me 
 
 To the river need go. 
 No ! no ! no ! no ! 
 
 The various merits and uses of the respective liquids 
 are fairly allowed in the above lines ; but I may observe, 
 that wine apologists, generally, are sadly apt to forget, 
 that there are such things as conscience and to-morrow 
 morning. For their edification and use, I indite the 
 following colloquy, to be kept in mind, rather than sung, 
 at all festivities where the " Agtta I^umpaffinis^\is held 
 in abhorrence : — 
 
 See the wine in the bowl, 
 
 How it sparkles to-night ! 
 Tell us what can compete 
 
 With that red sea of light ; 
 "Which breathes forth a perfume 
 
 That deadens all sorrow, 
 And leaves us bless'd now, 
 (Conscience loquitur,) 
 " With a headache to-morrow ! " 
 
 Where are spirits like those 
 That we find in the bowl. 
 Shedding joy round our brows, 
 Breathing peace to the soul ? 
 Cm- tongues feel the magic, 
 
 There our strains, too, we borrow : 
 We 're ApoUos to-night, 
 
 (Conscience loquitur,) 
 " To be songless to-morrow 1 " 
 
WIKE AKD WATEE. 285 
 
 O, this rare inspiration ! 
 
 How gay are the dreams 
 Of the thrice triple blest 
 
 Who may quaff of thy streams ! 
 It expels from the heart 
 
 Sulky care, that old horror, 
 And tells laughter to-night 
 
 (Conscience, ashamed of the rhyme) 
 " To wake sadness to-morrow ! *' 
 
 .Drink deep, though there be 
 
 Thirstless fools, who may preach 
 
 Of the sins of the bowl, — 
 Do they act as they teach ? 
 
 If we 're sinners, what then ! 
 As we 're not friends to sorrow, 
 
 "We '11 be glad ones to-night, 
 (Conscience loquitur,) 
 
 " To be sad ones to-morrow ! " ^ 
 
 Ah ! that was old Conscience : 
 
 Him we '11 drown in the wine ! 
 Plunge him in ! hold him down ! 
 
 Ah ! he dies ! — now the Nine 
 May, to write in his praise, 
 
 From our Helicon borrow. 
 He 's done talking to-night ; 
 
 (Conscience, from the bowl,) 
 *' You shall hear me to-morrow ! " 
 
 Finally, being on Pegasus, and he ambling along 
 through this chapter of Wine and Water, I will take the 
 opportunity, as connected with my subject, of doing jus- 
 tice to a flower whose " capability," as Mr. Browne used 
 very properly to say, has been overlooked, — I mean the 
 tulip : — 
 
 Praise they who will the saucy vine. 
 
 With her thousand rings and her curls so fine ! 
 
 But I fiU up 
 
 To the tulip-cup, 
 
286 TABLE TRAITS. 
 
 All looking as thougli it were bathed in wine. 
 Ah, show me the flower, 
 In vale or bower, 
 That looks half so well as this bowl of mine ! 
 O, who this night will fail to fill up, 
 Or to sing in praise of the tulip-cup ? 
 
 Praise they who will the willow-tree. 
 
 With her drooping neck and her tresses free, 
 
 That bend to the brink 
 
 Of the brook, and drink 
 Of a liquid that never will do for me ! 
 
 While the tulip-cup 
 
 Is for ever held up. 
 As though she could di'ink for eternity. 
 And that is the very best bowl for me. 
 Who hate the sickly willow-tree ! 
 
 The water-lily praise who will : 
 
 Of water we know that she loves her fill. 
 
 But what, pray, is she 
 
 To the tulip, that we 
 Have loved for so long, and love so well still ? 
 
 Ah ! who doth not think her 
 
 A mere water-diinker. 
 That quafi's but such wine she can get from the rill ? 
 Then fill up to-night to the tulip tail, 
 Who holds forth her cups, and can drain them all ! 
 
 See how naturally we drop out of the subject of " Wine 
 and Water," into that of "Wine," to which we now, 
 reverently, yet joyously, address ourselves. 
 
THE BIRTH OF THE VINE, AND WHAT 
 HAS COME OF IT. 
 
 The birth of the vine was in this wise. On the day 
 of the creation, the trees vied with each other in boasting; 
 and each exulted in the enjoyment of his own existence. 
 " The Lord himself," said the lofty cedar, " planted me, and 
 in me has he united stability and fragrance, strength and 
 durability." " Me," said the shade-spreading palm, " hath 
 the beneficence of Jehovah appointed for a blessing, 
 joining together in me utility and beauty." Then the 
 apple-tree spoke: "As a bridegroom among youths, so 
 am I resplendent among the trees of the woods." " And 
 I," said the myrtle, " stand among the lowly bushes, like 
 a rose among thorns." In this manner boasted they all, 
 the olive and the fig ; yea, the pine even, and the 
 fir exulted. 
 
 The vine alone, in silence, stooped to the ground. " It 
 seems," said she to herself, " as if every thing were denied 
 me, — stem and branch, blossom and fruit ; but, such as I 
 am, I will hope and wait. Thus speaking, she sank to 
 the earth, and her branches wept. 
 
 But not long did she thus wait and weep ; for, behold, 
 cheerful man, the earthly god, drew nigh unto her. He 
 saw a weak plant, the plaything of the breeze, sinking 
 under its own weight, and pining for assistance. Touched 
 with compassionate feeling, he upheld it, and trained the 
 delicate tree over his own bower. More freely now 
 
288 
 
 TABLE TRAITS. 
 
 sported the air among its branches. The warmth of the 
 sun penetrated the hard green berries, preparing therein 
 the deHcious juice, — a drink for gods and men. Laden 
 with chistering grapes, the vine now bowed herself before 
 her lord, and the latter tasted of her refreshing sweets, 
 and named her his friend, his own grateful favourite. It 
 was now that the proud trees envied her, but many of 
 them lived on in sterility, while she rejoiced, full of gra- 
 titude at her slender growth, and patient humility ; and 
 therefore it is, that it is given to her to make glad the 
 heart of sorrowing man, to elevate the cast-down spirit, 
 and to cheer the afflicted. 
 
 "Despair not," says Herder, who thus tells the old 
 traditionary story of the vine, — " Despair not, O thou 
 that art deserted, but endure patiently. Sweet streams 
 issue from unlikely sources ; and the feeble vine affords 
 the most potent draught in the world." 
 
 Let us, however, turn from poetical tradition to prosaic 
 reality. The vine is, by birth, a Persian. Its cradle was 
 on the sunny slopes of the hilly regions on the south 
 shores of the Caspian Sea. There, in the Caucasus, and 
 in Cashmere, the wild vine still climbs and clings to the 
 very necks of the most towering trees. Its life-blood 
 in those regions is seldom turned to evil purpose. In 
 Caubul it is taken less in potions than in powder. The 
 Caubulese dry and grind it to dust, and eat thereof, 
 finding it a pleasant acid. This is half matter of taste 
 and half matter of medicine, just as over-wearied diges- 
 tions in Germany drive their wretched owners into vine- 
 yards, to abstain from meat, and live, for a while, upon 
 raisins. Indeed, the vine was never meant entirely for 
 enjoyment. It is one of the most perfect of chymists ; 
 and if it offers grapes in clusters, its twigs afford car- 
 bonate of potash, serviceable for many purposes, and, 
 among others, for correcting the acidity brought on by 
 
BIETH OE THE VINE, ATSTD WHAT HAS COME OE IT. 289 
 
 too free indulgence in tlie fruit, or in its expressed 
 liquid. 
 
 . In the olden days, when the Patriarchs worshipped 
 Heaven in the " cathedral of immensity," Palestine was 
 renowned for the glory of its grapes. There were none 
 other to compare with them upon earth. When the 
 desert-treaders were waiting the return of their emis- 
 saries, whom they had sent from Kadesh-Barnea to 
 spy the Promised Land, their thirsty impatience was 
 exchanged for delight at beholding their agents re-appear, 
 bearing between them, upon poles, gigantic clusters, — the 
 near fountains whence their dried up souls might draw 
 new life and vigour. The grapes of Palestine are still 
 remarkable for their great size. Clusters are spoken of, 
 each of which exceeds*^ a stone in v/eight ; and vines are 
 mentioned, whose stems measured a foot and a half in 
 diameter, and whose height reached to thirty feet ; while 
 their branches afforded a tabernacle of shade, to the extent 
 of thirty feet square. But it could not have been from 
 such a vine that the men from Kadesh-Barnea collected 
 the grapes which they could scarcely carry. The Welbeck 
 grapes which the Duke of Portland sent to the Marquess 
 of Rockingham, were of Syrian origin ; and these — on a 
 single bunch, weighing nineteen pounds, and measuring 
 three-and-twenty inches long, with a maximum diameter 
 of nearly twenty inches — were borne upon a pole a distance 
 of twenty miles, by four labourers ; two to carry, and two 
 to reheve. So that the conveying grapes in this fashion 
 may have been more on account of their delicacy than of 
 their weight. The Hampton Court vine, too, produces 
 clusters of great weight, and covers a space of not less 
 than 2,200 feet. 
 
 The vine has been figuratively employed as an emblem 
 of fruitfulness, of security, and peace ; and no doubt can 
 exist of its having been cultivated at a very early period. 
 Noah planted the vine immediately after the Deluge; 
 
290 TABLE TRAITS. 
 
 and, from the first thing planted, shi came again into the 
 world, bringing with it widely-extending consequences. 
 Bread and wine are mentioned in Genesis. Pharaoh's 
 chief butler dreamed of a vine with three branches ; and 
 the Israelites (in Numbers) complained that Moses and 
 Aaron had brought them out of Egypt into a dry and 
 barren land, where there were neither figs nor vines. So, 
 in after-years, the companions of Columbus sailed trem- 
 blingly with their calm Captain over trackless seas, and 
 murmured at him for bringing them from the oHves and 
 vines of Spain, to the very confines of creation, where 
 terror reigned, and death sat enthroned. 
 
 Jacopo di Bergamo gives a singular account of the 
 reason which induced Noah to plant the vine. The 
 Patriarch did so, he says, because he saw a goat in Sicily 
 eat some wild grapes, and afterwards fight with such 
 courage, that Noah inferred there must have been virtue 
 in the fruit. He planted a vine, therefore, and — where- 
 fore is not told — manured it with the blood of a lion, a 
 lamb, a swine, and a monkey, or ape. But this, perhaps, 
 only signifies that, by drinking wine, men become bold, 
 confiding or meek, filthy or obscene. 
 
 It is stated by Theodoret, that Noah himself, after 
 pressing the grapes, became intoxicated through inexpe- 
 rience, as he had been a water-drinker for six centuries ! 
 The sin of Lot is supposed to have been committed, not 
 merely under the influences of wine, but of a maddening 
 and drugged draught. The evil power of wine is well 
 illustrated by the story of the Monk, to whom Satan 
 offered a choice of sins, — incest, murder, or drunken|;iess. 
 The poor Monk chose the last, as the least of the three ; 
 and, when he was drunk, he committed the other two. 
 
 Commentators pronounce our rendering under the sin- 
 gle word "wine," the thirteen distinct Hebrew terms 
 used in the Bible to distinguish between wines of differ- 
 ent sorts, ages, and condition, as a defect of great magni- 
 
BIETH OF THE YINE, AND WHAT HAS COME OF IT. 291 
 
 tude ; and no doubt it is so. The knowledge of mixing 
 wines appears to have been extensively applied by the 
 ancient people ; and it is said of the beautiful Helen, that 
 she learned in Egypt the composition of the exhilarating, 
 or rather, stupefying, ingredients which she mixed in the 
 bowl, together with the wine, to raise the spirits of such 
 of her guests as were oppressed with grief. I may notice, 
 too, here, that our word shruh, or syrup^ is an Eastern 
 word. In Tm^key, a sJiiruh-jee is simply a "wine-seller." 
 
 Yes, despite the Prophet, the Turks drink wine more 
 than occasionally, and under various names. Tavernier 
 speaks of a particular preparation of the grape drunk by 
 the Grand Seignior, in company with the ladies of the 
 seraglio ; and a similar beverage, it is conjectured, was 
 quaffed by Belshazzar and his concubines out of the holy 
 vessels, and was offered in vain to the more scrupulous 
 Daniel. It was a rich and royal drink, made strong by 
 the addition of drugs ; and the object of drinking the 
 potent mixture was the same as that which induced Con- 
 rad Scriblerus and the daughter of Graspar Barthius to 
 Uve for a whole year on goat's milk and honey. Either 
 mixture was better than that of the Persians, who " for- 
 tified " their wines, or syrup of sweet wines, by adding to 
 them the very perilous seasoning of mix vomica. But 
 none of these were so curious as the "wine-cakes " eaten 
 by Mr. Buckingham : these were, I suppose, made of wine 
 preserves. But pure wine may be eaten, or rather, be 
 rendered harder than any of our common food. Thus we 
 hear of Bussian troops being compelled, in very hard 
 winters, to cut out their rations of wine from the cask 
 with a hatchet. 
 
 I think it is the renowned Dissenter, Toplady, who 
 remarks, that the only sarcastic passage in Scripture is to 
 be found in the cutting speech of Elisha to the Priests of 
 Baal : " Is not Baal a god, seeing that he eateth much 
 meat?" There is, however, another ironical passage, in 
 
 u 2 
 
292 TABLE TEAITS. 
 
 reference to wine. " Give Shecliar unto him who is ready 
 to perish," is the satirical speech of Lemuel's mother, 
 who warns her royal son against the deceitful influences 
 of intoxicating heverages, representing them as especially 
 destructive to those who are charged with the govern- 
 ment of nations ; and then ironically points to the man 
 who foolishly concludes, that in the sweet or strong drink 
 he may hury all memory of the cares and anxieties brought 
 upon him by his own profligacy. 
 
 There is, however, a diflerence of opinion touching the 
 spirit in which the last words quoted from Scripture are 
 used. The Kabbins interpret the passage as a command 
 to administer wine to the individual about to suffer 
 death. Thus wine mingled with myrrh was offered to 
 One of whom the Gospel records, that He refused wha;t 
 His enemies presented. 
 
 The custom of ofl'ering doomed criminals a last earthly 
 draught of refreshment is undoubtedly one of considerable 
 antiquity. The right of offering wine to criminals on their 
 passage to the scaffold was often a privilege granted to reli- 
 gious communities. In Paris, the privilege was held by the 
 convent of Filles-Dieu, the Nuns of which kept wine pre- 
 pared for those who were condemned to suffer on the gibbet 
 of Montfaucon. The gloomy procession halted before the 
 gate of the monastery, the criminal descended from the 
 cart, and the Nuns, headed by the Lady Abbess, received 
 him on the steps with as much, perhaps more heartfelt 
 ceremony than if he had been a King. The poor wretch 
 was led to a crucifix near the church door, the feet 
 whereof he humbly kissed. He then received, from the 
 hands of the Superior, three pieces of bread, (to remind 
 him of the Trinity,) and one glass of wine (emblem of 
 Unity). The procession then resumed its dread way to 
 the scaffold. 
 
 Elie Berth et tells us of a poor wretch, who, on being 
 offered the usual refreshment, quietly swallowed the wine, 
 
BIETH or THE TIKE, AKD WHAT HAS COME OF IT. 293 
 
 and coolly put the bread in his pocket. When again in 
 the cart, his observant Confessor asked him his reason for 
 the act. "I suppose. Father," answered the moribund, 
 " that the good sisters furnished me with the bread that 
 it may serve me in paradise ; on earth, at all events, it 
 can no longer be of use to me." "Be of good cheer," 
 said another Confessor, who was encouraging a criminal 
 on the Greve ; " be of good cheer. To-night you will sup 
 in paradise." " Tenez, mon P^re," answered the poor 
 fellow ; " allez-y-voits a ma place ; car, pour moi, je n^ai 
 pas f aim. ^^ This incident has been made good use of by 
 the "ballad" writers both of England and France. 
 
 "Bowl-yard," St. Giles' s-in-the-Fields, preserves in its 
 name the memory of a similar custom in England. This 
 yard, or alley, adjacent to the church, is a portion of the 
 site of the old Hospital for Lepers, the garden of which 
 was a place of execution. Lord Cobham, under Henry V., 
 and Babington and his accomplices, for conspiring against 
 Elizabeth, were executed here. Stow tells us that, " at 
 this hospital, the prisoners conveyed from the city of 
 London toward Tyburn, there to be executed for treason, 
 felonies, or other trespasses, were presented with a great 
 iowl of ale, thereof to drink at their pleasure, (?) as to be 
 their last refreshment in this life." In later days, the 
 criminals were sometimes supplied by their friends from 
 the public-houses on the line of road. In one case, a 
 convict happily tarried drinking for a longer space of 
 time than usual. The rope was just round his neck, 
 when the arrival of a reprieve saved him. Had he drunk 
 a glass less, he would have been hanged a moment 
 sooner ; and society would thus have been deprived of his 
 valuable services. He was a luckier man than the sad- 
 dler in Ireland, who, on his way to the gibbet, refused 
 the ale and wine offered him on the road, who was 
 accordingly very rapidly dispatched, and for whom a 
 reprieve arrived a minute too late for him to profit by it. 
 
294 TABLE TRAITS. 
 
 Hence the proverb, applied by those who press reluctant 
 people to drink, " Ah, now go away wid you. Ye 're like 
 the obs'inate saddler, who was hanged for refusing his 
 liquor." It certainly was not a custom with Irish con- 
 victs to decline the " thrink," before trial or after. " The 
 night before Larry was stretch'd," is a slang lyric, gra- 
 phically illustrative of the grace with which Irish crimi- 
 nals took leave of life. The most singular thing, how- 
 ever, connected with the popular lay in question, is, that 
 it was written by a Clergyman. But, at the time of its 
 production, such authorship excited no surprise in the 
 literary public. The "cloth" was still of the quality of 
 that in which Fielding's Newgate Chaplain walked ; and 
 he, it will be remembered, was a pious gentleman, who 
 candidly avowed that he was the rather given to indulge 
 in punch, as that was a liquor nowhere spoken against in 
 Scripture ! 
 
 But it was not English or Irish Chaplains, of the olden 
 time, who stood by themselves in their respect for good 
 liquor. If that reverend and rubicund gentleman, Wal- 
 ter de Mapes, wrote the best Latin drinking-song that 
 Bacchanalian inspiration ever produced, so did a G-erman 
 Prelate preach the best sermon on the same text. I 
 allude to the Bishop of Triers, or Treves. Here is an 
 odour, caught by the way, of the full bottle of counsel 
 which he poured out to his hearers : — 
 
 " Brethren, to whom the high privilege of repentance 
 and penance has been conceded, you feel the sin of abusing 
 the gifts of Providence. But, ahustim non tollit usum. 
 It is written, 'Wine maketh glad the heart of man/ 
 It follows, then, that to use wine moderately is our duty. 
 Now there is, doubtless, none of my male hearers who 
 cannot drink his four bottles without affecting his brain. 
 Let him, however, — if by the fifth or sixth bottle he no 
 longer knoweth his own wife, — if he beat and kick his 
 children, and look on his dearest friend as an enemy, — 
 
BIRTH OF THE YINE, A^B WHAT HAS COME OP IT. 295 
 
 refrain from an excess displeasing to God and man, and 
 which renders him contemptible in the eyes of his fel- 
 lows. But whoever, after drinking his ten or twelve 
 bottles, retains his senses sufficiently to support his tot- 
 tering neighbour, or manage his household affairs, or 
 execute the commands of his temporal and spiritual supe- 
 riors, let him take his share quietly, and be thankful for 
 his talent. Still, let him be cautious how he exceed this ; 
 for man is weak, and his powers limited. It is but seldom 
 that our kind Creator extends to any one the grace to be 
 able to drink safely sixteen bottles, of which privilege he 
 hath held me, the meanest of his servants, worthy. And 
 since no one can say of me that I ever broke out in 
 causeless rage, or failed to recognise my household friends 
 or relations, or neglected the performance of my spiritual 
 duties, I may, with thankfulness and a good conscience, 
 use the gift which hath been intrusted to me. And 
 you, my pious hearers, each take modestly your allotted 
 portion ; and, to avoid all excess, follow the precept of 
 St. Peter,—' Try all, and stick by the best !' " 
 
 The sermon is not a bad illustration of what was, and 
 remains, historical fact. The first Archbishop of May- 
 ence was the Englishman Boniface ; and most of his suc- 
 cessors might have been characterized by his name. 
 They were more powerful than the Emperors, and more 
 stately than Moguls. The Canons of the Cathedral, sup- 
 ported by its enormous revenues, lived a jovial life. The 
 Pope, indeed, reproved them for their worldly and luxu- 
 rious habits ; but they uproariously returned for answer, 
 *' We have no more wine than is needed for the Mass ; 
 and not enough to turn our mills with !" 
 
 Good Hving, as it was erroneously called, was certainly, 
 at one time, an universal observance in Germany, when 
 the sole wish of man was, that he might have short 
 sermons and long puddings. When this wish prevailed, 
 
296 TABLE TEAITS. 
 
 every dining-room had its faulhett, or sot's couch, in one 
 corner, for the accommodation of the first couple of guests 
 who might chance to be too drunk to be removed. 
 Indeed, in G-erman village-inns, the most drunken guests 
 were, in former days, by far the best off ; for, while they 
 had the beds allotted them, as standing in most need of 
 the same, the guests of every degree, whether rich or 
 poor, the perfectly sober — ^wherever such phenomena were 
 to be found — and those not so intoxicated but they could 
 stagger out of the room, all lodged with the cows among 
 the straw. 
 
 Probably, no country on the earth presented such 
 scenes, arising from excessive drinking, as were witnessed 
 in Saxony and Bohemia, a few generations back. These 
 scenes were so commonly attended by murder, or followed 
 by death, that it was said to be better for a man to fall 
 among the thickest of his enemies fighting, than among 
 his friends when drinking. There were deadly brawls in 
 taverns, deadly drunken feuds in the family circle, and 
 not less deadly contentions in the streets. When the 
 city-gates were closed at night, the crowds of drunkards, 
 issuing to their homes in the suburbs, were met by as 
 dense and drunken a crowd, returning from their revels in 
 the country. And then came the insulting motion, the 
 provoking word, the hard blow, and the harder stab. 
 Then fell the wounded and the dead ; then rose the 
 shrieks of women and of children, and, loud above them, 
 the imprecations and blasphemies born in the wine- sodden 
 brains of men. Suddenly, a shot or two is fired from the 
 walls, right into the heaving mass below. And then 
 ensue the flying of the people, and the venting of impo- 
 tent rage from the rash and resolute. But, gradually, 
 the two opposing streams glide through each other, the 
 gates are at length closed ; and, by the light of the moon, 
 on the almost deserted esplanade, may be observed, 
 
BrRTH or THE VINE, AND WHAT HAS COME OF IT. 297 
 
 stretched on the ground, some half-dozen human forms. 
 Some of these are dead, some are still drunken and help- 
 less, and both equally uncared for. 
 
 This is no overdrawn picture of an ancient German 
 period. It is on record that once, on the banks of the 
 Bohemian Sazawa, a party of husbandmen met for the 
 purpose of drinking twelve casks of v^^ine. There were 
 ten of them who addressed themselves to this feat ; but 
 one of the ten attempting to retire from the contest 
 before any of his fellows, the remaining nine seized, 
 bound him, and roasted him alive on a spit. The mur- 
 derers were subsequently carried to the palace for judg- 
 ment ; but the Duke's funeral was taking place as they 
 entered the hall, and the Princes who administered jus- 
 tice were all so intoxicated, that they looked upon the 
 matter in the light of a joke that might be compensated 
 for by a slight fine. 
 
 There was a joyous revelry at that time in every direc- 
 tion. A father would not receive a man for a son-in-law 
 who could not drink ; and in Universities the conferring of 
 a degree was always followed by a carouse, the length of 
 which was fixed, by College rules, as not to exceed eight 
 hours' duration. Yet, during this generally dissolute 
 period, a strange custom was prevalent at the tables of 
 Nuremberg. In all well-regulated households, there 
 used to hang a little bell beneath the dining-table ; and 
 this bell was struck by the master of the family, if he 
 were sober enough, whenever any one uttered an unseemly 
 phrase. 
 
 Even so, in public, a voice of indignation was some- 
 times raised against the profligacy of the period. The 
 voice to the people at large was as the bell to the guests 
 at Nuremberg. Its efl^ects who can tell ? It may have 
 induced Luther to be content with dignified Yirgil rather 
 than with unclean Plautus ; it may have driven the 
 Monk Schwartz from the refectory to the alembic ; and it 
 
298 TABLE TRAITS. 
 
 may have called Gutemberg from the brutalities of the 
 camp to the wonders of the printing-press. In the two 
 latter cases, the consequences bear a very tipsy appear- 
 ance ; for it was a soldier who invented printing, and a 
 Monk who first manufactured gunpowder ! 
 
 Let us not hasten to condemn our fellows of the olden 
 time and distant land. Manners as fearfully outraging 
 prevailed but very recently among young Englishmen. 
 M. de Warenne, a French officer in our Indian army, 
 describes the manners and customs there prevalent as 
 any thing but edifying. In his '' Inde-Anglaise,'^ he 
 describes himself, on one occasion, as being disinclined 
 for study, and consequently joining a party of his com- 
 rades who were at the moment occupied in an unreserved 
 enjoyment of the pleasures of the table. They were from 
 fifteen to twenty in number, married and single, but all 
 young, full of hope, good prospects, and gaiety. Deep 
 were the libations made by this riotous company, seated 
 at a festive board in the open air, looked down upon by a 
 brilliant moon, and gently fanned by the evening breeze. 
 
 "While the attendant servant," says the author, 
 " poured out, with Indian profusion, fresh supplies of tea, 
 coffee, beer, punch, and grog, a dense vapour rose from 
 our cigars, and joyous shouts rang from every lip at 
 the conclusion of songs, bacchanalian and anacreontic. 
 Toasts succeeded each other rapidly, alternately exciting 
 the laughter or approbation of the carousers. One of 
 them caused in me, at the time, a singular impression. 
 A young, wild-brained fellow, in pouring out a bumper, 
 called on us to fill our glasses, in order to sanction the 
 strange wish of a rash ambition, — ' A bloody war, and a 
 sickly season!'" 
 
 The blasphemous sentiment, as M. de Warenne rightly 
 terms it, was drunk with enthusiasm ; and the gay and 
 thoughtless drinkers had yet the cup to their lips, when 
 one of them was stricken with the cholera, the presence 
 
BIETH OF THE VINE, AND WHAT HAS COME OF IT. 299 
 
 of which in camp was hardly known ; — ^the next day 
 the funeral salute was fired over his grave. The author 
 adds, that the music played on returning from the funeral 
 was joyously and daily hummed by the daily diminishing 
 survivors. He says that there was a mockery in the 
 waltzes they continued to dance ; for death was also daily 
 decreasing their orchestra. The stricken, we are told, 
 felt themselves relieved from further anxiety, recovered 
 their temporarily shaken self-possession, and died with 
 indifference. The strong who lived are described as, for 
 the most part, diverting their thoughts, outraging decency, 
 and defying God, by composing or chanting songs whose 
 inspiration certainly savours of hell. Here is a specimen 
 of one of these devil's canticles, roared over wine, to 
 frighten away the cholera : — 
 
 I. 
 *'We meet 'neath tke sounding rafter, 
 And the walls around are bare ; 
 As they shout back our peals of laughter. 
 
 It seems as the dead were there. 
 Then stand to your glasses ! — steady ! 
 We drink 'fore our comrades' eyes ; 
 One cup to the dead already ; 
 Hurrah for the next that dies I 
 
 II. 
 
 " Not here are the goblets glowing. 
 
 Not here is the vintage sweet ; 
 'T is cold, as our hearts are growing, 
 
 And dark as the doom we meet. 
 But stand to your glasses ! — steady ! 
 
 And soon shall our pulses rise ; 
 One cup to the dead already ; 
 
 Hurrah for the next that dies ! 
 
 III. 
 
 " There 's many a hand that 's shaking. 
 And many a cheek that 's sunk ; 
 But soon, though our hearts are breaking. 
 They 'U burn with the wine we 've drunk. 
 
300 TABLE TEAITS. 
 
 Then stand to your glasses ! — steady I 
 
 'T is here the revival lies ; 
 Quaff a cup to the dead already ; 
 
 Hurrah for the next that dies 1 
 
 IV. 
 
 " Time was, when we laugh'd at others, 
 
 We thought we were wiser then : 
 Ha ! ha ! let them think of their mothers, 
 
 "Who hope to see them again. 
 No ! stand to your glasses ! — steady ! 
 
 The thoughtless is here the wise ; 
 One cup to the dead already ; 
 
 Hurrah for the next that dies ! 
 
 V. 
 
 " Not a sigh for the lot that darkles, 
 
 Not a tear for the friends that sink ; 
 We '11 fall 'mid the wine-cup's sparkles. 
 
 As mute as the wine we drink. 
 Come ! stand to your glasses ! — steady I 
 
 'T is this that the respite buys ; 
 One cup to the dead already ; 
 
 Hurrah for the next that dies ! 
 
 VI. 
 
 " Who dreads to the dust returning ? 
 
 Who shrinks from the sable shore. 
 Where the high and haughty yearning 
 
 Of the soul can sting no more ? 
 No ! stand to yom* glasses ! — steady ! 
 
 This world is a world of lies ! 
 One cup to the dead already ; 
 
 Hurrah for the next that dies 1 
 
 VII. 
 " Cut off from the land that bore us, 
 Betray'd by the land we find, 
 When the brightest are gone before us. 
 And the dullest are most behind, — 
 Stand ! stand ! to your glasses ! — steady ! 
 
 'T is all we have left to prize ! 
 One cup to the dead already ; 
 Hurrah for the next that dies !'* 
 
BIETH OF THE VIIS'E, AlfB WHAT HAS COME OE IT. 301 
 
 After this, the most rigid examiner of public morals 
 in all eomitries need not exclusively frown on the old 
 G-ermans, nor on their profane canticle, the burthen of 
 which is : — 
 
 " Gaudeamus, igitur, juvenes dum sumus I 
 
 Post molestam senectutem, 
 Nos habebit, nos kabebit, nos habebit tumulus !" 
 
 There is, however, more reason, and healthy sentiment, 
 and pure principle, in such lines as the following, — 
 extracted from Walter Savage Lander's " Last Fruit off 
 an Old Tree," — than in reams of such fiery invocations to 
 quaff deeply as those cited above. Hear the old man : — 
 
 " The ckrysolites and rubies Bacchus brings, 
 
 To crown the feast where swells the broad- vein'd brow, 
 Where maidens blush at what the minstrel sings. 
 They who have courted, may court now. 
 
 " Bring me a cool alcove, the grape uncrush'd. 
 The peach of pulpy cheek and down mature ; 
 Where ev'ry voice, but bird's or child's, is husht, 
 And ev'ry thought, like the brook nigh, runs pure." 
 
 There was a Persian sage, whose philosophy was of a 
 different complexion from that of the eloquent moralist of 
 " the old garden near Bath." " In what can I best assist 
 thee?" demanded the Minister, Nizam-al-Mulk, as he 
 warmly greeted his friend, Omar Keyoomee. " Place me," 
 said Omar, enamoured of poetry and ease, "where my 
 life may pass without care or annoyance, and where wine, 
 in abundance, may inspire my muse." A pension was 
 accordingly assigned him in the fertile district of Nisha- 
 pour, where Omar lived and died. His tomb still exists, 
 and Mr. J. B. Fraser, in his " Persia," informs us that he 
 heard Omar's story told over his grave by a brother 
 rhymester, and a most congenial spirit. The system of 
 Omar was explained by himself, in something after this 
 fashion : — 
 
302 TABLE TRAITS. 
 
 I ask not for much : let the miser seek wealth ; 
 
 Let the proud sigh for titles and fame : — 
 All the riches I ask are a fair share of health, 
 
 And the hope of a true poet's name. 
 Let the flatterer talk of his worth to the Shah, — 
 
 Of his greatness, too, all the day long ; — 
 I envy them not, for I love better far 
 
 To pay my poor tribute in song. 
 
 A kaftan of honour ! a gem from the King I 
 
 To be gain'd in the field or divan ? 
 Ah ! rather around me the bright mantle fling 
 
 Of the poets of gay Laristan. 
 Let the gems be for those of the glittering crowd, 
 
 Who would die, the Shah Inshah to please ; 
 But I^m not ambitious, I never was proud, 
 
 I sigh hut for sherbet and ease. 
 
 Do I wish for command in dark history's page. 
 
 Do I long in fond record to shine ? 
 Yes, let me have sway, tiU the last sigh of age. 
 
 Over cohorts of old Shiraz wine. 
 And as for reno^^oi, it may be very well. 
 
 But Keyoomee the honour wiU ware ; 
 Contented, if some brother rhymester wiU tell 
 
 Keyoomee's glad life, o'er his grave. 
 
THE MAKING AND MARRING OE WINE. 
 
 It used to be said of the old learned and liquor-loving 
 Germans, that they did not care what Latin they spoke, 
 so long as it was Latin ; nor what sort of wine they 
 drank, so long as it was wine. I have read somewhere of 
 a feudal German Baron becoming intoxicated upon pious 
 principles. He was seated, with his wife at his side, at 
 the centre of his own table, presiding at a banquet. He 
 had drunk till he had scarcely power left to carry the 
 goblet up to his ever thirsty lips. The Frau] Baroninn 
 had repeatedly remonstrated, in whispers, with her lord ; 
 who replied, that he must needs drink when toasts were 
 given, or his want of faith would be marked by his guests. 
 He was about to raise a full goblet to his beard, when his 
 lady, overturning, as if by accident, the cluster of lights 
 which illuminated the board, begged of her consort 
 to fling his wine away upon the floor ; adding, "It is 
 dark; nobody will see you." "Nay," said the orthodox 
 Baron, solemnly, " God sees me ! " and therewith he 
 finished his draught, and was soon after conveyed to his 
 couch, under such benison as the Chaplain could give, 
 who congratulated his master upon the flavour of his 
 wine, and the strength of his principles ! 
 
 In no country in the world has more wine been drunk 
 than in Germany ; and no where has adulteration thereof 
 been practised so systematically. " Vaticana hihis, hihis 
 venerium^' says Martial, in the sixth book of his Epi- 
 grams. For '' Vaticana,^^ read '' Germanica ;^' and the 
 
304 TAELE TRAITS. 
 
 line had, at one time, as fitting an application. The 
 method pursued appears to have been of classical deriva- 
 tion ; and the Germans, like the Eomans, adulterated 
 their wine with lead. It has been a matter of vexation 
 to Teutonic scholars, that they have never been able to 
 discover the name of the ingenious person who first 
 realized the deadly idea of employing lead in the adultera- 
 tion of wine. All that they can say of him is, that he 
 was very wicked, but decidedly clever. 
 
 The Eoman wine-merchants treated the matter in a 
 business-like way. Lead arrested the acetous fermenta- 
 tion of wine, did not alter its colour, and did improve its 
 taste. This was all that was desirable, as regarded them 
 as merchants. If the beverage gave death, by slow or 
 speedy means, to those who drank, that was an affair 
 which concerned the imbibers, their medical men, and their 
 families. They were ignorant and godless Heathens, of 
 course, who committed this crime ; and as nothing like it 
 has ever been known as a characteristic of some of the 
 professors of a better dispensation, — why, our righteous 
 indignation may be intense. One excuse, indeed, may be 
 offered for the old Romans. " At lover's perjuries," as they 
 were told, "Jove himself condescended to laugh;" and, 
 if so, they might feel canonically certain, that Mercury 
 would not call them to account, but rather applaud their 
 proficiency in cheating. But Galen was more just than 
 the gods of either the Greek or Roman mythology, and 
 sternly denounces the tricks at which the son of Maia 
 would have smiled. 
 
 The same ancients were accustomed to boil new wine 
 in metal vessels ; and, when the quantity had been reduced 
 by the process, to add sea-water and bad wine, and send 
 the mixture to market as something that would make 
 the very eyes of Bacchus twinkle with delight. A pro- 
 cess not less distasteful, if less deadly, was that of boiUng 
 lime and plaster of Paris in inferior wine. The former 
 
THE MAKIKa a:n"d MAERTNG OF WII^E. 305 
 
 was supposed to add an intoxicating quality to the mix- 
 ture, which must have been as detestable as "Masdeu." 
 To this day, certain wines of the Mediterranean are 
 subjected to a similar process ; and, perhaps, if lime be 
 judiciously used, the results may not be very injurious. 
 It corrects acidity ; but too much of it would enable the 
 drinker to find out, as Falstaff did, that there was " lime 
 in the sack." We are wise in our generation, in employ- 
 ing carbonate of soda for this purpose, rather than lime, 
 slaked or unslaked; and we also do well to reject gypsum, 
 — a compound of sulphuric acid and lime, and which is 
 seldom procurable in a sufficiently pure state to authorize 
 its being employed. The rejection of plaster of Paris, 
 for the purpose of improving wine, is, however, more 
 general than universal. After all, it is not worse than 
 calcined shells, and is innocuous when compared with the 
 use of sugar of lead. 
 
 The Eoman law was not levelled against the adultera- 
 tion of wine ; it no more controlled the sale or manu- 
 facture, than, in Thevenot's days, the Tunisian Grovern- 
 ment interfered with the sale of wine at Tunis, which 
 was left to slaves, who did with it as they liked, for their 
 own profit, and the destruction of infidel stomachs. It 
 was otherwise in Germany, where Diets were assembled 
 to discuss what was, in truth, no unimportant matter; 
 the members of which began to think, that if wine was 
 worth having, it was worth providing for its purity. 
 For centuries Governments made laws, but bad wine was 
 drunk in spite of them. 
 
 Beckmann gives it as his opinion, that wines cannot 
 be poisoned by gypsum ; but that is more readily said 
 than proved. The ancients clarified their wine with 
 it ; but they did so at the expense of a portion of the 
 spirituous part. Old ordinances against the adulteration 
 of wine, in Brussels, by vitriol, quicksilver, and laps 
 calaminaris, — and in France, by lead and litharge, — may 
 
 X 
 
300 TABLE TRAITS. 
 
 still be read as curiosities, but they have no present 
 application. 
 
 A German Monk, named Martin Bayr, is damned to 
 everlasting fame, as the first who adulterated wines 
 within the territory of the Kaiser. Pickheimer, the 
 friend of Albert Durer, is particularly inveterate against 
 Bayr and his followers in evil. The indignation of the 
 lover of pure wine is carried to an incredible extent. He 
 narrates, in a rapt fury, the consequences of drinking inju- 
 rious wines ; beginning with an assurance, that adulterated 
 wine keeps the married childless, and adding, by a sort 
 of bathos, that it causes certain inward pains, "than 
 which none can be more excruciating." He mentions 
 many ingredients employed, and adverts to some, "the 
 names of which I should be ashamed to mention 5" and 
 then he calls for vengeance on the offenders, both in this 
 world and the next. "You hang the counterfeiters of 
 the public coin," says he; "do not these miscreants, 
 whose misdeeds have caused indignant Nature to check 
 the growth of our grapes, deserve something worse ? Cast 
 their accursed beverage, I say, into the sewers, and them- 
 selves into the flames : and so may Martin Bayr and his 
 disciples perish in this world, and inherit everlasting 
 damnation in the next ! " 
 
 Adulteration, however, still went on, until the penalty 
 of death, and confiscation of property, was levelled against 
 the employment of sulphur and bismuth, — used by the 
 most noble of wine-makers to sweeten their spoiled and sour 
 commodity. Offenders, however, again grew bold. The 
 tribunals treated them leniently. First, fines were levied ; 
 then came confiscation of property, imprisonment, and 
 hard labour ; next, banishment : and none of these courses 
 meeting the evil, the Judges at length cut off the head 
 of an incorrigible criminal, Ehrni of Erlingen ; and, for a 
 while, terrified the whole brotherhood of wine-spoilers 
 into a temporary observance of honesty. 
 
THE MAKING AXD MAEEIKG OF WINE. 307 
 
 The next struggle which occurred in Germany, was 
 between those who applied tests to detect the presence of 
 metals, and those who invented processes to def}^ them. 
 It was a scientific struggle between two species of assas- 
 sins, — those who swiftly killed by brewing poisonous wine, 
 and the physicians who racked their brains to invent 
 detective tests, and save their patients for a slower process 
 of extinction. This was very rudely said by rude people, 
 who looked upon themselves as the victims sought for by 
 two contending parties, — the distillers on one side, and 
 the doctors on the other. 
 
 The use of milk by the Greeks was, probably, not for 
 adulterating, but for refining, their wines. Isinglass is at 
 present generally employed for the last-mentioned purpose. 
 
 As it is the tendency of the world to improve, so the 
 not inconsiderable world of adulterators in England has 
 profited, like philosophers, by the discoveries of those who 
 have preceded them. A mixture of strong port, rectified 
 spirit. Cognac brandy, and rough cider, can be concocted 
 into what is called " fine old crusted port." It costs the 
 maker about sixteen shillings a gallon, and is sold retail 
 at five shillings a bottle. Sloe-juice is another ingi-edient, 
 and poisonous tinctures give it a seductive hue. Powder 
 of catechu does for it what hair-powder does for the indi- 
 vidual, — gives a crust of antiquity to secure for it the vene- 
 ration of the ignorant. A decoction of Brazil-wood, and 
 a little alum, will impart to the corks the requisite air of 
 corresponding age ; and these the credulous gaze at and 
 believe. 
 
 "Madeira, neat as imported," is the definition of a beve- 
 rage cleverly manufactured much nearer Fenchurch-street 
 than Funchal. Home-made Madeira is a compound of 
 bad port, Yidonia, that African nastiness called " Cape," 
 sugar-candy, and bitter almonds ; and the Yidonia, which 
 is an ingredient in itself, often adulterated with cider and 
 rum ; and a little carbonate of soda, " to contumace the 
 
 X 2 
 
808 TABLE TEAITS. 
 
 appetite's acidities." The lowest and cruellest insult to 
 human taste and stomachs is, perhaps, the adulteration of 
 Cape. It is bad enough in itself ; but Cape, with some- 
 thing worse in it, is only fit for the thirsty hounds of 
 Pluto. Gooseberry, passed off as Champagne, is an 
 impostor, and even with strawberries in it, to give it an 
 aristocratic pinkness, it is still a deception ; but, compared 
 with Cape, even in its best condition, gooseberry may be 
 imbibed without very much disgust. 
 
 A fracas between the waiters and their employers at 
 the last Lord-Mayor's dinner, betrayed another pleasant 
 process regarding wine. The attendants in question 
 declared that, after many hours' toil, they had not had a 
 glass even out of a dovered bottle. They were as much 
 surprised when the Magistrate asked the meaning of 
 " dovering^'' as the sailor was, when he stood before a Lord 
 High Chancellor ignorant of the signification of " 'baft 
 the binnacle." A complaisant Ganymede enlightened the 
 darkened mind of the metropolitan Cadi: '^ Dovering^'' 
 said he, "is the collecting of three-quarter emptied 
 decanters from the dinner-table, and re-decantering the 
 same, serving it up as freshly uncorked." Dover has the 
 bad reputation of being the locality where this process 
 was first invented. 
 
 One of the most ingenious — perhaps we should say, one 
 of the most scientific — tricks that we have heard of, in 
 connexion with wine-doctoring, proves that the modern 
 chymical brewers of superior beverages, which seem what 
 they are not, are vastly superior to the mere experiment- 
 alists of former days. In the royal cellars of Carlton 
 House, there was enshrined, if we may so speak, a small 
 quantity of wine which, like the gems worn by the Irish 
 lady, was both " rich and rare." It was only produced by 
 George lY. when he had around him his most select and 
 wittiest friends. The precious deposit gradually dimi- 
 nished ; year by year, as in the case of the famous sha- 
 
THE MAKIKa AND MARRINa OP WINE. tS09 
 
 green skin of the French noveUst Balzac, it grew less; 
 until, at last, a couple of dozen bottles only were left, 
 gleaming at the bottom of their bins like gems in a mine, 
 and full of liquid promise to those who needed the especial 
 comfort which it was their duty to impart. These, how- 
 ever, were left so long unasked for, that the gentlemen of 
 the King's suite who had the control of the grape depart- 
 ment, deemed them forgotten, and at their own mirthful 
 table drank them all but two, with infinite delight to 
 themselves, and to the better health of their master. 
 They soon found, however, that there was " garlic in the 
 flowers," as the Turkish proverb has it ; and their embar- 
 rassment was not small, when the King, giving his orders 
 for a choice dinner on a certain night, intimated his 
 desire that a good supply of his favourite wine should 
 grace the board. In Courts, "to hear is t6 obey;" and 
 the ofiicials who had drunk the wine, at once resorted to 
 an eminent firm, well-skilled to give advice in such deli- 
 cate wine-cases. The physician asked but for a sample 
 bottle, and to be told the exact hour at which the 
 favourite draught would be asked for. This was com- 
 plied with, and in due time a proper amount of the 
 counterfeit wine was forwarded to Carlton House, and 
 there broached and drunk with such encomiums, that the 
 ofiicers who were in the secret had some difficulty in 
 maintaining an official gravity of countenance. The 
 brewer of the new wine was certainly a first-rate artist ; 
 and if he ever achieved knighthood and a coat-of-arms, I 
 would give him a "Bruin" for his crest, and, "The 
 ...drink! the drink ! dear Hamlet!" for his device. This 
 anecdote, I may farther notice, has often been told, and 
 nearly as often been discredited ; but I am assured by an 
 officer of the household, who speaks " avec connaissance 
 de fait^'' that it is substantially true. 
 
 One of the merits of the wine above mentioned con- 
 sisted in its great age. There has, indeed, always been a 
 
310 TABLE TEAITS. 
 
 sort of mania for wine that bears the load of years. But 
 this rage is pronounced by Cyrus Redding to be one of 
 the most ridiculous errors of modern epicurism. The 
 "bee's wing," the "thick crust on the bottle," the "loss 
 of strength," and so on, — all these are declared by the 
 best judges to be nothing more than forbidding manifes- 
 tations of decomposition, and the disappearance of the 
 very best qualities of the wine. Many years ago, I made 
 a "note" on this subject, but am now unable to recollect 
 from what work, nor can I say whether the following 
 remarks on the qualities of wine were made by the 
 author of an original work, or by a reviewer commenting 
 thereon. Such as they are, however, they are not without 
 value. 
 
 " The age of maturity," says the writer, " for exporta- 
 tion from Oporto, is said to be the second year after the 
 vintage ; probably sometimes not quite so long. Our 
 wine-merchants keep it in wood from two to six years 
 longer, according to its original strength, &c. Surely 
 this must be long enough to do all that can be done by 
 keeping it. What crude wine it must be to require even 
 this time to ameliorate it ! the necessity for which must 
 arise either from some error in the original manufacture, 
 or a false taste, which does not relish it till time has 
 changed its original characteristics. 
 
 " Port, like all other wines, ripens in a shorter, or longer, 
 time, according to its lightness, or its strength, the 
 quality of the grapes, according to the fermentation they 
 have undergone, and the portion of brandy that has been 
 added to it. Also one cellar will forward wine much 
 sooner than another. Sound good port is generally in 
 perfection when it has been from three to five years in 
 the wood, and from one to three in bottle. 
 
 " Ordinary port is a very uncleansed fretful wine ; and 
 we have been assured by wine-merchants of good taste, 
 accurate observation, and extensive experience, that the 
 
THE MAKING AND MABRINa OP Wll^E. 311 
 
 lest port is rather impoverislied than improved by being 
 kept in bottle longer than two years ; that is, supposing it 
 to. have been previously from two to four years in the cask 
 in this country ; observing that all that the outrageous 
 advocates for vin jpasse really know about it is that sherry 
 is yellow^ and port is Hack ; and that if they drink (more 
 than) enough of either of them, according to the colours, 
 it will make them drunk. 
 
 " White wines, especially sherry and Madeira, being 
 more perfectly fermented and thoroughly fined before 
 they are bottled, if kept in a cellar of uniform tempera- 
 ture, are not so rapidly deteriorated by age. 
 
 " The temperature of a good cellar is nearly the same 
 throughout the year. Double doors help to preserve 
 this. It must be dry, and be kept as clean as possible. 
 
 " The art of preserving wines is to prevent them 
 from fretting, which is done by keeping them in the same 
 degree of heat and careful working, in a cellar where they 
 will not be agitated by the motion of carriages passing. 
 If persons wish to preserve the fine flavour of their wines, 
 they ought on no account to permit any bacon, cheese, 
 onions, potatoes, or cider, in the wine-cellars ; for if there 
 be any disagreeable stench in the cellar, the wine will 
 indubitably imbibe it ; consequently, instead of being 
 fragrant, and charming to the nose and palate, it will be 
 extremely disagreeable. 
 
 " It must be well-known that almost all our home-made 
 wines, for public sale, are made, and suffered to cool, in 
 leaden vats. Nothing can be more injurious or detri- 
 mental to health. Every chymist is aware that any 
 Vegetable acid that comes in contact with lead, and is 
 suffered to remain only a few hours, produces what we 
 call ' sugar of lead,' — a most deadly poison. How many 
 there are that complain that cider will not agree with 
 them! and several who cannot take even a wine-glass 
 fuU without vomiting almost immediately. They know 
 
3l2 TABLE TEAITS. 
 
 not the reason ; and thus many are prevented] from 
 taking a most delightful beverage in warm weather ; 
 while others are labouring under its baneful influence. 
 Often do we see servants run for vinegar in a pewter or 
 publican's pot ; and the answer we receive when cor- 
 recting them for the same is, — they have often done 
 the same without any serious consequence. May be so ; 
 but if vinegar, or any othe]* vegetable acid, as before said, 
 be suffered to remain in such vessels only a short time, 
 the health and constitution must suffer from the acid so 
 taken ; and we will venture to say that almost all para- 
 lytic affections are caused by persons, predisposed to such 
 attacks, drinking water impregnated with lead. For if 
 there be any carbonic acid in the water, which there 
 most assuredly is in every kind, a carbonate is thus 
 formed, just as injurious as the acetate (sugar of lead) ; 
 and where shall we find a cistern in London that is 
 not made of this pernicious, yet highly useful, material?" 
 The consideration of these subjects, when drinking 
 home-made wines, (if, indeed, there he people bold enough 
 to venture on such an experiment,) or the other beverages 
 mentioned above, might serve the purpose of the custom 
 observed among the ancient Egyptians. It was one less 
 barbarous than singular. A skeleton of beautiful w^ork- 
 manship, in ivory, and enclosed in a small coffin, was 
 carried round at a feast, by a slave, who, holding it up to 
 each guest, remarked, " After death you will resemble 
 this figure; drink, then, and be happy!" It must have 
 encouraged the mirth " con sumedly." But there was a 
 grave wisdom in the custom, notwithstanding. 
 
IMPERIAL DRINKERS AND INCIDENTS IN 
 GERMANY. 
 
 The stories of the gigantic drinkers of antiquity are 
 startling ; but I think they may he accounted for. 
 Natural philosophers inform us, that objects seen through 
 a mist are magnified to the senses ; and so it is with the 
 feats which we are asked to contemplate through the 
 mist of ages: they are probably not so astounding as 
 they appear. One may say of each story, so venerable 
 and enlarged by age, as the good Dominican did to the 
 congregation whom he had affected to tears by the 
 warmth of one of his legendary sermons. "Do not cry 
 so, my brethren," said the Preacher; "for, after all, 
 perhaps it 's not true." 
 
 It must be allowed, however, that the stories of wine- 
 bibbers of later times than those when the son of Aristides 
 gained his living by singing ballads in the streets of 
 Athens, or the heir of Cicero drank draughts longer than 
 his sire's orations, lack nothing whatever of the marvel- 
 lous. And this reminds me of an incident, quod alibi 
 narravi, and which I will narrate here, by way of illustra- 
 tion of this portion of my subject. 
 
 AN INCIDENT OF TEAYEL. 
 
 It is now some twelve years ago that I was, in com- 
 pany with two Norwegians, in Prague, loitering beneath 
 the tower of that sacred edifice dedicated to the fearful 
 dancer, St. Yitus. The tower was the same which the 
 drunken Emperor Wenceslaus had caused to be shortened, 
 
314 TABLE TEAITS. 
 
 by some thirty or forty feet, because he took it into his 
 head that it would one day fall, and crush him as he lay 
 on his uneasy couch in the Hradschin. I remarked to my 
 companions, that the empire, in its palmy days, had often 
 been well-nigh lost through the mad caprices of tippling 
 Kaisers. 
 
 " There was not a Kaiser of them all," said Lowen- 
 skiold, "who permanently injured either himself or his 
 country by his devotion to drinking." 
 
 " What !" said I ; " not even Maximilian ?" 
 "Not even Maximilian," remarked Knudtzen. "The 
 people, indeed, were occasionally a trifle startled at seeing 
 their ruler proceed, either to the camp or council, with as 
 much white wine in him as might serve the universe for 
 sauces. They slightly objected, on hearing that he 
 walked rosy and reeling to confession ; and they w^ere not 
 edified at understanding that his private Almoner stirred 
 up his punch with a silver crucifix. They even remon- 
 strated with Maximilian when he had been once within 
 an ace of destroying Ulm in a drunken frolic. And what 
 w^as his reply ? He kept the deputation of remonstrants 
 the whole night in his palace, and invited the citizens to 
 assemble, at day -break, on whatever spots commanded a 
 view of the towers of the cathedral. The Emperor and 
 the Committee of Moderates finished two hundred and ten 
 bottles of Rhine wine while they w^aited for sunrise. This, 
 among a temperate party of one score and one, was a 
 tolerable allowance for each individual. At dawn, all 
 Ulm was up, and every eye directed to the cathedral. 
 The towers had scarcely flung back the first rays from 
 heaven, when a joyous procession issued from the imperial 
 residence. The whole party, the Emperor excepted, were 
 as drunk as ^schylus. With difiiculty did they follow their 
 Lord, who, at the very top of his speed, and carrying a 
 heavy waggon- wheel on his shoulder, ran to the cathedral, 
 ascended the stairs leading to the summit of one of the 
 
IMPERIAL DRINKERS A:N^D INCIDENTS IN GERMANY. 315 
 
 towers, and appeared on the rampart, before his straggHng 
 followers had reached the low-arched door beneath. 
 With a light bound, he sprang on one of the highest 
 parts of the castellated portion, where there was scarcely 
 footing for him. In that position, however, he poised 
 the wheel aloft with his right hand, let it gently descend 
 on to the foot which he extended above the heads of the 
 multitude, and, holding it there for a moment or two, 
 ended by hurling it into the air, and catching it again, 
 ere it fell on the astounded and admiring crowd below. 
 
 " ' There, you calves ! ' cried the Emperor, as he gazed 
 tranquilly down on the sea of heads below ; "do you 
 dare complain that Niedersteiner touches your master's 
 nerves ? ' 
 
 "^ Never again!' exclaimed the delighted mass. 
 'What can we do to testify our affection for Your 
 Majesty?' 
 
 " ' Toss those gentlemen into a tub of Selzer-water,' 
 said Maximilian, ' and send me half-a-dozen of Hoch- 
 heimer, and half-a-dozen blood-puddings, for breakfast.' " 
 
 I could ahnost believe this tradition ; for I had seen a 
 nearly similar feat once performed by a woman on a pro- 
 jecting mass of rock in the Ahr Thai. The rock is, 
 doubtless, well known to all who have ascended that 
 lovely Rhine-valley, at eve, to eat Forellen, and drink 
 Wallportzheimer. They who do so, generally retm^n the 
 next morning with an inclination for nothing but the 
 cooling mineral waters to be had at Hippingen. 
 
 "Besides," said Knudtzen, ''' a-jpro^os to cathedi^als, 
 sober principles have done them more injury than jolly 
 Emperors. Do you forget that Caroline Bonaparte razed 
 a cathedral in Italy to the ground ?" 
 
 " I remember hearing of the deed as connected with a 
 church," said I ; " but I have forgotten the reason alleged 
 for it." 
 
 " It was a very sufficient reason for a Bonaparte. Her 
 
316 TABLE TRAITS. 
 
 Highness lived next door to the church ; and she had it 
 destroyed, because the noise of the organ kept her awake, 
 and the smell of the incense made her head ache." 
 
 "Eoyal minds," I remarked, "cannot condescend to 
 the weaknesses of common people. According to our 
 * Philosophical Transactions,' the pigeons at Pisa were as 
 destructive as Caroline Bonaparte. Pigeons, for many- 
 ages, built under the roof of the great church there. 
 Their dung spontaneously took fire at last ; and the 
 church was consumed. But, to return to the old, defunct 
 King of Saxony. He was afflicted with a super-delicate 
 attack of virtue ; and, during the prevalence of the dis- 
 order, he issued a decree for the expulsion, from his 
 picture-gallery, of all those master-pieces, the merit of 
 which lay in the glory of their flesh-colouring. He had 
 grown as modest as the Monk who declared that he had 
 never seen any portion of his body save his face and 
 hands. He is worthy of going down to posterity arm in 
 arm with that old Polish King, who was a cleaner, 
 but not a less delicate, man than the Monk, and who 
 boasted to his Confessor that his purity of mind was so 
 excessive, that he had never touched his own skin with 
 an ungloved hand. In short, the old King of Saxony 
 admirably illustrated the saying of Dean Swift, that ' a 
 nice man was a man of nasty ideas.' He had not been a 
 sparer of the wine-flask. Indeed, he had rather sinned 
 that way ; and, in expiation thereof, he undertook to per- 
 form a pilgrimage to the Holy Sepulchre on foot. A 
 fever of expectation shook Dresden, all the china in it, 
 and the whole line of road, at the idea of again beholding 
 a Christian King turning to the neglected shrine. The 
 expectation was not altogether fulfilled ; but the Monarch, 
 nevertheless, performed the pilgrimage." 
 
 "We never heard of it," exclaimed the travellers, look- 
 ing at each other with some manifestation of surprise. 
 
 "That is to say," I resumed, "that his Majesty per- 
 
IMPEBIAL DRIKKEES AIS^D I1S"CIDE1S"TS 11^ GERMAIS^T. 317 
 
 formed it after a fashion. He inquired the distance from 
 his own country-house at Pilnitz, to the Armenian Con- 
 vent at the Holy City ; and, in spite of his education, he 
 was nothing less than astonished, to find that it was 
 something more serious than a promenade to Toplitz. I 
 do not know if he had a vision of boiling his peas, as an 
 English pilgrim did, of whom I could tell you something ; 
 but he certainly experienced some unpleasant sensations 
 at the idea that, the way being so long, he might chance 
 to find himself without peas to boil. He wept at the 
 reflection that he might not only be a devout, but a 
 hungry. King, while one half of Dresden were solacing 
 their appetites on the terrace of Bruhl, and the other, at 
 the Baths of Link, or at the Bastei. He thought of the 
 dangers ; but he would be devout. The attendant pains 
 were great ; but the resulting pleasures were not to be 
 denied. In short, he would not go to Jerusalem ; but he 
 would perform the pilgrimage. Accordingly, the exact 
 distance having been ascertained, he started from his 
 room, and walked the entire number of leagues by pacing 
 up and down a long gallery, deducting from the distance 
 the amount of water passage, which was but fair. If 
 admiration had been great at the commencement, sur- 
 prising fun was excited during the performance. Every 
 evening the citizens of Dresden knew how far their reli- 
 gious Ruler had proceeded on his way, or how far he 
 would have proceeded, if he had but set out. JVow, he 
 \vas breakfasting, in imagination, at Breslau ; sleeping 
 (in fancy) at Olmutz ; and passing, by a pleasant fiction, 
 through Buda. During two days that his Majesty suf- 
 fered from a real bilious attack, the result, perhaps, of a 
 Barmecidal repast at Essek on the Drave, the King rested 
 at Belgrade, while confined to his bed in Dresden. But 
 his zeal soon re-invigorated his liver ; and, as he glided to 
 and fro by his palace windows, the mystified multitude 
 below learned that the Monarch was lodging in the 
 
318 TABLE TEAITS. 
 
 house of the Saxon Legation at Istamboul. The pilgrim- 
 traveller suffered a little from the heat (of the room) 
 as he descended from the western coast of Asia Minor ; 
 but the inconveniencies of the route were things beneath 
 the thoughts of him who — whether at Bursa, Smyrna, 
 or any other locality on his way — could ring his bell in 
 the Desert, and order Champagne out of his own cellar. 
 The King was puzzled one mid-day, (he had by calcula- 
 tion just reached Beyrout,) his progress being checked by 
 the unexpected arrival of a portion of the imperial family 
 from Vienna. Visitors of such condition must be attended 
 to ; nevertheless, his pilgrimage must be continued ; and 
 he, like the clever and facetious palmer that he was, did 
 both. He attended his guests with much politeness, 
 during their stay of two days ; and he put down the time 
 thus spent, as consumed in a sea voyage from Beyrout to 
 Acre. The moment they left, the royal pilgrim went ashore 
 again, and happily accomplished the remaining distance 
 to Jerusalem, through Nassara and Nablous, without any 
 other hinderance or obstruction than his going one night 
 to see a French vaudeville^ while supposed to be enjoying 
 his well-earned repose at Eama or Muddin. And thus 
 was accomplished that royal pilgrimage that was never 
 performed. The King reached Jerusalem without going 
 there ; and the people saw Mm return who had never 
 departed." 
 
 " Well," said Harold Knudtzen, "the Kings of Saxony 
 are no longer such simpletons. The present Monarch 
 loves, indeed, good wine, ' craftily qualified ;' but he 
 also, like Uzziah, King of Judah, loves husbandry. 
 Josephine herself had not half so frantic a passion for 
 flowers as he ; and not for flowers alone in their beauty, 
 — not for botany, either, merely for amusement's sake, 
 but for phytology and pharmacy, as connected with it." 
 
 "He lisped Linnaeus," said Lowenskiold, "before he 
 could speak plainly." 
 
IMPEEIAL DEI:N^KEES AISTD I1S"CIDE1^TS IK GrERMA:JTT. 319 
 
 " And, by reputation, he knew Tournefort better than 
 he did Knecht Eupert," added Harold. 
 
 "He himself told us, when we met him in Dalmatia," 
 continued the latter, "that he could spell Dodecandria 
 and Trigynia before he could read G-rimm's Story-Book ; 
 and that he knew the meanings of monopetalous and cam- 
 paniform before he was acquainted with the languages 
 from which the terms were derived. I never saw a man 
 so eager in pursuit of apetalous amerdaceous flowers ; and 
 as for carry opJiylous^^ 
 
 "Leave off your abominable phrases!" said I, "and 
 begin by telling me how you two very modest fellows 
 introduced yourselves to the acquaintance of the Sove- 
 reign of Saxony." 
 
 " The introduction was effected through a very light- 
 hearted and intelligent fellow-botanizer, whom we met on 
 our way from Zara up to the mountains. We had all 
 three lost our way while endeavouring to find an infundi- 
 luliforvi " 
 
 "Nay," interrupted I, " I care not what you found, if 
 you choose to tell it in pentameters." 
 
 " Well," resumed Knudtzen, " we were in a wild part of 
 the country, — weary, hungry, cold, and in the dark. Wan- 
 derers could not well be in a worse plight. We were as 
 flute Qi^ Juno's columns near the church of St. Helia; and 
 the skeleton doing duty there for that of St. Simeon of 
 Judaea, the pride and palladium of the people of Zara, 
 looked in far better condition, and in, especially, better 
 raiment, than could be boasted of by us humble pedes- 
 trians. We had walked many leagues, when we reached 
 a sorry inn kept by a Gipsy, where we hoped to find 
 rest and refreshment, but were permitted to enjoy 
 neither. Our swarthy host stood in his door-way, like 
 Horatius Codes at the head of the bridge. Beds he 
 did not even profess to find for travellers. He had 
 not slept in one himself for years, and was none the 
 
820 TABLE TEAITS. 
 
 worse, he said, for the privation. Leopold asked for 
 wine. 
 
 " ' We have three sorts of wine,' said the G-ipsy, 
 ' which travellers like yourselves once tasted and paid 
 for. I have the very wines which the seven Schwahen 
 asked for in the Golden es Kreutz at Ueherlingen.' 
 " ' What ! old Sauerampfer ? ' cried Lowenskiold. 
 " ' The same,' said our singular host. * It is not quite 
 so sour as vinegar, but it will pierce the marrow of your 
 bones like a sword ; and it will so twist your mouth, that 
 you shall never get it straight again.' 
 
 " * We will try something better than this acid water,' 
 
 said I : ' we will' 
 
 " ' Try the Dreimamierswein ? I am sorry there are 
 only women in the house ! ' 
 
 " ' What, in the name of all your saints in Zara, have 
 your women to do with the refreshment we need ? ' 
 
 " ' Do ! nothing in the world ! that is precisely it ! 
 You will want three men each of you. For Dreiman- 
 nerswein is three times as rough and ten times as sour as 
 vinegar ; and he who drinks it must be held fast by two 
 men, while a third pours the liquid down his throat ! ' 
 
 " ' And what of the third of these Olympic beverages ?' 
 said I. 
 
 " * It is called Hachenputzer, and has peculiar qualities 
 too. He who lies down to sleep with a flask of it in his 
 body, must be aroused every half-hour, and turned over. 
 Otherwise a pint of Rachenputzer would eat a hole right 
 through his side ! ' 
 
 " The Gipsy laughed aloud as he uttered these words. 
 We ourselves laughed in despite of our vexation ; and, 
 somewhat startlingly, a fourth voice took up the cachin- 
 natory affection, and laughed even louder than the ori- 
 ginal three. As the new-comer stood in the Ught of the 
 door-way, the landlord touched his cap, withdrew hastily 
 into the passage, and slammed the door in our faces, 
 
IMPERIAL DEINKEES AKD T^fCIDENTS IN aERMAKT. 321 
 
 leaving us in Cimmerian darkness, summer trousers, and 
 a drizzling rain. The matter was no longer risible, and 
 we were beginning to be seriously annoyed, when the 
 mysterious stranger, whom we could" but indistinctly see, 
 invited us to accompany him we knew not whither, and 
 hospitably to partake of we knew not what. We 
 accepted the invitation most gratefully ; and after a full 
 half-hour's walk, we found ourselves on the skirts of a 
 wood. In less than half that time, we subsequently reached 
 a neat little house within the wood itself; and I do not think 
 ten minutes had elapsed, ere we had made such toilette as 
 travellers may, and, with some doubts as to the reality of 
 the circumstance, detected ourselves in the act of eating 
 vermicelli soup, and wondering how it had reached us. 
 
 " Before our repast was entirely dispatched, our host, 
 in whom we saw a young, well-made, and exceedingly 
 amiable personage, informed us that he was on a botaniz- 
 ing expedition for the benefit of an establishment in 
 Northern Germany ; that he had been two months set- 
 tled in the house in which we then were, and that he 
 had already given temporary shelter to three plant- 
 explorers., who had resorted, in their need, to the house 
 of Djewitzki, the Gipsy, and who had found to their 
 sorrow, that it had nothing of the quality of an inn 
 about it, except the sign. 
 
 " We talked of flowers that night," continued Knudt- 
 zen, " as though they were the foremost as wellyis the 
 faii-est things in all the world. But we were sciolists in 
 the science, and, contrasted with us, our host was a sage. 
 He knew that agrimony was under Jupiter, and ange- 
 lica under the Sun in Leo ; that milfoil was under the 
 influence of Venus, and that garden basil was a herb of 
 Mars. If every new idea be worth the knowing, wliy, 
 we gained knowledge by the information, that all th(^ 
 dodders are under Saturn. We heard, for the first time, 
 the virtues of the plant enchusa." 
 
 Y 
 
322 TABLE TRAITS. 
 
 "But," interrupted Lowenskiold, "we were enabled to 
 remind our host of what Dioseorides says about it, — that 
 if any who have newly eaten of it do but spit in the 
 mouth of a serpent, the reptile instantly dies." 
 
 "True," said Knudtzen, "we have not been at Upsal 
 for nothing." 
 
 " We may all aid each other by turns," I remarked to 
 my two friends, as we arrived, after descending from the 
 cathedral, on the old bridge over the Moldau. A large 
 herd of cattle was crossing it at the time; and some of 
 the foremost black oxen of this herd had bunches 
 of amara dulcis (or, "woody nightshade") hung round 
 their necks ; a common custom in Germany, as I told 
 the young travellers, and employed as a remedy against 
 dizziness in the head. 
 
 "Of the owner or the ox?" said Harold, with a 
 laugh. 
 
 " Of him who wears it," I rejoined, "But I want to 
 see tho entry of your King of Saxony," I continued, " and 
 not to listen to the description, uses, and property of 
 herbs, plants, and flowers ; maiden-hair, moon-wort, and 
 orn ithogalum sulcatum . ' ' 
 
 " So much the worse ! " answered Knudtzen, " or Leopold 
 and I had told you what we learned from our entertainer 
 of celandine ; and what he told us, from Pliny, of the 
 anemone : how he recommended us, should we ever visit 
 Naples, never to retire to rest without strewing about 
 our bed-chamber some chopped leaves of arse-smart, a 
 herb most murderous to the numerous light troops can- 
 toned in Neapolitan sleeping-rooms ; how balm was good 
 for the bite of scorpions ; how Pliny recommends end- 
 weed for the quinsy ; — and a thousand other matters 
 touching leaves, herbs, trees, flowers, roots, and barks. 
 But I will tell you that our Amphitryon was light as 
 well as learned, and loved fun as he did flowers. He 
 would discom-se upon ballets as well as battles ; knew all 
 
IMPERIAL DRIKKERS AND IKCIDEI^TS IN aERMANT. 323 
 
 about logaritlims and the new opera ; told anecdotes ; 
 remembered sermons ; and, finally, lighted us to bed, 
 with a Latin quotation, and a brass candlestick. By 
 daybreak we were all out in the vicinity of the house, 
 looking for rare plants, with as much avidity as though 
 they equalled diamonds in value. We returned together 
 to a breakfast exactly adapted to our tastes and capaci- 
 ties ; after which, our knapsacks were once more on our 
 shoulders, and, having made due acknowledgment for the 
 hospitality received, we begged to be permitted to know 
 the name of our entertainer. 
 
 " ' You might call me,' said he, ' the Dalmatian 
 botanist, if I particularly cared about maintaining my 
 incognito. But I hope we shall meet again ; and, if you 
 ever visit Dresden, come to me, and you shall have better 
 fare than I have been able to afford you > here. Ask for 
 the King of Saxony,' he added, observing our inquiring 
 looks ; ' and in the mean time write your names on these 
 tablets, and you shall find that in Dresden I have not 
 forgotten the night in Dalmatia.' " 
 
 " And did you and the good Frederick Augustus ever 
 meet again ?" 
 
 "Twice," said Harold. "We saw one another for a 
 moment, a month afterwards, in Zara. He was accom- 
 panying the Emperor of Austria, followed by a brilliant 
 staff, to a review, and he gave us a smile of recognition 
 as he passed." 
 
 " The second time we met him," added Leopold, "was 
 in the gardens of the Nymphenberg, near Munich. He 
 was alone, amusing himself with feeding the beavers. 
 We spent a very agreeable hour with him in exploring 
 that pleasant retreat of the Kings of Bavaria ; and, on 
 parting, he repeated his wish that we might meet again 
 in Dresden, — a circumstance not very unlikely, as we are 
 now on our way to the Sachsische Schweitz." 
 
 T 2 
 
A FEW ODD GLASSES OF WINE, 
 
 The ancient people who loved the juice of the grape, 
 kept in grateful remembrance the names of the first 
 planters of vines. Bacchus came from India, through 
 Egypt, into Europe ; and he and his joyous company 
 made vineyards bloom amid many a desert. But the 
 introduction of the vine was not unopposed. The Chi- 
 ans accepted gratefully the rosy gift from OEnopia ; and 
 the branch was hailed on its passage through Greece, 
 Sicil}^, and Italy. But in Greece the vines were destroyed 
 wherever the order of Lycurgus had force ; and it was in 
 Athens that, under King Cranaus, men first diluted the 
 potent draught with water. The gods visited Greece 
 with an inundation in consequence ; but the Sicilians, 
 nothing daunted, adopted the temperance that was not 
 sanctioned in Olympus. Domitian did for the vines 
 carried into Gaul, from Tuscany, what Lycurgus did for 
 those of Lacedsemonia ; but Probus restored them to the 
 thirsty Gauls. Numa had taught his people to train the 
 vine which Janus had given them ; and, by placing the 
 statue of Minerva by the side of that of Bacchus, he 
 taught them a lesson which Domitian could not compre- 
 hend. He did not know how to be merry and wise. 
 
 It was long before the Egyptians acknowledged, by 
 grateful use, the excellence of the vine. The Scythians, 
 some of the Persians, and the Cappadocians would not 
 drink the delusive draught upon any account ; but then 
 these were barbarians. The Cappadocians especially not 
 only refused wine, but liberty. When the latter was 
 
A FEW ODD GLASSES OF WINE. 325 
 
 oflPered them by tlie Komans, the reply of the water- 
 drinkers was, " that they would neither accept liberty 
 nor tolerate it !" It is to be remarked, however, that all 
 these people tardily attained to a better taste, like the 
 great Hippocrates himself, who, after touching on the 
 advisability of mixing wine with water, finally decides, 
 like the enthusiastic Athenians, that it is much better to 
 take the beverage neat. He thinks that, when grief is at 
 the heart, pure wine is a specific ; and no doubt Ariadne 
 thought so too, or she would not have turned to Bacchus 
 after Theseus had abandoned her to a short-lived incon- 
 solability. Rome long honoured Bacchus even as Ariadne 
 did ; and he who stole a bunch of grapes from a vineyard 
 incurred the penalty of death. Italy was, indeed, proud 
 of her vines and their produce. Of the two hundred 
 varieties of wine then known in the world, only fourscore 
 were declared to be "excellent;" and of these fourscore, 
 nearly thirty were said to be natives of Italy. The 
 Chian wines, however, maintained for ages a marked pre- 
 eminence. It was a vase filled with wine of Chios that 
 the poet Ion gave to every Athenian who was present at 
 the representation of a tragedy, for which the poet was 
 publicly crowned. '' Fauper es, ut solent poetcB,''' was 
 therefore, evidently, a line that could not be universally 
 applied to the poets of Greece. 
 
 They loved old wine, too, did those old people. Wine, 
 as old as the years to which ravens are reported to attain, 
 — a century, or even two, — was served up at Rome. It 
 was in consistency something like the clotted cream of 
 Devonshire. But there was wine of a more solid con- 
 sistency than this. I have elsewhere spoken of wine 
 chopped in pieces by an axe, before it could be used. 
 This was because of an accident which had happened to 
 the wine ; but the Romans had vinous preparations 
 which were served up in lumps ; and we hear of wines 
 being kept in the chimney like modern bacon, and pre- 
 
326 TABLE TEAITS. 
 
 sented to the guests " as hard as salt.'' The ancients are 
 also reported to have been able to change red wine into 
 white, by means of white of egg and bean-flour, shaken 
 together with the red wine in a flagon. It would require 
 much shaking before a degenerate modern could eflect 
 the mutation in question. But if Cato could imitate the 
 best Chian by means of his own gooseberries, the other 
 feat may hardly be disputed. It is certain that the 
 ancients could boldly swallow some questionable mixtures. 
 Thus they drank their wine with sea-water, in order to 
 stimulate and whip up energies exhausted by being over- 
 driven the night before. Myrtle wine, on the other hand, 
 was copiously drunk at dawn by those who could not 
 sleep, but who could afford to remain in bed, and try to 
 court Nature's soft nurse. 
 
 There were Boman ladies who were not born before 
 nerves were in fashion. These had their especial drinks, 
 sovereign in their effects, to calm a nervous system too 
 sorely excited. The most efficacious of these was the 
 ^^ Adynamon,^^ or "powerless wine;" that is, powerless 
 to intoxicate, but excellent as an invigorator. It con- 
 sisted simply of a mixture of water and white-wort ; and 
 when Julia or Lalage had tremblingly sipped thereof, her 
 nerves were so braced, that she could stand by and look 
 on while Geta was flogged for an hour. 
 
 On the point of secret drinking, the early Romans 
 were quite as particular and more merciless regarding 
 their wives. When Micennius detected his wife in the act 
 of " sucking the monkey," that is, feloniously imbibing 
 his wine through a straw at the bung-hole, he then and 
 there slew her. Complaint was made by her friends to 
 Romulus ; but that chief and sole magistrate confined 
 himself to the remark, that she had been justly served. The 
 wine-casks at home were for years afterwards accounted 
 sacred by the wives in the absence of their lords. It 
 vrould appear, too, by this incident, that wine was com- 
 
A FEW ODD GLASSES OP WINE. 327 
 
 monl J produced long before Numa introduced the improve- 
 ment of training the vine. There were ladies who were 
 rendered more cautious, but not less bold, by the judgment 
 pronounced by Romulus. We hear of one caught in the 
 fact by some members of her own family, who were so 
 disgusted with her immorality, that to preserve the 
 respectability of their house, they starved her to death. 
 As years wore on, Judges grew more good-natured, and 
 only deprived tippling married women of all right in 
 their marriage portions. The Empire could hardly have 
 been inaugurated, before thirsty ladies adopted a custom 
 that had been denied them under the Commonwealth. 
 Livia, the consort of Augustus, was eighty-two when 
 she died ; and it was her boast that wine alone had made 
 her an octogenarian. What wine she drank is not stated. 
 She may have had a head that could bear old Falernian 
 undiluted ; but that was not the case with many of her 
 sex. The Roman ladies' wine was, generally speaking, 
 little more than a sweet tisane, distilled from asparagus 
 or marjoram ; from parsley, mint, rue, wild thyme, or 
 pennyroyal. These were sipped at breakfast-time ; and 
 the hour and the ingredient would seem rather to point 
 to iEsculapius than to Bacchus. They were, in fact, 
 medicinal drinks. The strong wines were drunk at other 
 hours, and these more innocent draughts were swallowed 
 in the morning, with reflections^ as bitter as the beverage. 
 Wormwood wine, too, was a favourite morning stimulant 
 with intoxication ; and it cannot be denied, that if modern 
 guests were condemned to a "pint of salt and water" 
 with their wine, the hilarity after dinner would not be of 
 a very joyous aspect. Some of the "sea-wines" of the 
 Greeks, however, owed their name and reputation chiefly 
 to being immersed, in casks, in the ocean. Our Madeira 
 may thus be called a "sea-wine," when it has been. to 
 the East Indies and back for the benefit of its health. 
 " Chambertin" was the favourite wine of Napoleon. 
 
328 TABLE TRAITS. 
 
 The '' vinum dulce^^ obtained after drying the grapes in 
 the sun, during three days, and crushing them beneath 
 the feet, in the hottest hours of the fourth day, was the 
 drink for which Commodus had a predilection. It was 
 after draughts of this beverage that he used to fight in 
 the Circus as the "Roman Hercules," as proud of his 
 performance as Mr. Ducrow, when he used to ride round 
 it in the same character. Commodus, too, like the great 
 equestrian, was an artist in his way ; but he ruined the 
 managers by the exorbitant salaries which he wrung 
 from them, whenever he condescended to appear in the 
 arena ! 
 
 For the games of the Circus, and for bread after the 
 sport was over, the Romans have been reproachfully 
 pointed at as alone caring. Considering the plight into 
 which they had been plunged by their Rulers and Priests, 
 they seem to me to have been wise in their sentiment. 
 One circumstance is clear, — that they might dip their 
 pennyworth of bread into a deep cup of "sack" at the 
 same price. "Wine cost but sixpence a gallon, — a suffi- 
 cient quantity for half-a-dozen gentlemen just returned 
 from the Circus ; or for half-a-dozen ladies, who had 
 learned to break through the total- abstinence principle of 
 the women of the Republic. There was much wine to be 
 had for a trifling outlay of money. In Greece, it was 
 cheaper still. In Athens, wine was dear at fourpence per 
 gallon ; and ordinarily, Davus, out on a holiday, might 
 get drunk upon four quarts of it, at a halfpenny per 
 quart ; but Chremes would nearly flay him alive, if he 
 caught him before he was sober. 
 
 I may add, that this was the price of wine, that is, of 
 French wine, in England, under John. A tun of Rochelle 
 wine cost twenty shillings, and it was retailed at four- 
 pence per gallon. But taking the value of money into 
 consideration, this was rather a high price. 
 
 When Probus restored the vine to the Gauls, he sent 
 
A FEW ODD GLASSES OP WINE. 329 
 
 cuttings of the precious plant into Britain ; and many 
 localities in the south part of the island produced a very 
 respectable beverage, of which the parent stock had no 
 reason to be ashamed. " As sure as God is in Glouces- 
 tershire!" was a common phrase when that picturesque 
 county was covered with monasteries ; and many of the 
 monastic gardens were famous for their grapes and the 
 liquor distilled from them. The little village of Dur- 
 weston, near Blandford, in Dorsetshire, was once as 
 remarkable for its peculiar grape and its product, as that 
 restricted Ehenish locality, whose grapes produce the 
 Lieb Frauenmilch. Of the respective merits of the English 
 grapes, I will say nothing. The merits of French wines 
 have, however, occupied the attention of rival medical 
 colleges, whose professors have shed much ink, and cracked 
 whole legions of bottles, in order to discuss, rather than 
 settle, the divers deserts of Burgundy and Champagne. 
 The question is yet an undecided one, as is also that 
 respecting the devotion of the Gauls to the grapes. 
 Arnaud de Yilleneuve praises the mediaeval people of 
 France, who intoxicated themselves monthly upon hygienic 
 principles. While other writers assert, that " in the mid- 
 dle ages, and in the sixteenth century, intoxication was 
 severely punished in France." I am the more inclinied 
 to believe in the latter assertion, as the laws against 
 drinking and drinkers, from Charlemagne to Francis I., 
 have often been cited ; and they are marked by a severity 
 — which Rabelais did not care for, a button ! 
 
 Our own wine-trade with France began after the l^or- 
 man Conquest, and was very considerable when our 
 English Kings were proprietors of the French wine dis- 
 tricts. About the middle of the sixteenth century, the 
 maximum price of wine was fixed at twelve-pence per 
 gallon ; but at this time no one was allowed to have in 
 his house a measure that would contain above ten gallons, 
 
330 TABLE TRAITS. 
 
 unless, indeed, he were of noble birth, or could expend a 
 hundred marks annually. 
 
 Of all French wines, that of Burgundy is the most 
 difficult of carriage. Some Burgundies cannot bear it at 
 all ; others are transported in bottles covered with a 
 cottony paper, or bedded in salt. Pure Burgundy exhila- 
 rates without intoxicating ; and there is not a liver com- 
 plaint in a hogshead of it. It is the alcoholic wines that 
 massacre the jecur. 
 
 The Burgundy vineyards were originally in connexion 
 with the Burgundian monasteries, and there were no 
 better vignerons than the monks. The modern quality of 
 the wine is inferior to its ancient reputation, simply 
 because modern proprietors are not artistical monks, but 
 mere money-makers. Napoleon adhered to the wine as 
 long as he could ; but at St. Helena he took to Bordeaux, 
 — Chambertin would have lost its best qualities in the 
 voyage thither. 
 
 The Emperor was, perhaps, the best judge of his 
 favourite Chambertin that France ever could boast of, 
 except, probably, in the case of the good Lindsay, of Bal- 
 carras. Bishop of Kildare. This Prelate long resided at 
 Tours, and was an excellent connoisseur in wme, though 
 he modestly used to say, " If I know any thing, it is the 
 management of turnip crops and mangel-wurzel." It is 
 no disparagement of the episcopal bench to say, that 
 many of its members could not justifiably make a similar 
 boast. Lord Brougham, I believe, used to say, that " if 
 he knew any thing, it was, that claret should always be 
 drunk after game." There is an imperial authority in 
 favour of Champagne. When the Emperol* Wenceslaus 
 visited France in the fourteenth century, to negotiate 
 with Charles YL, it was impossible ever to- get him sober 
 to a conference. "It was no matter," he said; "they 
 might decide as they lilted, and he would drink as he 
 
A FEW ODD GLASSES OE AVINE. 331 
 
 liked; and thus both parties would be on an equality." 
 There is something cui'ious in the caprices of Champagne ; 
 particularly of the vin mousseux, or effervescing wine. 
 In the same cellar, the same wine, all similarly placed, 
 will mousser in some bottles, and not in others. It will 
 even, when poured from the same bottle, mousser in some 
 glasses into which it is poured, while in others it will 
 fall as heavily placid as oil. In warm weather, however, a 
 great Champagne cellar is a very lively place ; so lively, 
 that it is unsafe to walk through the serried hosts of 
 bottles, without a wire mask over the face. 
 
 There are one or two sorts of French wine which are 
 considered to be improved by letting a small portion of 
 the stalk be trodden in with the grape. But, probably, in 
 the selection of the grape, there is no where such care 
 taken, as in the matter of imperial Tokay. The grapes 
 are selected with the greatest care ; sometimes a second 
 selection is made from the first selected lot. No grape 
 is chosen that is not perfectly sound. The result- 
 ing wine is of a highly delicious flavour ; but I need 
 not add, that the general public know but very little 
 about it. To them is vouchsafed the brewage from the 
 damaged grape, or the distillation of the refuse of the 
 first grape. The product is an acid one, resembling 
 moderately good Rhine wine ; but it is not Tokay. 
 
 "Old W'ortley Montague" was a great drinker of 
 Tokay. He lived to the patriarchal age of eighty-three. 
 Gray, writing of him, says, that it was not mere avarice, 
 and its companion, abstinence, that kept him alive so 
 long. He imported his own wine from Hungary, in 
 greater quantity than he could use, and he sold the overplus, 
 — drinking himself a half-pint every day, — for any price he 
 chose to set upon it. It was a fashionable wine with the 
 drinkers of the last century. Walpole records its being 
 ojQfered at a supper given by Miss Chudleigh to the Duke 
 of Kingston, her then "protector." "At supper she 
 
332 TABLE TRAITS. 
 
 offered him Tokay, and told him she believed he would 
 find it good.'* The entertainment was splendid, and 
 untidy. " The supper was in two rooms, and very fine ; 
 and on all the sideboards, and even on the chairs, were 
 pyramids and troughs of strawberries and cherries ; you 
 would have thought she was kept by Vertumnus ! " 
 
 Our ancient acquaintance, "mustard," was originally 
 raised to the character of " wine," in common with some 
 other of the seeds used at ancient tables. Our warm 
 friend mustard was the mustum ardens, or " hot wine." 
 It was held as good for persons of bilious temperament, 
 and as being more beneficial in summer than in winter. 
 Coriander was used in the same season. It was mixed 
 with vinegar, and poured over meat to preserve its fresh- 
 ness. There are some men who faint at the smell of 
 linseed. A bread made therefrom was once, however, 
 readily eaten by various European and Asiatic people. 
 Cakes made of it were placed before the altars of gods, — 
 men making willing sacrifice of what they accounted as 
 of small value. Similar sacrifices are made daily even 
 now ; only they are not in the form of aniseed cakes. 
 
 It is said of the Arabs, that they manufactured an 
 intoxicating wine from linseed. This beverage was worthy 
 of being served with that strange dish at dessert, — fried 
 hempseed, — a dish that would have been appropriate 
 enough at a highwayman's last supper, the night before 
 he rode to Tyburn. 
 
 It used to be said of old, that wine was a sympathetic 
 liquor ; and this is alluded to by more than one writer. 
 Sir Kenelm Digby, in his " Dissertation on the Cure of 
 Wounds," makes a singular remark with respect to wine. 
 "The wine-merchants observe every where, (where there 
 is wine,) that during the season the vines are in the flower, 
 the wines in the cellar make a kind of fermentation, and 
 percolate forth a little white lee (which I think they call 
 * the mother of the wine ') upon the surface of the wine, 
 
A TEW ODD GLASSES OP WINE. 333 
 
 which continues in a kind of disorder till the flower of 
 the vines be fallen ; and then, this agitation being ceased, 
 all the wine returns to the same state as it was in before." 
 It was a custom with the ancients to swallow, to the 
 health of their mistresses, as many cups or glasses as 
 there were letters in her name. To this custom Martial 
 refers : — 
 
 " Navia sex cyat?ds, sept em Justina bibatur, 
 Quinqiie Lycas^ Lyde quatuor^ Ida tribus : 
 Omnis ab infuso numeretur arnica Talerno^ 
 
 It became us, as a more mechanical people, to drink upon 
 pegs rather than letters : the peg-tankards were said to 
 be the invention of King Edgar. The two-gallon mea- 
 sure had eight pegs ; and the half pint, from peg to peg, 
 was deemed a fitting draught for an honest man ; but as 
 the statute, or custom, did not define how often the 
 toper might be permitted to indulge in this measure, 
 people of thirsty propensities got rather more inebriated 
 than they had dared to be previously. As the half-pint 
 was roughly set down as the maximum of their draught, 
 it was a point of honour with them never to drink less, — 
 and to drink to that extent as often as opportunity 
 offered. The Council of London (Archbishop Anselm's 
 " Canons," a.d. 1102) expressly warned the Clergy against 
 the perils of. peg-drinking ; but the same Council looked 
 upon perukes as being quite as perilous as these pegged 
 half-pints, and denounced wigs with as much intensity as 
 tankards, — and to about as much" purpose. Karloman 
 understood the Ecclesiastics better ; at least, if traditionary 
 history be worthy of any respect. 
 
 Among the legends of the Rhine connected with my 
 present subject of wine, there is one Which is worth men- 
 tioning. The great Karloman, who loved good liquor, 
 bequeathed to the brotherhood of Monks at Rheinfeld a 
 marvellous and covetable butt of wine, which had not 
 only the merit of being of first-rate quality, but which 
 
334 TABLE TEAITS. 
 
 never decreased, though it was eoiitirmally running at 
 the spigot ! This wine was for the use of the brethren ; 
 but the good Emperor also left a sum of money which 
 he desired should be spent in treating visitors to the 
 monastery with good Ehenish wine. When a weary 
 traveller claimed the hospitality of the Monks, he was 
 immediately conducted to an inner apartment. Here he 
 was invested with the collar of Karloman, and gravely 
 informed that, it being necessary that he should be bap- 
 tized, he had only to say whether he preferred that the 
 ceremony should be performed with wine or with water. 
 If, like an honest fellow, he selected wine, he was gently 
 constrained to swallow three monster bumpers of Mus- 
 catel. He was then crowned with a parcel-gilt coronet, 
 and so became installed one of the jolly Knaves of St. 
 Goar. There were some privileges attached to this dig-, 
 nity ; among others, was the right to fish on the summit 
 of the Lurley Berg, where there is no water; and of 
 hunting on the sand-banks of the Rhine, where there is 
 not safe footing for a sparrow. The poor temperate 
 wight, on the other hand, who preferred the modest 
 medium of water for the ceremony of his baptism, was 
 proclaimed a blind Heathen, and was immediately drenched 
 to the skin, from outpouring buckets of water that were 
 showered upon him in all directions. Such was the 
 solemnity of the Hansel, as instituted by Karloman. 
 This Emperor's affection for the Ehine and its vicinity 
 was as strong as that of an old gastronomic English 
 Bishop for his native island. The episcopal attachment 
 is exemplified in the story of the Prelate's last moments, 
 when his faithful servant John endeavoured to encourage 
 him. "Be comforted, my Lord," said John: "your 
 Lordship is going to a better place," "Ah, John!" said 
 the Bishop, " there is no place like old England ! " 
 
 There was a practice among the Eomans with regard 
 to wine, which should win the respect of all our Inns of 
 
A TEW ODD GLASSES OF WINE. 335 
 
 Court. All law business was suspended during vintage 
 time. ^^ Sane,'^ says Minucius Felix, '^ et ad vindemiam 
 fericB judiciorum cur am relaxaverunt ;'''^ and this was no 
 poor holiday : it was the Long Vacation of the Roman bar, 
 e^rtending, as the Rev. Hubert Ashton Holden remarks, 
 in his admirable edition of the " Octavius,^^ from August 
 22nd to October 15th. And here let me remark, paren- 
 thetically, how much preferable it would be to make a 
 school-book of the " Octavius^^ of Minucius Felix, so rich 
 in early Christian information, and so pure in its Latinity, 
 rather than pursue the old course of letting boys read 
 Ovid and similar authors. The Abbe Gaume, in his 
 " Ver Rongeur ^"^ traces all the evils by which society is 
 afflicted, to the study of erotic Latin and Greek authors. 
 The Abbe rushes from one extreme into its opposite, and 
 wishes to confine our sons to the mawkish Latinity of the 
 Lives of the Saints, and the Pastorals '(so unlike the 
 Eclogues) of Bishops. The work of Minucius Felix just 
 occupies the safe medium of the two remote points, — 
 erotic Heathenism, and Monkish mendacity, told with 
 much violation of grammar. It is a book that ought to 
 be on the list of works to be studied in every locality 
 devoted to the education of " ingenuous youth." 
 
 It is hardly necessary to write of the effects of wine on 
 the bodily economy. They are too familiarly known. 
 There was an old adage that — 
 
 " He who goes to bed, and goes to bed sober, 
 I'alls as the leaves do, and dies in October ; 
 But he who goes to hed, and goes to bed mellow, 
 Lives as he ought to do, and dies a good feUow." 
 
 This is poor poetry, worse sentiment, and deadly coun- 
 sel. Half the evils that torture men arise from intem- 
 perance ; and, next to excess in alcohol, immoderation in 
 wine is the most fatal practice to which humanity can 
 bind itself slave. An Arab says of his horse, that the 
 horse's belly is the measure of its corn. Men are too 
 
336 TABLE TRAITS. 
 
 apt to allow a similar metage with respect to themselves 
 in the matter of wine. It were safer to remember that 
 we cannot drink too little, and that we soon may be 
 drinking too much. Panard very justly says, — 
 
 " Se piquer d'etre grand buveur^ 
 Est un ahus quitje deplore. 
 Fuyons ce titre peuflatteur ; 
 
 C'est un honneur qui deshonore. 
 Quand on boit trop, on s'assoupity 
 
 Et Von tomhe en delire : 
 Buvons pour avoir de r esprit ^ 
 Et non pour le detruire^ 
 As good advice, more eloquently delivered, is given by 
 our own Herbert, a poet next to Shakespeare for felicity 
 of expression. Our reverend minstrel and monitor says, — 
 
 "Drink not the third glass, which thou canst not tame 
 
 When once it is within thee, but before 
 May'st rule it as thou list ; and pour the shame, 
 
 Which it would pour on thee, u])on the floor. 
 It is most just to throw that on the ground. 
 Which would throw me there, if I keep the round." 
 
 And again : — 
 
 " If reason move not, gallants, quit the room ; 
 
 (All in a shipwreck shift their several way ;) 
 Let not a common riiin thee entomb ; 
 
 Be not a beast in courtesy, but stay, 
 Stay at the third cup, or forego the place : 
 Wine, above aU things, does God's stamp deface." 
 
 This is admirable counsel, logic, and theology. The 
 people who least stood in need of such a triad of excel- 
 lent aids to good living were the Egyptians, at that par- 
 ticular period of their career when they confined them- 
 selves to drinking 
 
 " Beer small as comfort, dead as charity." 
 
 And this may naturally lead us to look in, for a 
 moment, on both the ancient and the modern Egyptians, 
 when seated at table. But, previous to doing so, there 
 is a little philological matter I would fain settle, as far as 
 
A FEW ODD GLASSES OE WINE. 337 
 
 SO indifferent an authority may presume to do so, and 
 which may interest, not merely wine-bibbers, but ety- 
 mologists, and zealous correspondents to " Notes and 
 Queries." It may be very briefly discussed. 
 
 I have noticed, in another page, the fact that nearly 
 all our old-fashioned drinking phrases are but corruptions 
 of foreign terms. A " carouse," for instance, is derived 
 from ''gar aus^"" " altogether empty," sufficiently indicative 
 of what a reveller was to do with his full glass. There is 
 one — a rather vulgar term — of the origin of which, how- 
 ever, I have never heard any account. But I think I 
 may have discovered it in a little German poem, by 
 Pfarrius, called " Der Trunk aus dem Stiefel,'' and which, 
 thus roughly done into English, may serve to show 
 
 THE ORIGIN OF "BOOSEY." 
 
 In the Rheingraf s haU were of Knights a score. 
 And they drained their goblets o'er and o'er, 
 And the torches they flung a lurid glow 
 On the Knights who were drinking there below. 
 
 " Ho, ho ! " said the Rheingraf, '' Sir Knights, I find. 
 Our courier has left a boot behind ; 
 He who can empty it off at a breath, — 
 The Hufflesheim viUage is his till death." 
 
 Then laughing, he filled the boot to the rim. 
 Till the bright red wine flowed over the brim ; 
 And said, as he mark'd their sparkling eyes, — 
 " Good luck to you. Knights — you know the prize !" 
 
 Then Johann von Sponheim sat silent by. 
 But pushed his neighbour to rise and try ; 
 And Meinhart, his neighbour, could nothing do 
 But scowl at the boot, and sit silent too. 
 
 Old Florsheim, he nervously stroked his beard ; 
 And Kunz von Stromberg spoke never a word ; 
 And even the giant Chaplain stared 
 At the monster boot, as though he were scared. 
 Z 
 
838 TABLE TEAITS. 
 
 Tlien Boos von Waldeck did loudly call, — 
 
 " Here, hand me that thimble !" and " Health to all !" 
 
 And then, in one breath, to the very last drain, 
 
 He drank, and fell back on his seat again. 
 
 And said, " O, Sir Rheingraf, it were my mind, 
 Had the fellow his other boot left behind, 
 To empty that, too, at a breath ; and take 
 For my prize Norheim village, near the lake." 
 
 Then loud laughed they all at Waldeck's good jest, — 
 Of all landless tipplers, till then, the best ; 
 But the Rheingraf, he kept his knightly word, — 
 And Boos of the Boot was Hufflesheim's lord ! 
 
 If therein be not the origin of boosey," why, let the 
 lexicographers look to it. But my readers will have had 
 enough of these uncouth names. I have now to intro- 
 duce them to hosts with names equally unmusical ; but, 
 luckily, we have now to do more with acts than appella- 
 tions, and therewith pass we to golden Egypt, and her 
 well-spread boards. I w^ill only first add another word 
 respecting spirits, as a beverage. All authorities are 
 agreed, that reason has no more deadly foe than alcohol. 
 The effects of the latter are well described by Dr. 
 Winslow, whom we have previously quoted in the matter 
 of mental dietetics, — a gentleman who might, with justice, 
 have given a plump denial to the remark of Macbeth, had 
 it been addressed to Dr. Winslow, when the royal patient 
 uncivilly told his medical adviser, "Thou canst not 
 minister to a mind diseased." Dr. Winslow says : 
 " The alcoholic elements introduced into the blood, and 
 brought into immediate contact with the tissues of differ- 
 ent organs, will derange the functions which they are 
 severally destined to perform ; and the amount and cha- 
 racter of the mischief so produced will correspond with, 
 and be modified by, the peculiarities of their individual 
 organic structure. With these facts before us, when we 
 
A FEW ODD GLASSES OF WINE. 339 
 
 consider the delicate structure of the brain, as revealed to 
 us by the progress of microscopic anatomy, we must be 
 prepared for the physical and mental derangement which 
 must arise, either from the alcohol itself, or its elements, 
 being brought into direct contact with the vesicular 
 neurine or granular matter entering into the composition 
 of its white and grey substance. According to our most 
 recent physiological views, the vesicular matter is the 
 source of nervous power, and associated, as the material 
 instrument of the mind, with all its manifestations, 
 whether in the simple exercise of perception, or the more 
 complicated operations of the thinking principle. We 
 are then to conceive the simple or organic structure 
 dedicated to this high function brought into contact with 
 irritating and noxious elements. The result must obvi- 
 ously be a disturbance in the manifestations of the mind 
 proportioned to the organic derangements so produced; 
 and without, therefore, taking a materialistic view of the 
 changes which take place, the obliteration of some, and 
 the derangement of other of the intellectual faculties, are 
 hereby satisfactorily accounted for. It is certain, that 
 when the circulation in the grey matter of the convolu- 
 tions is retarded by congestion, or accelerated by unwonted 
 stimulation, there is a corresponding state of stupor or 
 mental activity, amounting even to delirium, produced ; 
 and, indeed, it has been suggested, by some of our most 
 eminent physiologists, that every idea of the mind is 
 associated with a corresponding change in some part, or 
 parts, of the vesicular surface." And if they who sit 
 "amid bumpers brightening," could only hold this truth 
 in sober memory, there would be less imbibed at night, 
 and more sunshine in their souls on the morrow. And 
 now let us pass to the cradle of wisdom, the ancient 
 Misraim, where, despite the national boast, folly was, 
 perhaps, as much deified as in any locality upon 
 earth. 
 
 z 2 
 
340 TAELE TEAITS. 
 
 Yes, let us now to ancient Egypt, where, as good old 
 Herbert so finely expresses it, — 
 
 " Men did sow 
 
 Gardens of gods, wliicli every year did grow 
 
 Fresh and fine deities. They were at great cost 
 
 "Who for a god clearly a sallet lost ! 
 
 O, what a thing is man devoid of grace, 
 
 Adoring garlic with a humhle face ! 
 
 Begging his food of that which he may eat. 
 
 Starving the while he worshippeth his meat 1 
 
 Who makes a root a god, how low is he. 
 
 If God and man be severed infinitely ! 
 
 What wretchedness can give him any room, 
 
 Whose house is foul, while he adores his broom ? " 
 
THE TABLE OF THE ANCIENT AND 
 MODERN EGYPTIANS. 
 
 If neither the grave of the Pharaohs nor physiology 
 will, nor Dr. Hincke nor Chevalier Bunsen can, reveal to 
 us the secret of the origin of the Egyptians, we, at all 
 events, know that they were majestically-minded with 
 respect to the table. The science of living was well 
 understood by them ; and the science of killing was 
 splendidly rewarded; seeing that the soldiery, besides 
 liberal pay, allowance of land, and exemption from tribute, 
 received daily five pounds of bread, two of meat, and a 
 quart of wine. With such rations they ought not to 
 have been beaten by the Persians, w^hen the latter had 
 so degenerated, that their almost sole national boast was, 
 that they could drink deeper than any other men, without 
 seeming half so drunk. The Egyptians, too, were tole- 
 rably stout hands, and heads to boot, at the wine-pot ; and 
 there were few among even their Kings who, like the 
 King of Castile, would have choked of thirst, because the 
 grand butler was not by to hand the cup. 
 
 The pulse and fruits of Egypt, the fish of the Nile, 
 the corn waving in its fields, which needed neither sun 
 nor rain to exhibit productiveness, — all these were the 
 envy, and partly the support, of surrounding nations. 
 The corn was especially prized ; and a reported threat of 
 St. Athanasius to obstruct the importation of Egyptian 
 corn into Constantinople, threw the Emperor Constan- 
 tine into a fit of mingled fright, fever, and fury. 
 
 An Egyptian Squire commonly possessed a hundred or 
 two cows and oxen, three hundred rams, four times that 
 
312 TAELE TRAITS. 
 
 number of goats, and five times that number of swine, 
 for the supply of his own little household. The apart- 
 ments in the mansions of these gentlemen were beauti- 
 fully painted, and were furnished with tables, chairs, and 
 couches which have supplied models for the upholstery 
 of modern times. They were lovers of music, and wil- 
 lingly suspended conversation at their feasts, in order to 
 listen to the " concord of sweet sounds." 
 
 Cleopatra was but a febrile creature ; but she sat down 
 with good appetite, and love in her eyes, to the banquet 
 given by Antony, at which fifteen whole boars smoked 
 upon the board. But Cleopatra, frail and fragile, like 
 many thin people, ate heartily ; and w^hen she herself 
 treated CiBsar, it was with such a banquet that slaves 
 died to procure it, and the guests who were present won- 
 dered at the rarities of which they partook. There was 
 every thing there that gastronomy could think of, except 
 mutton, — an exception in favour of the divine Amnion 
 with the ram-like head. I believe that even roast-beef 
 and plum-pudding were not lacking ; for these delicacies 
 were popular in Thebes, as was broiled and salted goose, 
 with good brown stout, strong barley-wine, to cheer the 
 spirits and assist digestion. 
 
 Excessively proud, too, were the old Egyptians of their 
 culinary ability. When the Egyptians, under their 
 King, attacked Ochus, Sovereign of Persia, the former 
 were thoroughly beaten, and their Monarch was cap- 
 tured. Ochus treated him as courteously as the Black 
 Prince did John of France, and invited him to his own 
 table, at the simplicity of which the Egyptian laughed 
 outright. "Prince," said the uncourteous captive, "if 
 you would really like to know how happy Kings should 
 feed, just let my cooks — if you have caught the rascals, as 
 you have me — prepare you a true Egyptian supper." 
 Ochus consented, enjoyed himself amazingly at the ban- 
 quet, and then, turning to his Egyptian prisoner. 
 
TABLE or THE ANCIENT AND MODERN EGYPTIANS. 343 
 
 punished him by saying, " Why, what a sorry fool art 
 thou, whose ambition has lost thee such repasts, and 
 reduced thee to henceforth envy, as thou wilt, the mode- 
 rate meals that suffice us honest Persians ! " The implied 
 threat was worse than the sentiment. 
 
 The dinner-table of the Egyptians was sometimes 
 covered with a linen cloth imitating palm-leaves, some- 
 times left uncovered. Plates and knives, but not forks, 
 were in common use. In place of the latter were short- 
 handled spoons of gold, silver, ivory, tortoise-shell, or 
 alabaster. The dining-table was circular : ornamented 
 rolls of wheaten bread were placed before each guest ; 
 and supplies of the same were heaped in gay-looking 
 baskets on the side-board, where also were kept the wine, 
 the water, ewer, and napkins, which slaves, fair or 
 swarthy, Greek or Negro, were ready to present at the 
 bidding of the guests. 
 
 Previous to sitting down to the repast, the company 
 put a spur to their appetite, and a cordial to their sto- 
 mach, in the shape of pungent vegetables or strong 
 liqueurs. Glasses for beer, decanters and goblets for 
 wine, appear among the ancient pictorial illustrations of 
 Egyptian table-furniture. It would seem, too, from the 
 position of those at table, that they rose from their 
 chairs to challenge each other to drink, to propose toasts 
 or healths, or to inflict speeches upon the vexed ears of 
 compulsory listeners. 
 
 In these "counterfeit presentments" of Egyptian life 
 may be seen the entire science of epicureanism, and its 
 practical application put into action. The poultry -yard, 
 the slaughter-houses, the markets and the kitchen, are so 
 graphically depicted, that w^e see at once, that the art of 
 making life comfortable was one most profoundly 
 respected by the ancient and mysterious people. The 
 selecting, purchasing, and killing are vividly portrayed. 
 The cooking is carried on in a large bronze caldron, on 
 
344 TABLE TRAITS. 
 
 a tripod, over a fire, which is stirred by an iinder-cook, 
 with a poker that may have been bought any day at 
 Eippon and Burton's. The butcher is there, too, in 
 order decently to dissect the fowls ; and our ancient friend 
 carries before him the identical steel for sharpening his 
 knife, which may be seen any day hanging from the 
 waists of the butchers of London. There is a pastrycook, 
 also, in one of these " civil monuments of Egypt," who 
 is carrying a tray of tartlets on his head ; and to the 
 tray is appended the inscription signifying " one thou- 
 sand," which probably means, that this "Birch, Pyramid- 
 place, Cairo," drives such a trade, that he makes and 
 sells a thousand tarts or a thousand varieties of them 
 daily. 
 
 A dinner fresco^ in a tomb at Thebes, shows us an 
 entertainment given by a naval officer to some of his pro- 
 fessional brethren. This fresco is described as being in 
 compartments, and, perhaps, the most curious is that in 
 which " you see on one side the arrival of an aristocratic 
 guest, in his chariot, attended by a train of running foot- 
 men, one of whom hastens forv/ard to announce his 
 arrival by a knock at the door, sufficient to satisfy the 
 critical ear, and rouse the somnolent obesity, of the 
 sleepiest and fattest hall-porter in Grosvenor-square. 
 The other compartment presents you with a coup-d'oeil of 
 the poultry-yard, shambles, pantry, and kitchen ; and is 
 completed by a side view of a novel incident. A grey- 
 headed mendicant, attended by his faithful dog, and who 
 might pass for Ulysses at his palace-gate, . is receiving, 
 from the hands of a deformed,, but charitable, menial, 
 a bull's head, and a draught of that beer, for the inven- 
 tion of which we are beholden to the Thebans." 
 
 The story of Mycerinus, the Egyptian King, is grandly 
 told by Mr. Arnold, in his popular volume of poems ; and, 
 succinctly, by Herodotus. An incident of the story con- 
 Dects it with our subject. Mycerinus was persecuted by 
 
TABLE or THE AT^CIENT AT^D MODERI^ EGYPTIANS. 345 
 
 the gods for rendering Egypt happy, instead of oppressing 
 it, like his predecessors, and as the oracles had declared it 
 should be oppressed for many years to come. In punish- 
 ment for such impious x^i^'^y, as his offence may be called, 
 poor Mycerinus was told by the oracle at Buto, that he 
 should live only six years longer. " When Mycerinus 
 heard this, seeing that his sentence was now pronounced 
 against him, he ordered a great number of lamps to be 
 made, and, having lighted them, whenever night came on, 
 he drank and enjoyed himself, never ceasing night or day, 
 roaming about the marshes and groves, wherever he could 
 hear of places most suited for pleasure ; and he had 
 recourse to this artifice for the pm-pose of convicting the 
 oracle of falsehood, that by turning the nights into days, 
 he might live twelve years instead of six." Poor fool ! 
 He probably succeeded in his object, but after a sorry 
 fashion. It may be good poetry to say that — 
 
 " The best of all ways 
 
 To lengthen our days 
 Is to take a few hours from night, my dear ;" 
 
 but it is bad in principle, and universally unsuccessful in 
 practice. 
 
 A recent describer of his travels in Egypt has said, 
 that nothing is so easy as to show that the Egyptians 
 gave jovial banquets within the sepulchral hall of tombs. 
 I think that nothing would be so difficult as to prove 
 this. The nearest approach to it would be the case of 
 the skeleton that was carried about at Egyptian ban- 
 quets, the bearer, at the same time, warning the guests 
 that, eat, drink, and laugh as they might, to that " com- 
 plexion they must come" at last. The assertion, how- 
 ever, was probably made, in part, to excuse a barbarous 
 festival, at which the writer was present, in the tombs of 
 Eilythyias. The locale was one of the huge halls, whose 
 colossal columns serve to support the huger mountain 
 
346 TABLE TEAITS. 
 
 that is above. The dinner, we are told, was laid out 
 between the columns, with strings of small lamps sus- 
 pended in festoons over head. 
 
 The civilized and Christian ladies and gentlemen who 
 were the guests at this feast, broke up the coffins of the 
 pagan and barbarian Kings and Queens, in order to pro- 
 cure wood to boil their vegetables ! They laughed, 
 joked, and sang joyous songs, and wondered what the 
 buried majesty of Misraim would say, could it burst its 
 cerements, and see northern men of unknown tongues 
 drinking Champagne at its august feet. And if, for a 
 moment, a reflecting guest contrasted the savage revelry 
 with the ensigns hung out by the King of Terrors to inti- 
 mate his irresistible dominion over the company, — why, 
 reflection was soon banished by the appearance of the 
 Awalim and Ghawazi girls, whom strong coffee and more 
 potent brandy had primed for their lascivious dancing. 
 " Father Abraham ! what these Christians are !" 
 
 These tombs are full of instruction to those who can 
 read them. They show us that the chief butler and cook 
 — the "keeper of the drinks," and the Prince (sar) of his 
 cooks — were probably Princes of the blood of Pharaoh. 
 In all pictorial representations of banquets, it is the eldest 
 son who hands the viands to his father, the eldest daugh- 
 ter to the mother. The bill of fare of the trimestrial 
 banquet of the dead, held in the noble hall of the tomb 
 of Nahrai at Benihassan, is still extant. It is as long as 
 that of a score of Lord Mayors' ; and hundreds of men 
 were fed from what remained. All the retainers of Nah- 
 rai, who was a Prince in Egypt »a full century before the 
 time of Joseph, were buried in the vaults beneath the 
 hall ; and every one who could claim kindred with them 
 had a right to partake of the feast. The manner of ser- 
 vice appears to have been after this fashion : — The 
 youngest children of the house received the viands from 
 the cooks, and those children passed them on to the elder, 
 
TABLE OF THE AIs^CIEKT AND MODEEN EGYPTIANS. 347 
 
 until they reached the first-born, who placed the dish at 
 the feet of his sire, by whom a portion was cut off, which 
 the daughters, according to their age, transferred from 
 one to the other till it reached the separate table of their 
 mother. All remained standing, at these festival- dinners, 
 until the two seniors of the house had finished the first 
 dishes of the repast. Portions from these were then 
 served to the children, when the whole party sat down 
 together ; the children eating of the remains of the first 
 dish, while "the governor" and his lady partook of the 
 integral second ; and so on, through a long service. On 
 the wall of a tomb at Ghizeh, — that of Eimei, one of the 
 Princes of the Saphis, — the bill of fare directs ninety- 
 eight dishes to be placed, at once, on the table, at the 
 fortnightly banquets which glad survivors held in honour 
 of the departed, who appear to me always to enjoy an 
 immense advantage over those whom they leave behind 
 them. 
 
 But now let us look in upon the modern Egyptian. 
 If he be the master of a house, while he is at ablutions 
 and prayers, his wife is making his coffee ; and it is to be 
 hoped that she is allowed the privilege alluded to in the 
 Augustinian sentiment, orat qui lahorat. The cup of 
 coffee and pipe, taken early, generally suffice the Egyp- 
 tian till noon, at which hour comes the actual breakfast, 
 usually consisting of bread, butter, eggs, cheese, clotted 
 cream, or curdled milk, with, perhaps, a thin pastry, satu- 
 rated with butter, folded like a pancake, and sprinkled 
 with sugar. A dish of horse-beans (terrific dish !) some- 
 times adorns the table. They have been slowly simmer- 
 ing through a whole night in an earthen vessel, buried 
 up to the neck in the hot ashes of an oven ; and the sauce 
 for this indigestible dish is linseed oil or butter, and, 
 perhaps, a little lime-juice. Those to whom butter is 
 difficult of procuring, or to whom good dinners are rari- 
 ties, often make a meal, and are content, upon dry bread . 
 
348 TABLE TRAITS. 
 
 dipped in a mixture of salt, pepper, wild marjoram, with 
 various other herhs, pungent seeds, and a quantity of chick- 
 peas. The hread is dipped into this ragout, and so eaten. 
 The supper is the principal meal in Egypt. The cook- 
 ing is especially for this repast ; and what remains is 
 appropriated for the next day's dinner, despite the 
 apophthegm of Boileau, that — 
 
 " Tin diner rechauffe ne vaut jamais rien^ 
 
 It is only an amiable paterfamilias that dines with his 
 wives and children ; and, in truth, where the wife appears 
 in the plural number, the husband can hardly expect a 
 quiet meal. The washing before eating is almost of uni- 
 versal observation. The table is a round tray placed low, 
 so that the squatters on the ground may conveniently eat 
 thereat. Bread and limes are placed on the tray. The 
 bread is round, as among the ancient Egyptians, and 
 often serves as a plate. The spoons, too, are of the mate- 
 rials I have named in speaking of the older nation. The 
 dishes are of tmned copper or china ; and several are put 
 "upon the table at one time. Among the Turks, only one 
 dish appears at a time. Twelve persons, with one knee 
 on the ground and the other (the right) raised, may sit 
 round a tray three feet in diameter. Each guest tucks 
 up his right sleeve, and prepares for his work, after imi- 
 tating the master of the house in uttering a low Bis- 
 millah, " In the name of God." The host sets the second 
 example of commencing to eat ; and the guests again fol- 
 low the good precedent. Knives and forks are not used ; 
 spoons only for food like soups and rice. The thumb and 
 two forefingers are the instruments otherwise employed ; 
 and they are employed delicately enough. Grenerally, a 
 piece of bread is taken, doubled together, and dipped into 
 the dish, so as to enclose the morsel of meat which the 
 guest designs for himself, or, if it be a savoury bit, and 
 he be courteous, intended for presentation to his neigh- 
 
TABLE OP THE ANCIENT AND MODERN EGYPTIANS. 349 
 
 bour. The food is suited to such practices. It consists 
 of stewed meats, with vegetables of endless variety, or of 
 small morsels of mutton or lamb, roasted on skewers : 
 clarified butter compensates for want of fat in the meat. 
 A fowl is summarily torn asunder by two hands, either of 
 the same person, or the right hands of two guests. Dex- 
 terous fellows, like our first-rate carvers, will "joint" a 
 fowl with one hand. The Arabs do not use the left hand 
 at all at table, because it is used for unclean purposes. 
 The disjointing is easily done ; and even a whole lamb, 
 stuffed with pistachio nuts, may be pulled to pieces much 
 more easily than we divide a chicken. Water-melons, 
 sliced, set to cool, and watched, lest serpents should 
 approach, and poison the dish by their breath, generally 
 form, when in season, a part of an Egyptian meal, — a 
 meal which usually closes with a dish of boiled rice, mixed 
 with butter, salt, and pepper ; but occasionally this dish 
 is followed by a bowl of water, with raisins that have 
 been boiled in it, and sugar added, with a little rose- 
 water, to give it an odour of refinement. A bottle of 
 six-year-old port is preferable. 
 
 As soon as each person has satisfied his appetite, he 
 ceases, murmurs, "Praise be to God!" drinks his sweet- 
 ened water, rises, and goes his way. They who drink 
 wine, do it in private, or with confidential friends, call it 
 "rum" to save their orthodoxy; and if a visitor call 
 while this process is going on, fche ready servant informs 
 him that his master is abroad or in the harem. Sweet 
 drinks and sherbets, approved by the Law and tlie Pro- 
 phet, are in common use, and pipes and prayer end " the 
 well-spent day." 
 
 Egyptian women have some little fancies connected 
 with the table that may be mentioned. In order to 
 achieve that proportion of obesity which constitutes the 
 beautiful, they eat mashed beetles, and they chew frank- 
 incense and laudanum, to perfume the breath. The 
 
350 TABLE TUAITS. 
 
 Egyptian peasantry live upon the very sparest of diets, 
 not often being able to procure even rice. They, like the 
 Bedouins, are, however, remarkable for strength and 
 health ; but an Egyptian or Bedouin diet would not pro- 
 duce the same results in an English climate. 
 
 It will have been observed, that in Egypt each man 
 says his own "grace," before and after meat, for himself. 
 The same custom prevails in Servia. At table, instead of 
 one person asking for a blessing on the food, each indi- 
 vidual expresses, in his own words, (an improvement on the 
 Egyptian plan,) his gratitude to the Supreme Being. In 
 drinking, the toast or sentiment of the Servian is, " To 
 the glory of God ! " and a very excellent sentiment, only 
 the Servian is apt to get very drunk over it. The Ser- 
 vian qualification for a chairman at a convivial party is, 
 that he should be able to deliver an extempore prayer ; 
 and a very good qualification, provided it be not a mere 
 formality, and that the spirit of prayer be the strongest 
 spirit there. The combination, however, of Collects and 
 conviviality reminds me of some strange parties at old- 
 fashioned houses in our provincial towns, where comic 
 songs are followed by discussions on the Millennium, and 
 seed-cake and ginger wine season both. 
 
 I have spoken more of the achievements of Egyptian 
 cookery, than of the quality of the cooks. The fact is, 
 that it is far more easy to speak decidedly of the former, 
 than of the latter. Mr. St. John describes the Arab 
 cooks in Egypt as being great gastronomers, and serving 
 up " their dishes in a style which could not have dis- 
 pleased Elagabalus himself!" Mr. Lane equally lauds 
 their excellence, and the delicacy of the manner of eating. 
 Herr Werne, on the other hand, — and he is a man of 
 wide experience in this matter, — speaks very differently 
 both of Turkish eating and Arab cooking in Egypt. 
 Werne, indeed, speaks of the remote district of Bellad 
 Sudam, rather than of Cairo and Alexandria; but his 
 
TABLE or THE AIS'CIE:N^T AND MOBEllN EGYPTIANS. 351 
 
 observations have an extensive application, nevertheless. 
 He is disgusted with the general want of cleanliness ; 
 and he remarks, that " the cooks are dirtier in themselves, 
 and more filthy in their dress, than any other class of 
 people." The dirty Arab cook is in a dirty kitchen, a 
 dirty pipe ever in his mouth, and with the dirtiest of 
 hands manipulating savoury preparations for the mouths 
 of his masters. He knows little more than how to 
 boil or roast meat, boil beans, and prepare vegetable 
 dishes. Even the female slaves of the harem, who act 
 as cooks to their lords, are remarkable for uncleanli- 
 ness. "All the meat to be used for the dinner is 
 sodden together in one huge caldron, and separated 
 for arrangement in various dishes, all of which partake 
 of general flavour, having been cooked together, and 
 there is but scant nourishment in any of them." The 
 vegetables are described by him as being wretchedly 
 cooked, and saturated with bad butter, or the water in 
 which they have been boiled. The dishes are not larger 
 than our plates ; the plates, when such are used by the 
 guests, about the size of our saucers : but " each guest 
 at once plunges his hand into any or every dish that 
 pleases him, and gropes about till he gets hold of the 
 best bits, pulls them out, and swallows them. Yery 
 often a bite is only taken from the piece thus seized 
 on, and the rest returned to the dish ; but, in spite of 
 the clean treatment it has undergone, it is again soon 
 seized hold of by another, and, perchance, again simi- 
 larly handled, till all is finally bolted. The Turks eat incre- 
 dibly rapidly, as they bolt every thing, and keep cram- 
 ming into the mouth more, ere the former mouthful has 
 been swallowed ; while a smacking of lips, and licking of 
 sauce-dripping fingers, succeed, and proclaim their pleasure 
 in the meal. Bread is generally to be found on the table, 
 but neither salt, oil, vinegar, nor pepper ; although, 
 when they dine with Europeans, they show no dislilte to 
 
852 TABLE TRAITS. 
 
 highly-seasoned dishes or strong drinks. Although these 
 dishes are numerous, they contain hut little. If there 
 are many courses, or more dishes than the tahle will hold 
 at one time, the entertainer is ever husied making signs 
 to the attendants which are to he removed ; and not 
 seldom the guest finds, that the very dish he was ahout 
 to help himself from is carried off from imder his very 
 nose. The Pasha used often to amuse himself by playing 
 tricks on his guests, by ordering off, with the utmost 
 rapidity, those dishes he saw their longing eyes fixed on, 
 ere their outstretched hands could convey any portion of 
 them into their watering mouths. At first, in spite of 
 the pilau, we never were quick enough to get sufficient to 
 eat, not having been brought up to bolt our food; and 
 that the Turks are so quickly satisfied, and by so little, is 
 wholly owing to this bolting of their food, is undeniable ; 
 and this also produces the repeated eructations they so 
 loudly and joyfully give vent to, as proving their high 
 health and vigour." 
 
 The Turks and Arabs of Egypt " chaw,'* carrying , 
 their quid between the front teeth and upper lip. The 
 blacks of Gesira mix tobacco and nitron, dissolving the 
 latter in an infusion of the former. This they call 
 " bucca ;" and they take a mouthful of it at a time, which 
 they keep rinsing over their teeth and gums, for, perhaps, 
 a quarter of an hour, before they eject it. They have 
 " bucca " parties, as we have tea parties ; and then is the 
 circle in the very highest state of enjoyment, — imbibing^ 
 gurgling, gargling, and ejecting, — and not a word uttered, 
 except at the close, when the guests return thanks to 
 their host " for this very delightful evening !" 
 
 Egypt was the locality wherein the saints of old espe- 
 pecially shone with respect to their table arrangements, 
 or their contempt for them ; and these gentlemen fairly- 
 claim a due share of notice at our hands. So, now " for 
 the Desert!" 
 
THE DIET OE SAINTS, 
 
 Feasting, under certain circumstances, at certain seasons, 
 and for certain ends, is undoubtedly sanctified by apo- 
 stolical recommendation. The earlier fathers, however, say 
 little on the subject. Clement of Alexandria mentions 
 weekly fasts at Easter ; and Tertullian, in an article espe- 
 cially recommending the observation, bitterly bewails that 
 it has fallen into a general disuse. The iJhurch of Alex- 
 andria also ordained a fast on Wednesdays and Fridays; — 
 on Wednesday, because on that day Christ was betrayed ; 
 on Friday, because on that day he was crucified. In 
 Alexandria too arose the saying, that the aspen-tree shook 
 because it was the tree from which the wood for the cross 
 was taken. The fasting generally consisted in abstaining 
 from food until three o'clock in the afternoon, but a reli- 
 gious liberty was allowed, connected with its observance, 
 until the sixth centur}^, when a Council of Orleans decreed 
 excommunication against all who did not fast according to 
 the laws of the Church. Nor did the authorities stop at 
 this penalty; for, in later times the unlucky wight detected 
 in relieving hunger by eating prohibited meats, was punished 
 by having all his teeth drawn — the offending members 
 were summarily extracted. The prohibited food in Lent 
 was flesh, eggs, cheese, and wine ; subsequently flesh alone 
 was prohibited ; and this tenderness of orthodoxy so dis- 
 gusted the Greek Church, that it lost its temper, flew off 
 into schism, and forgot charity in maintaining that the use 
 of meat in Lent was damnable. 
 
 A A 
 
354 TABLE TRAITS. 
 
 The Xerophagia, or " dry eatings," were the days on 
 which nothing was eaten but bread and salt. This was in 
 very early times. Innovators added pulse, herbs, and 
 fruits — no unpleasant fare in hot countries. The Monta- 
 nists made this fast obligatory, and were very much cen- 
 sured in consequence. The Essenes, who, whether as Jews 
 or Jewish Christians in Alexandria, were singularly strict 
 observers of the Sabbath, carr^ang their strictness to a 
 point which my readers may find in Jortin, if they are 
 curious thereupon, observed also this fast very rigidly, and 
 on the stated days ate nothing with their bread but salt 
 and hyssop. 
 
 Most of the saints recorded on the canon roll of Rome, 
 appear to have maintained very indifferent tables, and to 
 have considerably marred thereby their strength and 
 efi&ciency. Saint Fulgentius abstained from everything 
 savoury, and even drank no wine, says his biographer; 
 which looks as if the good men generally did take some for 
 their stomach's sake ; and indeed Fulgentius himself took 
 a little negus when he was indisposed to plain water ; and 
 " small blame to him" for so harmless a proceeding. St. 
 Eugenius never broke his fast till sunset ; and when a 
 bunch of grapes was sent to a sick monk of the desert, he 
 forwarded it to a second, and a second to a third, and so 
 on to a twentieth, until this health-inspiring offering, made 
 for man by God, was withered and nasty. These monks 
 did not pray like Pope : — 
 
 " The blessings thy free bounty gives 
 Let me not cast away, 
 For God is paid when man receives, — 
 To enjoy is to obey." 
 
 But this is a sentiment in the opposite extreme, or might 
 be easily carried in that direction. Palladius says of one 
 of these desert monks, St. Macarius, that for years together 
 
THE DIET OP SAINTS. 355 
 
 he lived only on raw herbs and pulse ; that during three 
 consecutive years he existed on four or five ounces of bread 
 daily ; and that he consumed but one small measure of oil 
 in a twelvemonth — a substitute for the gallons of sack with 
 which profaner men washed down their modicum of bread. 
 St. Macarius, however, surpassed himself in Lent ; and an 
 alderman might be excused for fainting at the idea of 
 a human being passing forty days and nights in a standing 
 position, with no more substantial support than a few raw 
 cabbage-leaves on a Sunday ! St. Genevieve was hardly 
 inferior in austerity, and only ate twice in the week, on 
 Sundays and Thursdays, and then only beans and bread. 
 When she grew old and infirm, and she was prematurely 
 both, she indulged in a little fish and milk. Simeon 
 Stylites surpassed both in culpable austerity. He spent 
 an entire Lent without allowing anything to pass his lips j 
 and at other seasons this slow suicidal saint never ate but 
 on Sundays. His chief occupation upon the pillar, which 
 looks much more like a column of pride than a monument 
 of humility, was in praying and bowing. An admiring monk, 
 who must have had as little of active usefulness to employ 
 his time with as poor Simeon, exultingiy records, that he 
 did not eat once during the day, but that he made one 
 thousand two hundred and forty-four bows of adoration in 
 that time. Oh, Simeon ! well for thee, poor fellow-mortal, if 
 those reverences be not accounted rather as homage to 
 thyself, than to Him to whom homage is due. 
 
 It is extremely difficult for the human mind to realize 
 the idea of a Bishop of London never breaking his fast till 
 the evening, and then being satisfied with a solitary egg, 
 an inch of bread, and a cup of milk and water; such, 
 however, is said to have been the daily fare of St. Cedd, a 
 predecessor of Dr. Blomfield in the metropolitan diocese. 
 " How unlike my Beverly !" St. Severinus, an Austrian 
 prelate, had a more indifferent table than St. Cedd, espe- 
 
356 TABLE TRAITS. 
 
 cially in Lent, when he ate but once a-week, St. William 
 of Bourges never tasted meat after he was ordained. St. 
 Theodosius, the Cenobiarch, was more frugal still, and bread 
 often lacked, we are told, even for the holy offices of the 
 Church. This would seem to intimate, however, that the 
 officers of the Church may have eaten it. Be this as it 
 may, when bread was needed for the sacrament, a string of 
 mules miraculously appeared in the desert, bearing the 
 necessary provision. ^' Necessary provision," may be well 
 said, for if the Cenobites consumed little themselves, they 
 presided at tables where occasionally sat a hundred hungry 
 guests, who must have much needed a dinner, seeing that 
 they crossed the desert to obtain it. 
 
 Some of the most self-denying saints, like St. Felix of 
 Nola, if they declined wine in its liquid form, took it in 
 pills, — swallowing grapes. St. Paul, the first hermit, lived 
 on the fruit of a tree which produced a fresh supply daily, 
 the bread to temper which was brought every morning by 
 a raven. The diet was sufficiently invigorating to give 
 strength to the modest man to bite off his own tongue, and 
 spit it in the face of a lady who tried to tempt him, as the 
 Irish nymph tempted the uncourteous St. Kevin of Glen- 
 dalough. He was, in abstinence, only second to St. 
 Isidore, who, when hungry, burst into tears, not because 
 God had mercifully provided him wherewith to satisfy 
 lawful appetite, but because, sinful man that he was, he 
 dared to eat at all ! 
 
 I have spoken of the abstinence of a Bishop of London ; 
 there was a Bishop of Worcester, Wulstan, who is worthy 
 of being mentioned with him. Wulstan was rather fond 
 of savoury viands, but he was one day, during mass, so 
 distracted by the smell of meat roasting in a kitchen, which 
 must have been very close to his church, that he made a 
 vow to abstain from meat for ever. But I do not know if 
 he kept his vow. St. Euthymius was a more rational man, 
 
THE DIET OF SAINTS. 357 
 
 for he taught his monks that to satisfy hunger was no 
 crime, but that to abuse appetite and God's gifts too, was 
 an offence. St. Macedonius, the Syrian, did not discover 
 this truth until he had so impaired his powers by long 
 fasts, that it was impossible to restore them — as he tried 
 to do on a diet of dry bread. And yet he was so prema- 
 turely gifted, that his own birth is said to have been the 
 result of his own prayers ! 
 
 The table kept by St. Publius for his monks was not of 
 a liberal character. He allowed them nothing but pulse 
 and herbs, coarse bread, and water. Nothing else! He 
 prohibited wine, milk, cheese, grapes, and even vinegar — 
 which every sour brother might have distilled from his own 
 ichor. From Easter to Whitsuntide was accounted a holi- 
 day time, and during that festive period, the brotherhood 
 were allowed to grow hilarious, if they could, upon a gill of 
 oil a-piece. St. Paula, ^^the widow," subjected her nuns 
 to the same lively fare, and she moreover fiercely denounced 
 all ideas of personal neatness and cleanliness, as an unclean- 
 ness of the mind. She accounted herself wise in so doing, 
 but her nuns might fairly have put to her the question 
 asked by Mizen, in the Fair Quaker of Deal : — ^- Do'st 
 thou think that nastiness gives thee a title to knowledge V 
 
 St. John Chrysostom was as severe as Paula, and it would 
 not have cost Olympias much to defray, as she insisted upon 
 doing, the expenses of his table. The table which the saint 
 kept for guests was, however, hospitably and delicately 
 laden — and perhaps this w^as an inconsistency in a man who 
 censiired what he also encouraged. 
 
 They who have made a saint of Charlemagne, aver that 
 he broke his fast but once a day, and that after sunset. I 
 cannot believe this of a man who dealt so largely in the 
 eggs laid by his hens, and in vegetables raised in his garden. 
 Nor do I believe that St. Sulpicius Severus would have 
 written so capital a biography of St. Martin, had he lived. 
 
358 TABLE TRAITS. 
 
 as it is said, on herbs, boiled with a little vinegar for 
 seasoning. Surely, we have heard of the "kitchen" of 
 gentlemen like Sulpicius, and if his condensed Scripture 
 History be as dry as the bread he ate during the task, his 
 letters to Claudia seem to have been written on more 
 generous food. Not that he was immoderate. He kept 
 one cook, a very "plain cook" indeed, as Sulpicius 
 describes him, when he despatched the boy to Bishop 
 Paulinus with a letter which commences with a startling bit 
 of episcopal history, namely, that " all the cooks in the 
 kitchen of Paulinus had left him without warning, because 
 the prelate was getting too careless about good living," 
 Some commentators say, that the letter was a joke; but 
 the reply to it is extant, and therein it may be seen how 
 Paulinus did not look upon it as a joke. 
 
 Southe}^, in his " St. Romuald," mirthful as the story is, 
 has not exceeded the truth, or rather has not departed 
 from the narrative told by the good man's biographers : — 
 
 " Then, Sir, to see how he would mortify 
 The flesh ! If any one had dainty fare, 
 Good man, he would come there ; 
 And look at all the delicate things, and cry, 
 
 Belly ! Belly ! 
 You would be gormandizing now, I know ; 
 
 But it shall not be so ! — 
 Home, to your bread and water. Home, I tell ye." 
 
 And thus says Alban Butler of him: — " He never 
 would admit of the least thing to give a savour to the 
 herbs or meal-gruel on which he supported himself If 
 anything was brought him better dressed, he, for the 
 greater self-denial, applied it to his nostrils, and said, 
 ' Oh Gluttony, Gluttony ! thou shalt never taste this ! 
 Perpetual war is declared against thee ! ' St. William of 
 Maleval was of the same opinion when he cried because he 
 ate his dry bread with a relish, and found that what he 
 
' THE DIET OF SAINTS. 359 
 
 called " sensuality " was not inseparable from the coarsest 
 food. St. Benedict of Anian, on the other hand, did 
 not decline the use of a little wine, when it was given him ; 
 while St. Martinianus, again, lived upon biscuits and 
 water, brought to him twice a-year — and very nasty fare 
 it must have been towards the end of each six months. 
 It must have been worse than that of St. Peter Damian, 
 who prided himself on never drinking water fresh, and 
 thought there was virtue in having it four-and-twenty 
 hours old. St. Tarasiiis must have maintained a more 
 decent table, for it is said of him that he used to take the 
 dishes from it and give of them to the poor ; and honour 
 be to his name, because of his good sense and his charity ! 
 Our venerable acquaintance of the principality, St. David, 
 was not half so wise, however well-intentioned ; but St. 
 Charles, Earl of Flanders, followed the better course, and 
 not only lived moderately well, but acted better, by daily 
 distributing seven hundred loaves to the poor. The 
 Welsh saints, generally, kept as austere a table as St. 
 David. There was, for instance, the cacophonous Win- 
 waloe of Winwaloe, who kept his monks at starving point 
 all the week, recalling them to life on Sundays by mi- 
 croscopic rations of hard cheese and shell-fish. His own 
 fare was barley-bread strewn with ashes, and when Lent 
 arrived, the quantity of ashes was doubled, in honour of 
 the season ! St. Thomas Aquinas was so abstracted that 
 he never knew, at dinner, what he was eating, nor could 
 remember, after it, if he had dined, which was likely 
 enough. St. Frances, Widow, foundress of the Collations, 
 was in more fall possession of her wits ; as, indeed, the lady 
 saints were, generally. She had her little fancies indeed, 
 which were " only charming Fanny's way," and her be- 
 verage at eve was dirty water, out of a human skull ; but 
 she had no mercy for lazy devotees, and invariably told 
 sighing wives that they had active duties to perform, and 
 
360 TABLE TRAITS. 
 
 that they had better keep out of monasteries, at least till 
 they were widows. She was a good, humble woman ; and, 
 as a commentator says of the abstinence of St. Euphrasia, 
 without humility these facts would be but facts of devils ! 
 
 Another gleam of good sense shines upon us from the 
 person of St. Benedict. He drank wine, and so did his 
 monks of Yicovara, who liked his wine better than either 
 the toast or sentiment with which he passed it round to 
 them, and who tried to get rid of him by poisoning his 
 glass ; but the saint, full of inspired suspicion, made over 
 it the sign of the cross, and away went the flask into fifty 
 fragments. The taste of the good saint was known after 
 he left Yicovara, and a pious soul once sent him a couple 
 of bottles of wine by a faithless messenger, who delivered 
 but one. " Mind what you are about," said St. Benedict, 
 ^^when you draw the other cork for 3'ourself." The knave 
 was not abashed, but when he did secretly open the other 
 bottle for the solace of his own thirsty throat, he found 
 nothing therein but a lively serpent, which glided from 
 him after casting at him a reproachful look ! 
 
 If St. Benedict was right in the ordering of his table, 
 wdiy St. John of Egypt was wrong, for he never drank 
 anything but stagnant water, nor ate anything cooked 
 by fire ; even his bread he complacently swallowed before 
 it was baked ; — and what his liver was like, it would puzzle 
 any but a physician even to conjecture. 
 
 There w^as infinitely more sense in the table kept by an 
 abbot of the compound Christian and Pagan title and 
 name of St. Plato. He never ate anvthino- but what had 
 been raised or procured by the labour of his own hands ; 
 he was consequently never in debt with respect to his 
 household expenses, and if all men so far followed the 
 example of St. Plato, who was a better practical philo- 
 sopher than his heathen namesake, what a happy world we 
 should make of it 1 There would be fewer Christmas bills. 
 
THE DIET OF SAINTS, 361 
 
 and many more joyous dinners, not only at Christmas, 
 but all the year round 1 
 
 St. Plato deserves our respect; he would not live on 
 alms. He was more useful in his generation than the men 
 who, like St. Aphraates, were content to exist on the elee- 
 mosynary contributions of the faithful, or than those who, 
 like Zozimus and his followers, wandered through the 
 desert, trusting to chance and calling it providence. What, 
 compared with our friend Plato, was that St. Droun, the 
 so-called patron of shepherds, who during forty years 
 taught them nothing, and lived on the barley-bread which 
 they brought him in return for his instruction. 
 
 I have given one or two instances of the spare tables 
 kept by a few of our ancient bishops ; I may here add to 
 them the name of St. Elphege, some time Bishop of Win- 
 chester, and subsequently Archbishop of Canterbury. The 
 smell of roast meat was never known in his palace on any 
 but " extraordinary occasions." This, however, is a very 
 indefinite term, and the table of this primate may have 
 been one to make a cardinal give unctuous thanks for 
 rich mercies, five days out of the seven. There was cer- 
 tainly gastronomic work to do in some of the ancient godly 
 households, or St. James of Sclavonia would not have 
 passed so many years in one, as he did, in the capacity of 
 cook, ^' improving ' the occasion, by drawing ideas of hell 
 from his own fires, which were for ever roasting savoury 
 joints, like those which strike the visitors with awe and 
 appetite in the kitchens at Maynooth. 
 
 If in some houses there were busy kitchens, in others 
 there were soft couches, whereon digestion might progress. 
 Thus Adalbert, Bishop of Prague, was a Saint and Martyr; 
 and it is said, that he had a most comfortable bed in his 
 dormitory, but that he never slept upon it ! Then, what 
 was the bed for ? It is added, that he fasted in private 
 with great severity, — but it is no more *^ of faith " to 
 
362 TABLE TRAITS. 
 
 believe this, than it is that he slept every night on the 
 floor, under, and not upon, his own excellent leather-bed; 
 for what says the old refrain 1 — 
 
 " A notre coucher 
 
 Un lit, des draps blancs, 
 
 Une 
 
 digue daine, bon ! 
 Voila la vie que ces moines font ! " 
 
 But he may have been a profane fellow who wrote these 
 rude rhymes ; and we will no more implicitly trust him, 
 than we will the prose historians of the doings and 
 dealings of the saintly men. 
 
 It is not an unusual thing to find wine-bibbers men- 
 tioned among the members of holy communities ; where 
 wine was generally supposed to be a luxury never em- 
 ployed but for the service of the altar, — and perhaps of 
 the sick. The venerable Bede tells a story of a " brother," 
 whom he had known, and whom he wishes to God he had 
 never known, and who was given to worship the spigot. 
 Bede does not give his name, but certifies that the too 
 jolly friar lived ignobly in a noble monastery, where he 
 was often reproved for his acts of drunkenness, and only 
 tolerated because of his gifts, — not spiritual, but as a 
 carpenter. He was a terrible tippler, but a hard work- 
 man to boot, and would, at any time, rather labour all 
 day and all night at his bench than join the brethren in 
 chapel. Indeed, when he did go, his thoughts were running 
 on something else. He was like the profane Yorkshire 
 farmer, who praised the institution of the Sabbath be- 
 cause it not only brought roast beef with it as a sacred 
 observance, but it authorized him to attend in his pew at 
 church, where, said he, '^ 1 puts up my legs and thinks 
 o' nothing 1 " Bede's carpenter was characteristically 
 punished for his bibbing; and the story was made much 
 
THE DIET OF SAINTS. 363 
 
 of; by way of monition to others. It was to this effect : — 
 " He, falUng sick, and being reduced to extremity, called 
 the brethren, and with much lamentation, and like one 
 damned, began to tell them that he saw hell open, and 
 Satan at the bottom thereof, and also Caiaphas, with 
 the others that slew our Lord, by him delivered up to 
 avenging flames. ' In whose neighb<jurhood,' said he, ' I 
 see a place of eternal perdition prepared for me, miserable 
 wretch that I am ! ' The brothers, hearing these words, 
 began seriously to exhort him that he should repent even 
 then, while he was in the flesh. He answered in despair, 
 — ^ I have no time now to change my course of life, when 
 I have myself seen my judgment passed.' When he had 
 uttered these words, he died, without having received the 
 saving viaticum ; and his body was buried in the remotest 
 part of the monastery; nor did any one dare to say 
 masses, sing psalms, or even to pray for him." Which 
 seems a very hard case ; for if any one needed such service 
 it was he ; and the Church's ability to extricate him 
 could not be denied, when she was duly pre-paid for the 
 service. 
 
 Curiously enough, St. Monica, the mother of St. Au- 
 gustin, ranks among the wine-bibbers. Her pious parents 
 left their children to be brought up by a servant-maid, 
 who had more zeal than discretion, and who would allow 
 none of the children to drink, were they ever so thirsty, 
 except at meal-times, and then only a drop or two of 
 water. " If you cannot restrain your desire to drink 
 now," she would say, "what will it be when you have 
 wine at command V Now, the effect of this speech was 
 exactly like that of the confessor to the hostler, when he 
 asked the latter, if he never greased the horses' teeth in 
 order to prevent them eating their corn. It gave the 
 young Monica a new idea. She was accustomed to draw 
 the wine for her father's table, and she henceforth began 
 
364 TABLE TRAITS. 
 
 to drink a portion each time that she went to the cellar 
 with her pitcher. And I do not know that Mr. Millais, or 
 any other of the pre-Raphaelite gentlemen, could have a 
 better subject for a picture, than that representing the 
 scene when the horrified nurse-maid beheld her young 
 charge indulging in her cups in the parental wine-vault. 
 The lecture she received worked her conversion, we are 
 told ; and she married, and became the mother of St. 
 Augustin, who so far followed the maternal example 
 that, in his earlier years, when, with his eyes upon heaven, 
 his heart was with the good things of the earth, his com- 
 monest prayer used to be, '' Lord, make me religious, hut 
 not just yetr 
 
 The nurse-maid of Monica deserved to have been the 
 Avife, — and perhaps she was, — of St.Theodotus, the vintner 
 of Ancyra. He was a teetotaller who kept a tavern, and 
 who passed the live-long day in leaning over his counter 
 and begging his customers not to drink ! Well, men have 
 been canonized for less useful service to their kind ; 
 and Theodotus was more worthily employed in keeping 
 drunkaVds from his wine-casks, than St. Pius V. was when, 
 every day before dinner, by way of mocking his appetite, 
 he resorted to the public hospitals, and kissed the ulcers 
 of the patients ! Nay, biographers tell us that an English 
 Protestant gentleman was suddenly converted to Ro- 
 manism, by observing the condescension and affection 
 with v/hich Pius kissed the ulcers on the feet of some 
 poor men ! The pope, if he and the convert dined 
 together after this nasty ceremony, might have confessed 
 that he had been sore put to it for an argument that 
 should carry conviction to an English gentleman in search 
 of a religion. 
 
 Let us contrast this pope in his pride with a cardinal 
 in his fall. " When Wolsey," says Mr. Hunter the anti- 
 quary, "was dismissed by his tyrannical master to his 
 
THE DIET OF SAINTS. 3G5 
 
 northern diocese, he passed many weeks at Scrooby. It is 
 a pleasing picture which his faithful servant, Cavendish, 
 gives of him at this period of his life: — * Ministering 
 many deeds of charity, and attending on Sundays at some 
 parish church in the neighbourhood; hearing or saying 
 mass himself, and causing some one of his chaplains to 
 preach to the people ; and that done, he would dine in 
 some honest house of that town, where should be distri- 
 buted to the poor a great alms, as well of meat and drink, 
 as of money to supply the want of sufficient meat, if the 
 number of the poor did so exceed of necessity.' " Wolsey 
 was no saint certainly, but he was as honest a man as 
 Pius, and a wiser when he fed the poor rather than kiss 
 their ulcers. 
 
 But there is no accounting for taste ; the Russian Boni- 
 face used to roll himself among thorns and 'nettles, in order 
 to get an appetite, or to punish himself for indulging 
 over much. St. Germanus, on the other hand, commenced 
 every repast by putting ashes into his mouth; — the modern 
 custom of beginning with oysters is certainly better both 
 for taste and stomach. St. Walthen took wine, but then 
 he put spiders in it. St. Dominic, too, was singular in his 
 diet, and he sometimes spent his half-hoar before dinner 
 in one of the most curious positions that gentlemen could 
 possibly fix upon. The Abbot of St. Vincent's one day 
 desired his company at dinner, but at the usual hour the 
 saint was in church, and had forgotten the invitation. In 
 the meantime the turkey and chine were spoiling, and the 
 hungry abbot despatched a monk in quest of the loiterer ; 
 the messenger hurried to the church, where, to his very 
 considerable astonishment, he beheld St. Dominic "ravished 
 in an ecstasy," whatever that may mean, " raised several 
 cubits above the ground, and without motion." The Saint, 
 on being told that dinner was ready, graciously smiled at 
 the intelligence, and gently descended to the ground. 
 
366 TABLE TRAITS. 
 
 St. Laurence would have joked at this, as he did at his 
 own grilling. After he had lain for some time extended 
 on his gridiron, he calmly said to the executioner, " Will 
 you have the kindness to turn me, as I am quite done on 
 the under side ? " The executioner, a trifle astonished, did 
 as he was required, and soon after, the Saint, again speak- 
 ing, said, " I shall be obliged if you'll take me up, as I am 
 now fit for eating." This story reminds me of the remark 
 made by an Irishman, when first told that St. Patrick had 
 crossed the ocean on a millstone : — " I can't contradict it 1 
 He w^as a lucky fellow ! " 
 
 We are told of St. Bernard, who used to walk before 
 dinner on the banks of the Lake of Lausanne, that on 
 hearing two of his monks speak of the beauty of the lake, 
 he declared that no such lake existed, or he had been too 
 much absorbed ever to have noticed it. So the Trappists 
 used to glory in not knowing where or how they dined, or 
 recollecting anything about it 1 A 11 this shows less wisdom 
 at table than was exhibited by the royal St. Louis, who, 
 w^hen a certain friar began to discuss doctrinal subjects 
 with the pullets, stopped him with the remark that " all 
 things had their time, and joking was good sauce with 
 chickens!" 
 
 St. Laurence Justinian, the first patriarch of Venice, was 
 far less indulgent than the royal saint of France. He 
 was so little so, that when his thirsty monks sometimes 
 asked for a little wine, declaring that their throats felt as 
 dry as the high road in summer, he used quite as drily to 
 remark, that if they could not bear parched throats now, 
 what would they do in the fires of purgatory 1 St. John 
 the Dwarf, Anchoret of Scete, cared as httle for wine as 
 St. Laurence, but he was fond of fruit, and he obtained a 
 supply from a strange source. An old hermit bade him 
 plant his walking -staff in the ground, and he not onl}^ did 
 so, but he watered it regularly for three years, when it 
 
THE DIET OP SAINTS. 367 
 
 bore pippins^ sweeter than those that grew at Eibstone up 
 to the time of the death of the late baronet. Before this 
 miraculously-bearing stick the little man used to read 
 prayers as devoutly as Sir Hollyoak Goodrick, the present 
 Eibstone baronet, does to the villagers in his own parish 
 church, and for the same reason each had much to be 
 thankful for. It must be confessed that John the Dwarf 
 had more taste than his namesake of Cupertino, who not 
 only ate nothing but vegetables, but ate no vegetables that 
 any other human being could be induced to swallow. It 
 was such garbage as only pigs would condescend to. 
 Arcades amho — nasty creatures both! 
 
 St. Francis of Assisium exhibited something more 
 of true humility at his table, with a touch of the false 
 metal notwithstanding. He ate nothing dressed by fire, 
 unless he were very ill, and even then he covered it with 
 ashes, or dipped it in cold water. His common daily 
 food was dry bread strewn with ashes ; but this founder 
 of the Friars' Minors had the good sense not to condemn 
 his followers to the rigorous diet he observed himself; 
 and " Brother Ass," as he familiarly called that self, was 
 in his own opinion worthy of no better fare. 
 
 There was a founder of another community who 
 exhibited more singularity than St. Francis, who, despite 
 some mistakes, was a man of whom none other dare 
 speak but with respect, — St. Ammon, founder of the 
 hermitages of Nitria. At the age of twenty-two this 
 young Egyptian noble married a fair girl of Memphis ; 
 and instead of a nuptial banquet, he treated his bride 
 to a reading of a particularly edifying chapter from St. 
 Paul, after which he withdrew to solitary meditation. 
 During eighteen years he occupied himself in training 
 balsam-trees all day, after which he returned home to a 
 supper of fruit and herbs; then came that terrible re- 
 iteration of advice from St. Paul, followed by a separate 
 
368 TABLE TRAITS. 
 
 solitary comment on the part of this exemplary pair. At 
 the end of the time above specified, he retired altogether 
 from domestic life, and settled alone on Mount Nitria, 
 and his biographers naively remark, this was " with his 
 wife's consent." This saint was of such a '^complexion" 
 of virtue, that one day, on accidentally catching sight of an 
 uncovered portion of his own body, he was so shocked that 
 he fainted away. If he had only read " Erasmus Wilson, 
 on the Skin," he would have learned to look oftener at 
 his own, and would have been a cleaner man, a better 
 husband, a more grateful feeder, and an improved Christian. 
 
 But St. Bruno, the founder of the Carthusians, probably 
 exceeded all other originators of communities in the 
 '' fierceness," so to speak, of his dietetic laws ; he never 
 spared himself, nor his disciples. A Carthusian is never 
 permitted to eat meal under any pretence whatever. In 
 addition to this, they fast eight months in the year, and 
 I suppose they starve in Lent, for during that season 
 they are forbidden to eat what is called " white meats," 
 that is, eggs, milk, butter, and cheese. Dry bread with 
 water is their Lenten fare; and a peculiar law con- 
 nected wdth them is, that they can never change into 
 another order, because they would thereby profit a little 
 in the way of better living ; but a brother of any other 
 order may become a Carthusian, as thereby he increases 
 his mortifications and diminishes his diet. Of course 
 from these remarks the Carthusians of the "Charterhouse" 
 are excepted. If the thin spirit of St. Bruno ever scents 
 the juicy viands that adorn the well-spread table there, 
 it probably melts into thin air by the very force of disgust 
 or ghastly envy. 
 
 The table kept by St. Bridget, when she married Ulpho, 
 prince of Nericia, in Sweden, was a very modest one for so 
 princely a pair, but what was spared thereby was given to 
 the poor. Bridget and Ulpho, she sweet sixteen, he two 
 
THE DIET OF SAINTS. 369 
 
 jeai's more, read every evening the soothing chapter from 
 St. Paul, which formed the favomite study of St. Ammon 
 and his wife ; but, as it would appear, with indifferent 
 success. "They enrolled themselves," say their various 
 biographers, "in the Third Order of St. Francis, and lived 
 in their own house as if it had been a regular and austere 
 monastery." The biographers immediately add without 
 comment, — " They afterwards had eight children : four 
 boys and four girls;" and as the same paragraph goes on 
 to state that " all these children were?^ favoured with the 
 blessings of divine grace," it may be fairly concluded that 
 a domestic observation of a monastic regularity and 
 austerity, is a course that will purchase blessings and olive- 
 branches. 
 
 The case of St. Gomer and his wife, the Lady Gwinmary, 
 may perhaps be cited as an exception. But this Gwinmary 
 was an exacting lady at all times, and when St. Gomer 
 betook himself from her to live in the desert on bitterness 
 and biscuits, he fared as sumptuously and lived far more 
 quietly than he had done at home. He was one of the 
 most placid of saints, and it is a positive libel upon him 
 for the French Admiralty to have given his name to one 
 of the most thundering steamers in the service. Its 
 broadsides far more nearly resemble the tongue of Gwin- 
 mary than the tones of Gomer. 
 
 In charming contrast with this truculent Gwinmary do 
 we meet and greet the gentle St. EKzabeth of Hungary. 
 The record of her good deeds would fill a volume, but out 
 of them I have only to select an exquisite table trait — to 
 register which is also to eulogize it. I do not allude to 
 her habitual temperance, to her dry bread and thimble- 
 full of wine, when she sat at meat with kings and queens, 
 her equals in birth ; nor to her small feasts with her two 
 maids, in the absence of her consort, Louis the Landgrave j 
 but I allude— and listen, ye Benedicts, with grateful 
 
 B B 
 
370 TABLE TRAITS. 
 
 rapture — to the fact *^ that the kitchen she kept out of 
 her own private purse, not to be the least charge to her 
 husband." If celibate priests, who can hardly be supposed 
 capable of appreciating such a fact, canonized so rare a 
 lady, all married men who love banquets but dislike the 
 butchers' bills, will cry ^^Well done !" and recommend 
 their wives to read the instructive life of Elizabeth of 
 Hungary. 
 
 Who would expect to hear good of a Borgia? — St. 
 Francis Borgia wdB virtuous enough to save his family 
 name from entire infamy. Of no other man or woman of 
 his house could it be said that they gave up suppers, in 
 order to have more time for prayers. . It was not Alexander 
 VI., the papal glory of his house and the shame of man- 
 kind, that would have been content with one meal a-day, 
 and that meal — a mess of leeks, or some pulse, with a piece 
 of bread, and a cup of water. At the same time, Francis 
 Borgia kept a table becoming a man of his rank, for the 
 gratification of his guests of high degree. There, while 
 they ate their venison, and quaffed their lachrymoe Christi, 
 he nibbled his leeks, and sipped his water, ^^ and conversed 
 facetiously with them, though at table his discourse 
 generally turned on piety." It was very like a Borgia to 
 make piety facetious, but if fun in holiness be of the ingre- 
 dients necessary to the making of a saint, Sidney Smith 
 has as good a right as Borgia to be on the roll of the 
 heati. Our reverend ^^ joker of jokes," indeed, would not 
 have smiled at the cook who put wormwood instead of 
 mint into his broth; and I doubt if Peter Plimley ever 
 thought of doing what Francis Borgia did, — namely, chew- 
 ing his pills, and swallowing physic slowly, as works of 
 meritorious mortification, bearing compound interest to 
 the profit of the practitioner. St. Wilfrid, who taught the 
 half-starved South Saxons to catch the fish that swam at 
 their feet, and thereby live, seems to me to have performed 
 
THE DIET OF SAINTS. 371 
 
 a far more meritorious work than if he had passed his life 
 in gnawing leeks or masticating pills. Our native saint, 
 a good man at table, was often better employed than St. 
 Theresa, who is so eulogized because when serving at table, 
 or carrying the dinner from the kitchen, '^ she was often 
 seen suddenly absorbed in God, with the utensils or instru- 
 ments of her business in her hands." The hungry and 
 expectant monks might have quoted against the rapt maid, 
 the assertion of the royal sage, that there is a time to eat, 
 as well as to fast and pray. But ^t. Theresa, with all 
 her good qualities, was as obstinate as the Polish saint 
 Hedwiga, who not only abstained from meat till abstinence 
 had nearly proved suicidal, but who refused to save her 
 life by eating any, until the Pope's legate had issued a very 
 peremptory precept to that eifect. St. Peter of Alcantara 
 lost all taste by his nearly total -abstinence principle, and 
 when some one gave him warm water with vinegar in it, 
 he thought it was his usual dinner of bean broth ! That 
 actively good saint, Charles Borromeo, was only wisely 
 moderate. " His austerities were discreet," is the phrase 
 of one of his biographers ; and his abstemiousness made his 
 health rather than marred it. This was so well known, 
 that they who dieted themselves in order to recover or 
 preserve health, were said to have adopted the remedy of 
 Doctor Borromeo. St. Francis Xavier had something of 
 the discretion of Charles Borromeo, — and of the modesty 
 too, for he dressed his own dinners, even when he was apo- 
 stolic legate ; and that St. Clement of Alexandria belonged 
 to the same class of sagely temperate men, is proved by his 
 maintaining that a little wine taken at evening, after the 
 labours of the day, was good for the body, and cheering for 
 the spirits. So the sainted Archbishop of York had no re- 
 pugnance to a slice of roast goose, for, as he truly remarked, 
 so good a thing was not designed especially for sinners. 
 And this recalls to my mind a comment, similar in spirit, 
 
372 TABLE TRAITS. 
 
 made by St. Thomas h Becket. A monk once saw him 
 eating the wing of a pheasant with much rehsh, and the 
 Pharisaical fellow thereon affected to be scandalized, saying 
 that he thought Thomas was more of a mortified man. 
 " Thou art but a ninny," said the Archbishop ; " knowest 
 thou not that a man may be a glutton upon horse-beans ; 
 while another may enjoy with refinement even the wing of 
 a pheasant, and have nature's aid to digest what Heaven's 
 bounty gave V 
 
 This was good sense in the Archbishop, who perhaps had 
 been reading Epicurus, before he sat down to his repast. 
 However this may be, it is certain that the philosopher in 
 question says something very like what Becket said to the 
 friar. "Is man," he asks, "made to disdain the gifts of 
 nature? Is he placed on earth only to gather bitter fruits ? 
 For whom then are the flowers that the gods strew at the feet 
 of mortals ?. . .We please Providence when we yield to the 
 divers inclinations which Providence suggests ; our duties 
 have reference to His laws; and our innocent desires are 
 born of His inspirations." 
 
 There are few things more common in the Lives of the 
 Saints, than to find them, after spare banquets of their own, 
 working penal miracles at the banquets of others. St. Eloy 
 was gifted with terrible power in this way, and endless are 
 the stories of revellers turned to stone by the might of his 
 magic right arm. Other saints had equal power in turning 
 the tables upon those who slighted them ; and I will take 
 this opportunity of narrating one instance, and .will set my 
 Muse in slippers, to detail what occurred at 
 
 THE BRIDAL AND BANQUET OP FERQUES. 
 
 Near the marble quarries of Ferques, adjacent to Land- 
 recthun lo Nord, in the Boulonnais, may be seen a circular 
 
THE DIET OF SAINTS. 373 
 
 range of stones, bearing a close resemblance in their shape, 
 though little in their magnitude, to those at Stonehenge ; 
 as also to the Devil's Needles, near Boroughbridge, and to 
 th^solitary block on the common at Harrogate. Learned 
 people recognise the stones at Ferques by the appellation of 
 the Mallus, a Druidical name for an altar; but the tra- 
 ditionary folks, wiser in their generation, acknowledge no 
 other title for these remains of antiquity than Neuches, an 
 old provincial word, the corruption, I suppose, of Noces, and 
 signifying a bridal, including the banquet w^iich followed 
 it. According to them, the stones at Ferques stand there 
 as a testimony of divine vengeance, inflicted on a fiddler 
 and other individuals belonging to a wedding party vv^ho 
 refused to kneel before the Host, as it was being borne along 
 by a priest to a dying brother. Eabelais says, that a well- 
 disposed and sensible man believes all that he is told ; (" Un 
 homme de bien, un homme de bon sens, croit toujours ce 
 qu'on lui dit, et ce qu'il trouve par ecrit ;") and argal, as the 
 logical grave-digger in Hamlet has it, this story of a bridal 
 and banquet will be allowed to pass without question. 
 
 Though around the bleak district there is not a grove 
 
 That can boast of a shade, e'en in summer, for love, 
 
 Nor a walk by the side of a murmuring stream, 
 
 Where somnambulist lovers may talk as they dream ; 
 
 l!^or a valley retir'd, nor sweet mossy dell. 
 
 Where young hearts that are aching, their anguisji may tell ; 
 
 Nor a wood where a maiden deserted may sigh, 
 
 Or where youths, stripp'd of hope, may with decency die ; — 
 
 Though all it can boast be a desolate heath. 
 
 Where 'twould puzzle young Cupid to find him a wreath, — 
 
 Yet e'en here the Idalian has farnish'd full work 
 
 Por the hearts of the youths and the maidens of Ferques. 
 
 Of these there were two in the good days of old, 
 When the hard iron heel of the baron so bold 
 Ground those to the dust whom the mere chance of birth 
 Had deprived of the licence to lord it on earth. 
 
374 TABLE TRAITS. 
 
 The maid was as light and as shy as the fawn, 
 
 Her e^^es dark as night, and her brow like the dawn ; 
 
 And her lips, twice as rich and as red as the rose, 
 
 Were more warm than the sky at a summer eve's close ; p. 
 
 While a music fell from them made only to bless ; 
 
 And her shape — nay ! her shape I must leave you to guess. 
 
 *T would require the power pictorial of Burke, 
 
 To record how sublime was this beauty of Ferques. 
 
 The swain was in manhood's first op'ning bloom, 
 
 In doublet, slash'd hose, martial bonnet, and plume ; 
 
 And he look'd, as he walk'd 'neath the moon's silver lighf, 
 
 Half hero, half mortal; — half iourgeois, half knight. 
 
 If upward he gazed into heaven's soft skies. 
 
 He saw nothing there half so soft as her eyes ; 
 
 Or, at least, the young lover thus gallantly swore, 
 
 As he ran the long roll of his soft nonsense o'er. 
 
 And mincingly walk'd by the damosel's side, — 
 
 The latter all fondness, the former all pride ; — 
 
 With one arm round the maiden, one hand on his dirk, 
 
 Irresistibly fine look'd this gallant of Ferques. 
 
 These walkings, these gazings, the terrible sighing. 
 
 With death, or at least earnest threat'nings of dying ; 
 
 These sinkings of spirit, these meltings away, 
 
 With the watchings by night and the dreamings by day. 
 
 What could such a mixture combustible bring, 
 
 But a state of incendiarism, like Swing? 
 
 When hearts are the haystack, and Love holds the torch, 
 
 'Tis odds but the hay-stack will soon get a scorch. 
 
 And what else could arise from those meetings at eve, 
 
 From those flaming assertions which maidens believe. 
 
 And those vows warmly breath'd * 'twixt the gloam and the murk,'* 
 
 But a bridal and banquet to gladden all Ferques ] 
 
 Love's eddying current, I say it in sooth, 
 Ran, for this young couple, remarkably smooth ; 
 For the fathers paternally look'd on each child, 
 While the mothers maternally wept as they smiled; 
 
 'Twixt the gloaming and the murk, 
 When the kye comes hame." — Hogg. 
 
THE DIET OF SAINTS. 375 
 
 Fraternally too a whole bevy of brothers 
 Look'd on the alliance as fondly as mothers ; 
 And, if the young bride had possess'd but a sister, 
 These lines would have told how she tenderly kiss'd her. 
 Suffice it to say, that there never was seen, 
 In valley, dale, hamlet, on moorland or green. 
 An assembly so joyous as met at the kirk, 
 To view and to envy the lovers of Ferques. 
 
 For, the youthful, the aged, the ugly, the fair. 
 The idle, the busy, grave and gay, all were there. 
 Maids with prayers on their lips, for the weal of the bride, 
 Some who long'd for her looks, some for him by her side. 
 And, though last, yet most certain, by no means the least, 
 Stood his Kev'rence, who having been bid to the feast, 
 Look'd as jocund and joyous, and beaming with smiles. 
 As the fair Cytherean, when weaving her wiles.* 
 For where is the priest, be he Pagan, Hindoo, 
 Yellow Bonze from Japan, olive sage from Loo Choc, 
 A Franciscan Friar, an opium-drench'd Turk, 
 But loves a fair feast like this banquet at Ferques? 
 
 'Twould be tedious to tell, when the service was done. 
 How that of the gallants was warmly begun. 
 How, like the old suitors in Livy's old story. 
 By ' Cupiditate' (his words) ' et Amore,'t 
 The hearts of the damsels they ruthlessly task'd, 
 And finally gain'd twice as much as they ask'd. 
 Ah, sigh not to think that in Love's stricken field, 
 The maidens of Ferques were so ready to yield ; 
 For Livy declares that no maid can withstand 
 The wooer who comes with such arms in his hand. 
 They're pleasant to talk of, but 'neath them doth lurk 
 A peril not felt less at Rome than at Ferques. 
 
 The banquet was sped, and the floor being clear'd, 
 Terpsichore's summons distinctly was heard. 
 In the tuning Cremona that squeak'd forth its call, 
 Inviting all those light of foot to the ball. 
 
 * *i\oiit;U€/57)$ *Afpo5iT?7. Iliad, iii. 414. 
 
 t After "Cupiditate et Amore," Livy ungallantly adds, "quae 
 maxime ad muliebre ingenium efficaces preces sunt." 
 
376 TABLE TEAITS. 
 
 Lovely dance ! of thy charms how correct was the notion 
 Of her who the Poetry, called thee, of Motion !* 
 "When Beauty her features in smiles deigns to grace. 
 What are those same smiles but the dance of the face 1 
 And when Dancii^g and Modesty happily meet. 
 What is Dancing just then but the smiles of the feet If 
 I'd defy e'en a hermit the summons to shirk, 
 Ask'd a measure to tread by the beauties of Ferques. 
 
 When moonlight had risen to silver the scene, 
 
 The party adjourn'd from the hall to the green, 
 
 And their laughter was shaking the stars in the sky, 
 
 When by chance, on the heels of their mirth, there pass'd by 
 
 A Franciscan from Boulogne, Franciscanly shod. J 
 
 Who ask'd them to kneel at the sight of their God, 
 
 Whose presence mysterious he fully reveal'd. 
 
 But the fiddler, he swore, he'd be hang'd if he kneel'd, 
 
 And affirm'd — most irreverent charge 'gainst a monk — 
 
 That the barefooted priest was decidedly drunk. 
 
 And the party applauded each quip and each quirk 
 
 That fell from this vile Paganini of Ferques. 
 
 But, oh, wonder ! those ribalds their scoffs had scarce utter'd, 
 
 When, at a low prayer by the Cordelier mutter'd, 
 
 Their laughter was heard to change into a moan, 
 
 As the priest transform'd each to a figure of stone. 
 
 There motionless still do the revellers stand. 
 
 Misshapen, as turn'd from their sculptor's rough hand ; 
 
 Save one, who when moonlight pours down from above. 
 
 May be seen from the spot vainly trying to move. 
 
 Some affirm 'tis the bridegroom aroused from his trance, 
 
 Some declare 'tis the bride gliding forth to the dance. 
 
 But 'tis only the fiddler endeavouring to jerk 
 
 His bow arm o'er the once magic fiddle of Ferques. 
 
 * Lady Morgan, I think, calls dancing, " the Poetry of Motion." 
 f " Qu'est-ce qiiela danse? la sourire des jambes. Qu'est-ce que 
 la sourire ? la danse du visage." — Bibliophile Jacob. 
 
 X The theatre at Boulogne stands on the site of the old convent 
 garden belonging to the Cordeliers, the sea formerly flowed close to 
 the spot. When Henry A^III. took Boulogne, he converted the con- 
 vent into a marine arsenal. 
 
THE SUPPORT OP SAINTS OP LATER 
 
 DAYS. 
 
 It may be seen from our last chapter, that the bill of 
 fare of those who dined in the desert was neither very long 
 nor very varied. It was otherwise with the better-fed, 
 but perhaps not better-taught gentlemen of the church of 
 later days. Thus, for instance, the Cure of Brequier kept 
 a very different table from that of the lean Amphitryons 
 of the desert. Brillat Savarin once called on the holy 
 man just as he had dismissed the soup and beef from the 
 table. These were replaced by a leg of mutton a la royale, 
 a fat capon, and a splendid salad. The hour was scarcely 
 noon, and the cur6 had sat down to this saint's fare alone. 
 He was not selfish, however, and he invited his guest to 
 '' break bread" with him, but the guest, a prince of "'^gas- 
 tronomers" in his way, declined, and the cure, like Co- 
 riolanus, did it all alone ! He finished the " gigot" to the 
 ivory, the capon to the bones, and the salad to the 
 polished bottom of the bowl. A colossal cheese was then 
 placed before him, in which he made a breach of ninety 
 degrees, and having washed down all with a bottle of 
 wine, he, like the Irishman, thanked God ^^for that 
 snack," and betook himself to digestion and repose. ^^Le 
 pauvre homme !" 
 
 The nuns were in no ways behind the priests. Madame 
 d'Arestrel, lady Abbess of the nuns of the Visitation at 
 Belley, (faustum nomen I) once told a secret to a visitor 
 who feared she was going to expound a chapter from the 
 
378 TABLE TRAITS. 
 
 Prophets. " If you want a foretaste of Paradise in the 
 guise of good chocolate," said she, " be sure to make it 
 over-night, in an earthenware coffee-pot. Its standing 
 still for a night concentrates it, and gives it a velvety 
 taste, which is divine ! And Heaven cannot be angry with 
 us for this little luxiirv, for is not Heaven too divine ?" 
 How wide the distance between St. Paula, widow, and 
 Madame d'Arestrel, of the convent of the Visitation ! I 
 may add, that if the Visitandines made good chocolate, 
 the monks of the Feuillants, in Paris, were renowned for 
 their ratafie. But they too have superior authority for 
 good living. A dainty dish in Italy is commonly called a 
 '' mouthful for a cardinal." — un boccone di cardinali. 
 
 The canons took the tone from the cardinals. When 
 the French canon Eollet became ill through excessive 
 drinking, his doctor interdicted all strong beverages, and 
 was not a little wroth, on his next visit, at finding the 
 dignitary in bed indeed, but at his bed-side a little table, 
 neatly laid out with bottles and glasses. The canon met 
 the threatened storm by gently remarking : — " Doctor, 
 when you forbade me drinking wine, you did not wish to 
 deprive me of the pleasure of looking at the bottle 1" It 
 w^as such canons who were the best customers of the nuns 
 v/ho distilled liqueurs, and of the Ursulines who manu- 
 factured the daintiest drops flavoured by the daintiest 
 essences ! But in the Archbishop of Paris himself, M. de 
 Belley, the clergy of France had example to which they 
 might appeal as authority for indulging in good cheer. 
 The archiepiscopal face was wreathed in smiles at the 
 sight of a good dinner. The prelate lived to be a veteran 
 among gastronomers, and was, in other respects, not an 
 unworthy archbishop. 
 
 But M. de Belley was at least a gentleman in his gas- 
 tronomic propensities. He was not, like a Russo-Greek 
 ^Tapa," a brandy- bibber. The Eusso-Greek priests sanctify 
 
THE SUPPORT OF SAINTS OF LATER DAYS. Oi\) 
 
 drinking, in the minds of the people, by their evil ex- 
 ample. Monsieur Leverson Le Due, a French diplo- 
 matist in Russia, tells us that he knows of one parish in 
 Muscovy where the people lock up their pastor every Sa- 
 turday night, in order that he may not be too muzzy for 
 mass on the Sunday. They occasionally find him very 
 drunk, nevertheless, when they have forgotten previously 
 to examine beneath his robe, under which the sinning sot 
 sometimes smuggles his quart of Cognac ! Sir George 
 Simpson crossed the Pacific in a Russian vessel. The 
 chaplain had been sent in her to sea, because he was al- 
 ways too drunk to ofiiciate on land. He was kept sober 
 expressly for the hour of service on Sundays, but at other 
 times, he appears to have realized the verse in the old 
 song of Dibdin's, wherein it is said that 
 
 " 'Tother day as our chaplain was preaching, 
 
 Behind him I curiously slunk ; 
 And while he our duty was teaching. 
 
 As how we should never get drunk, 
 I show'd him the stuff, and he twigg'd it. 
 And it soon set his Rev'rence agog. 
 
 And he swigg'd, and Nick swigg'd, 
 
 And Ben swigg'd, and Dick swigg'd. 
 
 And we all of us swigg'd it, — 
 And we swore there was nothing like grog." 
 
 These examples, however, must be understood as occur- 
 ring mostly, if not exclusively, among the lower classes 
 of the clergy. There was a time when " the Vicar and 
 Moses" illustrated the sad doings of a similar class among 
 ourselves. 
 
 The Greek clergy in the South of Europe present us 
 with something no less curious of aspect. The hall-kitchen 
 of the Greek Patriarch, at Constantinople, is crowded with 
 inferior clergy, who take their meals there, and his All- 
 Holiness himself is served with pipes and sweetmeats by 
 
OCU TABLE TRAITS. 
 
 nothing less than gentlemen in Deacon's orders. Fancy 
 our Lord Primate ringing his bell for cheroots for two ! 
 and having them brought in on a silver tray by the Curate 
 of St. Margaret's ! 
 
 The Greek usages however are classical. The stranger 
 who dines with the Patriarch has, previous to falling to, 
 water poured over his hands as he holds them over a basin 
 with a perforated cover, and the napkins for drying them 
 are as delicate as rose-leaves. The guest reclines on a 
 low couch, in ancient fashion, and his repast is placed on a 
 low stool at his side. The same custom exists in the con- 
 vents, but meat is seldom to be found there by a guest 
 who arrives unexpectedly. The monks themselves never 
 eat it at all. During half the year they have but one 
 meal a-day, and that consists of vegetables and bread. On 
 the other days of the year they are permitted the more 
 liberal, but sufficiently eremitic fare of cheese, eggs, fish, 
 wine, and milk ; but even on these gala days they are 
 never allowed more than two meals. Poor fellows ! the 
 majority of them pass their remarkably well-spent time, 
 when not at table, in tilling the ground or teaching won- 
 derful feats to very accomplished tom-cats ! 
 
 A Greek monk's idea of an Englishman is that he is a 
 plum-pudding eater. And no wonder, since the English 
 are almost the exclusive purchasers of the currant-grapes 
 which are cultivated all along the northern shores of the 
 Peloponnesus, from Patra to Corinth. As the Chinese 
 think that we take their tea that we may live, so the Greek 
 monks conclude that we must buy their currants, or die ! 
 At the convent of Yestizza, the good fathers trouble their 
 heads about nothing but the produce and price of thejr 
 great staple crop. If you ask how many brethren there 
 are in the convent, they will answer, " Three hundred ; 
 and what was the price of currants in England when you 
 left V Inquire if their books be in good order, and they 
 
THE SUPPORT OF SAINTS OF LATER DAYS. 381 
 
 will reply in the negative, adding an assurance that they 
 do their utmost to produce the best currants in the country. 
 And they will give you permission to see their church, if 
 you will only promise to recommend their dwarf grapes to 
 the English merchants who are catering for plum-pudding 
 eaters at home. The grounds of other convents in the 
 peninsula are famous for their nuts, in the exportation of 
 which the brethren drive no inconsiderable trade. 
 
 These worthy people are said to be a trifle more en- 
 lightened and a degree less slothful than they were some 
 thirty years ago. There was ample room and verge 
 enough for improvement ; for at the period mentioned, the 
 Greek priests resisted the introduction of the potato into 
 the kitchen-garden, for the very satisfactory reason that 
 the pomme de terre was the very identical apple with 
 which Satan beguiled Eve out of Paradise! Yes, these 
 modern and orthodox saints very generally held that the 
 devil tempted Eve with an " ash-leaf kidney ! " 
 
 If we cross over to Abyssinia, we shall find that the 
 priests and orthodox people there keep as poor tables, at 
 least on fast days, as the Greeks. Above eight months in 
 the year are assigned by the Abyssinian Christians to 
 abstinence ! On these occasions an Abyssinian neither 
 eats nor drinks till long after noon. On festival days, 
 however, they make up for their moderation by unre- 
 strained excess. Mr. Mansfield Perkyns, a traveller who 
 has given us the most recent account of life in Abyssinia, 
 tells us that, in honour of the festival of the Elevation of 
 the Cross, he gave an early breakfast to some dozen 
 guests, who were engaged to half-a-dozen other parties in 
 the course of the same joyous day, and that these guests 
 whetted their appetite for later meals by consuming, at 
 breakfast a fine fat cow, two large sheep, and endless 
 gallons of mead ! On these occasions the mead is pretty 
 prolific of murder. The guests get dreadfully drunk in 
 
382 TABLE TRAITS. 
 
 honour of the day, exactly as many highly civilized 
 Christian people in happy England do on the yearly 
 recurrence of "merry Christmas." Indeed, a feast of the 
 Elevation of the Cross without plenty of quarrelling and 
 bloodshed would be as dull as Donnybrook fair now is 
 without a row. But the Abyssinian Christian is as clever 
 in establishing a casus belli as a Donnybrook Romanist. 
 If the latter sees the fair is likely to end without a fight, 
 he simply takes off his hat, draws a white line round it 
 with chalk, and declaring that he wull break the head of 
 the first man who denies that such white line is silver 
 lace, he has speedily abundance 9f active work before him. 
 So a pious Abyssinian at an " Elevation" banquet, if he 
 finds things dull, merely remarks to his dearest friend and 
 next neighbour, ^' You are a good sort of man, but you 
 are not so handsome as I am ! " and thereupon out fly the 
 knives of the parties and their respective friends, which 
 they proceed to clean by plunging them into each other's 
 ribs ! 
 
 The people are brought up on a food likely to encourage 
 such pugnacious propensities. Mr. Perkyns, speaking of 
 the slaughtering of oxen for the kitchen, says : — " Almost 
 before the death-struggle is over, persons are ready to 
 flay the carcase, and pieces of the raw meat are cut off, 
 and served up before this operation is completed. In 
 fact, as each part presents itself, it is cut off and eaten 
 while yet warm and quivering. In this state it is con- 
 sidered, and justly so, to be very superior in taste to what 
 it is w^hen cold. Raw^ meat, if kept a little time, gets 
 tough ; whereas, if eaten fresh and warm, it is far tenderer 
 than the most tender joint that has been hung a week in 
 England. The taste is perhaps, in imagination, rather 
 disagreeable at first, but far otherwise when one gets 
 accustomed to it ; and I can readily believe that raw meat 
 would be preferred to cooked meat, by a man who from 
 
THE SUPPORT OF SAINTS OF LATER DAYS. 383 
 
 childhood had been accustomed to it." Such fare, T may 
 observe, may not be out of place at the table of a patriarch 
 who lives in such a climate as that of Abyssinia, but we 
 suspect that it would as much astonish a dinner party at 
 an episcopal palace in England, as Mr. Perkyns himself 
 would do were he to sit down to that dinner in his 
 ordinary Abyssinian fashion of — a bald head covered with 
 butter ! 
 
 I have spoken in another chapter of a Brahmin who 
 stuffed himself with sweetmeats until he was nearly suf- 
 focated, and who exclaimed, on being recommended to 
 swallow a little water, that if he had had room for water he 
 would have swallowed more sweetmeats ! It is but justice, 
 however, to these saintly gentlemen to confess that they 
 can fast when there is anything to be gained by it. 
 Among the Mahrattas, when a fast man attempts to cheat 
 his creditors, a Brahmin is hired to sit the dhurna, and 
 this is the process — a process, by the way, which Monsieur 
 Dimanche tried on Don Juan, but unsuccessfully. The 
 Brahmin goes to the house or tent of the debtor, some- 
 times attended by numerous followers, and he announces 
 the dhurna, by which the debtor must not eat until he 
 has discharged his liabilities. The clerical bailiff sits at 
 his side and is bound to fast also, until the matter is 
 arranged. He who holds out longest wins the day, and if 
 the debtor be famished he will pay rather than die out- 
 right, for eat he dare not until his creditor be satisfied; 
 besides, if he were to starve the Brahmin to death, the 
 crime would be so heinous, that the debtor himself had 
 better have departed to the world of shadows. It 
 ensues that sitting dhurna is more successful in certain 
 districts than it would be in Belgravia, even though the 
 Archbishop of Canterbury himself were to take his seat 
 in the middle of the square, with a declaration that he 
 w^ould neither move nor eat until every inhabitant in 
 
384 TABLE TRAITS. 
 
 the parish had paid his Christmas bills. Poor man ! he 
 would have to sit as long as infelix Theseus, 
 
 The saints of our puritan days were great favourers of 
 public fasts ; but these fasts were less numerous after they 
 had consolidated their power, than before. " In the be- 
 ginning of the wars," says Foulis, in his ^^ History of the 
 wicked Plots of the pretended Saints," " a public monthly 
 fast was appointed for the last Wednesday of every month, 
 but no sooner had they got the king upon the scaffold, 
 and the nation fully secured to the Eump interest, but 
 they thought it needless to abuse and gall the people with 
 a . multitude of prayers and sermons, and so, by a par- 
 ticular act of their worships (April 23, 1649), nulled the 
 proclamation for the observation of the former ; all which 
 verifieth the old verses : — 
 
 " ' The devil was sick, the devil a monk would be. 
 The devil was well, the devil a monk was he.' " 
 
 George Fox, the father of the Quakers, remarks in his 
 Journal, of the Puritans and their fasts: — "Both in the 
 time of the Long Parliament, and of the Protector, so 
 called, and of the Committee of Safety, when they pro- 
 claimed fasts, they were commonly like Jezebels, and there 
 was some mischief to be done." Taylor, the Water-poet, 
 compares their fasts to hidden feasts. "They were like the 
 holy maid," he says, "that enjoined herself to abstain four 
 days from any meat whatsoever; and being locked close 
 up in a room, she had nothing but her two books to feed 
 upon; but the two books were two painted boxes, made 
 in the form of great Bibles, with clasps and bosses, the 
 inside not having one word of God in them ; but the one 
 was filled with sweetmeats, the other with wine; upon 
 which this devout votary did fast with zealous meditation^ 
 eating up the contents of one book, and drinking as con- 
 tentedly the other." Dr. South, in his Sermons, is equally 
 
THE SUPPORT OF SAINTS OF LATER DAYS. 385 
 
 severe. He observes that *^ their fasts usually lasted from 
 seven in the morning till seven at night ; the pulpit was 
 always the emptiest thing in the church ; and there never 
 was such a fast kept by them, but their hearers had cause 
 to begin a thanksgiving as soon as they had done." Butler, 
 in his Hudibras, hints that the work of fasting was to be 
 accounted to the faster, righteousness : — 
 
 " For 'tis not now who's stout and bold, 
 But who bears hunger best, and cold. 
 And he's approved the most deserving, 
 Who longest can hold out at starving." 
 
 The fasting of the civilians, however, was made to turn 
 to the benefit of the military gentlemen ; and, in March, 
 1644, an ordinance was passed for the contribution of one 
 meal a week towards the charge of the army. There w^as 
 by far a more considerable liberality of spirit among some 
 of the clergy of the time of Louis XIY. than in the 
 Puritan authorities, inasmuch as they permitted others 
 to follow clerical example rather than precept. The 
 celebrated preacher, Father Feuillot, for instance, stood by 
 while "Monsieur" was enjoying an uncanonical collation 
 in the middle of Lent. His Highness held up a macaron, 
 and remarked, " This is not breaking fast, is itT' " Nay," 
 said Feuillot, " you may eat a calf, if you will only act 
 like a Christian." I am afraid that we had not improved 
 at home, in the last century. On one of the fasts of that 
 period, Walpole comments after his usual gay fashion. 
 " Between the French and the earthquakes," he says, in 
 1756, "you have no notion how good we are grown; 
 nobody makes a suit of clothes now but of sackcloth, 
 turned up with ashes. The fast was kept so devoutly, 
 that Dick Edgecumbe, finding a very lean hazard at 
 White's, said with a sigh, ' Lord ! how the times are de- 
 generated! Formerly, a fast would have brought every- 
 body hither; now it keeps everybody away!' A few 
 
 c c 
 
386 TABLE TRAITS. 
 
 nights before, two men were walking np the Strand, one 
 said to t'other, ' Look how red the sky is ! Well, thank 
 God, there is to be no masquerade!'" 
 
 An ex-Capuchin has revealed some of the mysteries of 
 the house of which he was lately a member, and by this it 
 would appear that the Friars of the nineteenth century 
 are as little for slender diet as the fine gentlemen of the 
 eighteenth. " These Capuchins," he says, '' of squalid 
 appearance, clothed in serge, with shaven heads and bare 
 feet, presenting the very type of humility and self-renun- 
 ciation, enjoy the luxuries of life with a prodigality un- 
 known to you. The poor friars have, with one exception, 
 no enjoyment of the things of this world, their only 
 worldly comfort is good cheer. The friars have three car- 
 nivals in the year, of two or three weeks' duration each. 
 These are the only periods at which they can recruit their 
 wasted strength, to enable them to resist the mortifications 
 of the rest of the year. During these few weeks they have 
 seven courses served at dinner, all substantial and choice 
 dishes, the most dainty morsels that can be provided. At 
 supper they have five courses. By that hour, in spite of 
 their plentiful dinner, they have regained their appetites ; 
 and their digestion is again most active. These courses 
 are as substantial as those of the dinner, and are despatched 
 with equal facility by these men of iron frame and tranquil 
 conscience. . . . Lent is arrived ! Well, you must fast, 
 you must mortify the flesh, but you must not die of inani- 
 tion. A good table is necessary, or you will suffer too 
 much from contrast with the past few weeks. You need 
 double the supply that the secular orders do when they 
 fast, for your digestion is twice as active as theirs. Supper 
 is now a sadly scanty meal; it consists simply of fish, 
 bread, wine, and fruit. A miserable dish ! not miserable 
 as to quantity or quality, but because it is the solitary 
 dish during the forty days of Lent, always excepting bread 
 
THE SUPPORT OF SAINTS OF LATER DAYS. 387 
 
 and wine ad libitum. Fortunately, the friars are wise and 
 provident; the slender supper is foreseen and provided 
 against at dinner, which consists of four dishes. The 
 bottle of good wine is valuable now, or they would be over- 
 come with weakness." Such is the testimony of a living 
 witness, who pledges his reputation for the truth of his 
 depositions. 
 
 I do not know that there is much that is exaggerated in 
 this, for from M. Saurin we hear that, in France, well-to- 
 do priests mortify the flesh on maigre days by very pretty 
 eating. The bill of fare of these saintly men has been 
 known to include soup au coulis d'eaievisse, salmon-trout, 
 an omelette au Thon, that would have called a dead 
 gastronome to life; a salad, the very smell of w^hich 
 seemed to give eternal youth ; Semonal cheese, fruit, con- 
 fectionary, a light wine, and a cup of coifee. By such 
 self-denial is heaven gained by modern saints, in orders; 
 having fair fortunes, and looks with the same characteristic. 
 
 The Dominicans of Italy are in no degree behind their 
 brethren in France. The " late prior and visitor of the 
 order," who recently published his dealings with the 
 Inquisition, thus describes his ancient brethren. "They do 
 nothing," he says, '^ which they are bound to do by their 
 rulesi, if these are opposed to their inclinations. They 
 profess never to eat meat in the refectory, or room for 
 their common meals ; but there is another room near it, 
 which they call by another name, where they eat meat 
 constantly. On Good Friday, they are commanded by 
 their rules to eat bread and drink water. At the dinner 
 hour they all go together into the refectory, to eat bread 
 and drink water, but having done so for the sake of 
 appearance, they go one after another into another room, 
 where a good dinner is prepared for them all. I do not 
 blame them for enjoying it ; but I blame them for feign- 
 ing an abstinence which none of them intend to keep,** 
 
 cc2 
 
388 TABLE TRAITS. 
 
 These Dominicans, honest fellows ! are more hungry than 
 the gods of the old regime of whom it is said, — 
 
 " The Gods require the thighs 
 Of beeves for sacrifice ; 
 Which roasted, we the steam 
 Must sacrifice to them, 
 "Who, though they do not eat, 
 Yet love the smell of meat." 
 
 But our poor friend the monk has witnesses in his 
 favour, as well as opposed to him. Some men call him a 
 living mummy swathed in faith. Another says he is 
 ^^a moral gladiator ^who wrestles with his passions, and 
 either stifles them or is devoured by them." A third, 
 describes him picturesquely as a sea-worthy vessel moored 
 in a stagnant dock ; and a fourth dismisses him con- 
 temptuously as a coward who w^on't fight. Even allowing 
 him to be all these, it does not follow that he is to be 
 deprived of his dinner. If he pays homage with his body 
 to the saints, he has earned what has been called the 
 mind's daily homage to the body. Dinner should be the 
 peculiar privilege of the monk, for it is as he is, in some 
 sense, '^tlie open friend of poverty, the secret foe of 
 riches ;" and if dinner be '' the breakfast of the poor and 
 the supper of the rich," it is doubly due to the monk, who 
 can claim it by either title. And it must not be sup- 
 posed that they do not know how to enjoy pleasure like 
 sensible men. The Abb6 of St. Sulpice, a Bernardino 
 monastery in the south of France, once invited a party of 
 merry and musical gentlemen from the neighbouring 
 town to come up to the monastery, and give the monks 
 a treat of good music on the fete day of their patron 
 saint. A joyous company ascended at early dawn to 
 the monastery j the most remarkable incident connected 
 with which is, that it is seated at the edge of a pine 
 forest, from which a hurricane swept down, in one night. 
 
THE SUPPORT OF SAINTS OF LATER DAYS. 389 
 
 thirtj-seven thousand trees. The visitors were received by 
 the cellarer, the abb6 not being yet risen, who conducted 
 them to the refectory, where they found awaiting them 
 a pat6 as big as a church; flanked on the north by a 
 quarter of cold veal ; on the south by a monster ham ; on 
 the east by a monumental pile of butter ; and on the west 
 by a bushel of artichokes db la poivrade. All the ne- 
 cessary adjuncts were at hand ; and among others, a 
 party of lay brethren ready to wait upon the visitors^ and 
 very much astonished to find themselves out of bed at so 
 early an hour. An array of a hundred bottles of wine 
 bespoke the fathers' idea of good cheer ; and the cellarer, 
 having bidden them fall-to and welcome, deplored his 
 inability to join them, not having yet said mass, — and he 
 then took his leave to go and sing " matins." 
 
 The breakfast was done ample justice to ; after which 
 the visitors retired to take a short repose, subsequently 
 repairing to the church, where they performed a musical 
 service with the usual zeal and energy of amateurs, and 
 received modestly the showers of thanks that descended 
 upon them in return. 
 
 Monks and musicians then sat down to a dinner, 
 — ample, admirably cooked, excellently served, and 
 thoroughly enjoyed. The abundance that marked it may 
 be judged of by the fact, that at the second course there 
 were not less than fifteen dishes of roasted meats. The 
 dessert would have made the eyes of a queen sparkle ; 
 the liqueurs were choice, and the coiFee redolent of Araby 
 the Blest. The enjoyment was long and perfect ; and by 
 the end of the repast, there was not man or monk present 
 who was not in charity with all the world. The " pious, 
 glorious, and immortal memory " of St. Bernard was not 
 ^forgotten among the toasts. 
 
 And then came vespers and more amateur music, — 
 probably more vigorously performed than in the morning. 
 
390 TABLE TKAITS. 
 
 And after vespers there was a division of pleasures : some 
 took to quiet games at cards, some chose a ramble in the 
 wood, and a few looked in again upon their friend the 
 cellarer. As night came on, all again drew together, but 
 the discreet abbot retired, willing to allow the brethren 
 full liberty on a festival which only came " once a year." 
 And to do the brothers justice, they began to make a 
 night of it as soon as the superior had disappeared. Jokes 
 and laughter and winged words flew about like wildfire, 
 and the exercise got thereby sharpened the general appe- 
 tite for supper, — a repast which was discussed with a 
 vivacity as if the guests had been fasting up to that very 
 hour. Wit and wine, and wisdom and folly, were all 
 mingled together ; and the oldest of the fathers present, 
 with a flush on the cheek and a light in the eye, joined 
 chorus in table songs that were not sung to the tune of 
 Nunc dimittis. It was when the fun was flying most fast 
 and furious, that a voice exclaimed, " Brother cellarer, 
 where is your official dish "i " '' True ! " answered that 
 reverend individual ; " I am not cellarer for nothing ;" 
 — and therewith he disappeared, but speedily returned 
 accompanied by three servitors, bearing piles of buttered 
 toast and bowls of what worldly men would have called 
 " punch." If the fun had waxed fast before, it grew fiery now, 
 and fervour for the patron saint glowed at the very fiercest 
 heat that punch could give it. In the midst of it all, the 
 hour of midnight was solemnly tolled out by the convent 
 bell, and the revellers, reverend and laic, swang merrily 
 to bed, satisfied with the day well spent in honour of 
 St. Bernard. 
 
 I have now spoken of the Dominicans, Capuchins, and 
 Bernardins. The Franciscans are a not less lively fra- 
 ternity. When the author of Eothen was at the Fran- 
 ciscan Monastery in Damascus, he asked one of the monks 
 to tell what places were best worth seeing, in reference to 
 
THE SUPPORT OF SAINTS OF LATER DAYS. 391 
 
 their association with St. Paul. " There is nothing in all 
 Damascus," said the good man, " half so well worth seeing 
 as our cellars ; " and forthwith he invited the stranger to 
 *^go and admire the long range of liquid treasures that he 
 and his brethren had laid up for themselves upon earth." 
 And, adds the author, " these I soon found were not as 
 the treasures of the miser, that lie in unprofitable disuse ; 
 for day by day, and hour by hour, the golden juice 
 ascended from the dark recesses of the cellar to the 
 uppermost brains of the friars, dear old fellows ! In the 
 midst of that solemn land, their Christian laughter rang 
 loudly and merrily. Their eyes kept flashing with joyous 
 bonfires, and their heavy woollen petticoats could no more 
 weigh down the springiness of their paces, than the filmy 
 gauze of a danseuse can cloy her bounding step." 
 
 Richard the First, as worthless a human being as ever 
 lived, bankrupt in every virtue save that of brute courage, 
 in making legacy of his vices, said he would bequeath glut- 
 tony to the priests. It was rather a compliment than 
 otherwise, for the inference was, that they lacked what he 
 was willing to surrender, when he could no longer enjoy 
 it. St. Augustin settled this vexed question as to what 
 was " good living," when he said, that *^ the great fast was 
 abstinence from vice." And in the true spirit of St. 
 Augustin's prose, rings the rich rhyme in Plerrick's Noble 
 Numbers. ^^ Is this," he says, 
 
 " Is this a fast, to keep 
 The larder leane 
 And cleane 
 From fat of veales and sheep 1 
 
 " Is it to quit the dish 
 Of flesh, yet still 
 To fill 
 The platter high with fish ? 
 
392 TABLE TRAITS. 
 
 " Is it to faste an houre ] 
 Or ragged to go, 
 Or show 
 A downcast look, and soure 1 
 
 " No ; 'tis a fast, to dole 
 Thy sheaf of wheat, 
 And meat, 
 Unto the hungry soulc. 
 
 " It is to fast from strife, 
 From old debate. 
 And hate ; 
 To circumcise thy life. 
 
 " To show a heart grief-rent, 
 To starve thy sin, 
 Not bin : 
 And that's to keep thy Lent." 
 
 This is better philosophy than that given on a similar 
 subject by Montesquieu, who only recommends moderation 
 on the ground that it lengthens the term of enjoyment. 
 " I call moderation/' says Pythagoras, " all that does not 
 engender pain ;" and by this maxim of the Hellenized 
 Hindoo, Buddha Ghooros, the saints both of the desert and 
 the dining-room may, perhaps, in their several ways be 
 condemned. 
 
 In treating of the diet of more modern saints than those 
 of the days of martyrdom, I might have noticed the fact, 
 that in not very remote times, the parsonage-house at Lang- 
 dale, in Westmoreland, was licensed as an ale-house, the 
 living being too poor to allow the incumbent to make any- 
 thing like one upon it for himself. The ale-cask became 
 to the priest, what the fruit of the amrite tree was to the 
 Tibetians — the spring of life. This Westmoreland ale was 
 accounted a great strengthener, but so have many less 
 likely things. But enough of the " saints," good men and 
 
THE SUPPORT OF SAINTS OF LATER DAYS. 393 
 
 true the majority of them, earning their right to enjoy 
 the rich blessings of God, by fairer means, perhaps, than 
 many of their censurers. I know no set of men so well 
 to contrast with the saints, as the " Caesars," and we have 
 yet time before supper to attend that august company 
 to table. 
 
THE C^SARS AT TABLE. 
 
 It is a well-ascei tained truth, that the Caesars at table 
 by no means generally conducted themselves as though 
 they were under the influence of a Roman Chesterfield, 
 as regarded their behaviour; or a Eoman Abernethy, as 
 regarded their moderation. Perhaps the great Julius was 
 as much of a gentleman in both the above respects as any 
 of his imperial successors ; and even he could reform the 
 calendar with far more ease than he could reform himself. 
 
 When he was commanding in the Roman provinces, 
 beyond the Italian frontier, he kept two distinct tables. 
 At one sat his inferior officers and the Greeks who were in 
 his service. The latter do not appear to have expressed 
 any discontent at not ranking with their Roman comrades. 
 At the other table sat none but Romans of high state, with 
 such native guests of quality as Caesar chose to invite to 
 meet them. He would watch his servants as sharply as he 
 did the enemy; and on one occasion, having observed that 
 his baker had put down to his guests a coarser bread 
 than that which he had served to Caesar, he sent the knave 
 to prison, there to learn better manners. 
 
 Caesar was as sober as Sir Charles Napier, who used to 
 sign himself " Governor of Scinde, because I was always a 
 sober man." Cato said of Julius, that he was the only 
 sober man who had ever attempted to subvert a government; 
 "a cutting sarcasm on all preceding patriots." As for 
 sauces, the Duke of Wellington did not inspire Francatelli 
 
THE CiESARS AT TABLE. 395 
 
 with more despair upon that head, than Csesar did his 
 cook. It was immaterial to him whether he had sauce to 
 his meat, or not ; and as to the quahty, he never concerned 
 himself about it. He ate, thankfully perhaps, but thought- 
 lessly, certainly. His politeness was sometimes ridiculously 
 excessive, as when he ate up the ointment which had been 
 served instead of sauce, at a table where he was a guest, 
 and where he was courteously resolved to find everything 
 excellent. But although the great Julius was, according to 
 Cato, the only man who came sober to the subversion of his 
 country, he had some unsoberiy habits about him. Thus, 
 when invited to a feast, he used to whet his appetite by 
 taking an emetic. This is attested by Cicero, who says, in 
 his letters to Atticus, (lib. xiii. p. 52,) '^ Unctus est ; accu- 
 buit; ifieTLKriy agebat. Itaque edit et bibit dhuig et 
 jucunde." Suetonius agrees with Cato, that Caesar was 
 moderate with regard to wine : — " Yini parcissimum ne 
 quidem inimici negaverunt." 
 
 It is singular that a man who cared so little as he was 
 reported to have done for his stomach, should have cared 
 so much about the outside of his head. He could eat 
 pomatum, and yet be ashamed of the baldness which a 
 proper application of the unguent might perhaps have cured. 
 
 Augustus Caosar, who visited prisoners, like Howard, 
 and cut off heads like an Algerine Dey, was moderate in 
 his cups, and endeavoured to make the people so. When 
 the latter once complained that wine was not only dear, 
 but scarce, he gravely proclaimed that his son-in-law 
 Agrippa had been looking to the aqueducts, and there was 
 no fear of any one dying of thirst. 
 
 There were seasons, however, when he could be more 
 than imperially extravagant. Witness the little supper he 
 gave to chosen guests, all of w^hom attended in the attire 
 of gods and goddesses ; and at which feast he presided in 
 the character of Apollo. The wits of the day, who were 
 
396 TABLE TRAITS. 
 
 not invited, denounced this supper as an orgy at which 
 decent people would not have been present, even if asked. 
 Such stupendous iniquity was said there to have been en- 
 acted, that the real gods who had at first looked laugh- 
 ingly down from Olympus, withdrew one by one behind 
 their respective clouds. Even Jove himself, who sat gazing 
 longest, at length hurried away from the sight of men, who 
 were greater beasts than the privileged gods ! 
 
 Like some of the extravagant and unclean banquets at 
 Versailles, this entertainment was given when there was a 
 famine in the city. On the following day, the people ex- 
 claimed in the streets, " It is the gods who have devoured 
 the food." The less fearful than these raised an altar to 
 Augustus Phoebus, and there paid mock worship to the 
 Emperor, under the title of Apollo the Tormentor. 
 
 It was not every one that deemed himself entitled, that 
 could find access to the table of Csesar Augustus. He was 
 extremely nice with regard to his associates, but he was 
 not so nice with respect to keeping his guests waiting for 
 his company. It was the maxim of Sir Joshua Keynolds, 
 that it was far less courteous on principle to allow hungry 
 guests to be kept from table out of respect to one man, 
 than it was to go to dinner without him. So also Au- 
 gustus thought that the many should not be made to wait 
 for one ; and, accordingly, he frequently did not appear at 
 table till the repast was half over; and sometimes departed 
 even then, after tasting of from three to half-a-dozen dishes, 
 before it was concluded. 
 
 He was dignified and condescending, enjoyed the jokes 
 of those who were bold enough to make them, and en- 
 couraged the reserved to be bold and jocund too. When 
 jests lacked from either of those parties, the master of the 
 Roman world then laughed, as he sipped his moderate 
 draught, at the quips and cranks of the hired jesters, whose 
 office it was to be cheerful when the guests grew dull. 
 
THE C^SARS AT TABLE. 397 
 
 It has come down to us that he was a lover of brown 
 bread, small fish, green cheese and green figs. He was so 
 far intemperate that he would never let his appetite tarry 
 till meal-time. He ate when he was hungry, and perhaps 
 he was right. And yet it was but an unedifying sight to 
 see him passing in his chariot through the public streets, 
 returning the greetings of the people with one hand full of 
 bread, the other full of dates, and his almost sacred mouth 
 full of both. He was, in fact, wayward in his attentions 
 to his appetite, and would occasionally fast till sunset if 
 the caprice took him. As to what is said of him that he 
 sometimes rose from the most sumptuous banquets, leav- 
 ing the viands untouched, — this was perhaps because the 
 edge -of his appetite had been altogether destroyed by 
 brown bread and indigestible fruit. 
 
 In the day-time he quenched his thirst by eating of 
 bread dipped in water, by drinking water itself, or by 
 taking a slice of cucumber, lettuce, or unripe apple. His 
 moderation in drinking, when he did take up the goblet 
 at the evening repast, is much spoken of, but as we hear 
 more of the quantity than of the strength of what he 
 drank, it is difiicult to decide upon this point. Suetonius 
 admiringly records that " he never exceeded a quart for 
 his share, or if he did, he was sure to throw it up again." 
 This is but equivocal praise after all. He was a very great 
 man, no doubt, but, demi-god as he almost was, he spelt 
 after the '^ cacological" fashion of Lord Duberly ; and he 
 was more afraid of lying awake in the dark than any little 
 baron or squire in the nurseries of Belgravia and the ad- 
 jacent squares. 
 
 Tiberius, like his predecessor, treated his soldiers occa- 
 sionally like schoolboys, and when they displeased him, 
 he used to put them on a regimen of barley. Tiberius 
 himself was not a profuse eater ; he was rather moderate 
 than otherwise, and when gastronomic extravagancy had 
 
398 TABLE TRAITS. 
 
 reached a high pitch in Rome, he used to dine in pubHc, 
 like the kings of France, but, unHke them, upon cold 
 meat, as a reproof to the luxury of the times. He was 
 not, however, at all moderate in his cups, and the Roman 
 wits, who, Uke those of Paris, used to make merry epigrams 
 on the worst of their woes, punningly transformed his 
 names of Tiberius Claudius JSTero, into Biherius Caldius 
 Mero, He had a reverence too for great draughts, and 
 he once raised a common fellow to the office of quaestor, 
 simply because he could drink off a measure of three 
 pints of wine without drawing breath. Most of the 
 Caesars must have been very unsatisfactory people to dine 
 with, but none more so than Tiberius, who loved discus- 
 sion, but if he found himself worsted in it, he invariably 
 ordered his opponent to retire — and commit suicide. A 
 hot bath and a vein or two opened soon disposed of an 
 inconvenient adversary. He used to puzzle his guests 
 with all sorts of strange questions, such as would puzzle 
 even the editor of Notes and Queries to answer. One of 
 these interrogatory puzzles was " the name of the song 
 chanted by the Syrens." He would not speak the 
 fashionable Greek at table, but conversed in Latin; and his 
 favourite feat at dessert was to run his forefinger through 
 a hard green apple. 
 
 Caligula must have been a most unpleasant person to 
 dine with. He entertained himself and his guests with 
 the sight of men tortured on the rack, and he got up 
 little private executions on those occasions to enliven the 
 scene. We read of Her Majesty's private concerts, and 
 how "Mrs. Anderson" presided at the piano. But the 
 Romans only heard of their Emperor's killing fun to 
 frighten his guests with, and how his Divinity's private 
 headsman, Niger Barbatus, performed, as usual, with his 
 well-known dexterity. His frolics were really of a frightful 
 character. It was after a banquet, when the capital jest 
 
THE CiESARS AT TABLE. 399 
 
 of slaying had failed to make him as merry as usual, that 
 he rushed to the sacrificial altar, attired in the dress of 
 a victim-killer, that is, with a linen apron for his sole 
 costume. He seized the mallet as though he were about 
 to slay the appointed victim, but he turned suddenly 
 round on the resident official and butchered him instead. 
 And thereat, all who had witnessed the frolicsome deed 
 of their master, declared that " 'Fore Jove, 'twas a more 
 capital joke than the last 1" His answer to the Consuls 
 who ventured to ask the cause of a sudden burst of 
 laughter in which he indulged at a crowded feast, is well 
 known ; "I laugh to think," said the amiable creature, 
 '^ that with one wave of my hand I can sweep all your 
 stupid heads off!" His method of loving was equally 
 characteristic. He would fling his terrible arm round the 
 fair neck he professed to admire, and express his delight 
 that he could cut it off when he pleased. There was the 
 brilliant Cesonia; "I cannot tell," said, her imperial 
 lover at a feast, " why it is that I am so fond of that 
 girl. I'll have her put on the rack for a quarter of an 
 hour, that she may be compelled to tell me the reason." 
 Blue Beard was the mildest of Quaker gentlemen com- 
 pared with this Caligula. A lady might as well have 
 been wooed by a boa constrictor. 
 
 Claudius Csesar has hardly had justice done him, as 
 regards his general character, but as my office is only to 
 show how he looked at table, I must be satisfied with 
 making the remark, and pass on to Csesar at meat. He 
 was no hero, undoubtedly, for he contemplated suicide, 
 for no better reason than having a pain in his stomach 
 after a repast. In this, however, he did not show less 
 courage than Zeno, the father of the Stoics, who having 
 bruised his finger by a fall, went home and hung himself 
 
 He was largely hospitable, and sometimes entertained 
 six hundred guests at a time. He liked on these occasions 
 
400 TABLE TRAITS. 
 
 to see his own children and those of the nobility seated, ac- 
 cording to the ancient fashion, at the lower end of the table. 
 It is to be hoped that they were out of ear-shot of what 
 was being said at the upper end. The jokes were sometimes 
 pleasant enough in their way. Thus a Roman nobleman 
 having carried home with him a gold plate from the im- 
 perial table, was gently reminded of his theft when, on the 
 next occasion of dining with Claudius, he saw a reproach- 
 fully vulgar earthenware platter put down before him. 
 
 He was a man of infinite capacity, was the divine 
 Claudius, — that is, in gastronomic matters. He was ever 
 ready to devour, and always did so greedily. He has 
 been known to have suddenly jumped down from his seat 
 in the forum, allured by the smell of roast meat issuing 
 from the priest's table, in the adjacent temple of Mars. 
 And he would sit down with the reverend gentleman, 
 without waiting fof an invitation. It must have surely 
 made the common-place spectators of the feat broadly 
 smile, just as if the twelve judges in Westminster Hall 
 were to leap from their benches, and racing across the 
 churchyard, pour into the first house in the cloisters where 
 the dinner bell was ringing loudest, and the prandial odour 
 was most savoury. 
 
 He ate like Baal, and drank like the beast in Fortu- 
 natus. He did both to repletion; but his attendants 
 would then tickle his throat with a feather, and so, by 
 exonerating his stomach, enable the imperial animal to eat 
 and drink again. He contemplated making a decree for 
 the benefit of guests at table, which was of a Rabelaisian 
 indelicacy, and which probably never presented itself to 
 the minds of any other men but Claudius and the Cur6 of 
 Meudon. 
 
 Caligula had more affection for his horse than for any- 
 thing human. He fed him on gilded oats, and the animal 
 was not a more beastly consul than many who were 
 
THE CiESARS AT TABLE. 401 
 
 appointed to that high office. The emperor's dinner parties 
 must have presented a strange aspect, when the obsequious 
 senators stood, napkin in hand, to wait upon the guests. 
 Fancy the peers of all politics, and the commons of e very- 
 shade of opinion, all ranged behind the dinner-table at 
 Windsor Castle, in the professional uniform of dingy white 
 waistcoats and napless black coats, with their thumbs duly 
 doubled up in napkins, and all offering anxious service, 
 and " dindon a la daube " to our Sovereign Lady and her 
 guests, — fancy this, I say, and you will have the very 
 remotest idea possible of what the sight was like when the 
 senators changed the plates of Csesar. The personages 
 and their qualities are all different, but the strangeness 
 of one spectacle could only be matched by that of the 
 other. 
 
 Nero {who found sport in sitting in an upper galleiy at 
 the theatre, and flinging down nuts upon the bald head of 
 the prEetor below) was a very common- place individual at 
 table, but he assembled guests about him who were ever 
 ready to consume his good things and applaud his good 
 sayings. Galba, his successor, was at once gouty and 
 gluttonous. He commenced eating at early dawn, and 
 darkness came over him still with appetite unsatiated. 
 He was as mean, however, as he was voracious. He did 
 once so far whip up his liberal spirit as to compel him- 
 self to give a dinner party j but when he read the bill of 
 fare, he fairly burst into tears at the idea of the extrava- 
 gance and the expense. And yet the most costly dish he 
 could reprovingly point to, when his steward challenged 
 him, was a dish of boiled peas; — but perhaps they were 
 out of season, and Galba knew he should be asked for 
 them at least a guinea a quart ! He would never have 
 been guilty of the prodigality of the Emperor Otho, who 
 daily wasted more bread and milk in makmg cosmetic 
 poultices to lay on his own face than would have served to 
 
 D D 
 
402 TABLE TRAITS. 
 
 keep body and soul together in half-a-dozen families. The 
 father of Vitellius more gallantly, when he wished to look 
 well at the centre of his table, was wont to besmear him- 
 self with a mixture made up of honey and his mistress's 
 saliva. He of course deemed it impossible to say which 
 was the sweeter of the two ingredients. This was even 
 worse than Galba, who was, however, essentially greedy; 
 the latter emperor could not eat with pleasure unless he 
 had more before him than he could digest. When his 
 stomach cried, " Hold, enough !" he used it as the Somer- 
 setshire lad did his. '^ Ah ! " exclaimed the lad of Win- 
 canton, to certain monitions, — '' ye may ake, but, Vor I ha' 
 done, I'll make ye ake worser." Galba, when no longer 
 able to eat, lay and gazed at what he hoped to attack 
 more successfully after digestion had been accomplished. 
 
 Otho is remembered as being the complaisant gentle- 
 man who, when Nero had determined to murder his 
 mother, gave an exquisite little supper to both parties by 
 way of a pleasant preliminary. But Otho could at least 
 behave with outward decency, and of this Vitellius was 
 incapable. If he walked through the market-place, he 
 snatched the meat roasting at the cooks' stalls, and 
 greedily devoured it. He was not more reverent even in 
 the temple ; where, taking advantage of his vicinity to 
 the altar, he would sweep the latter of the barley that was 
 on it, consecrated to the god, and swallow the same, like 
 the sacrilegious heathen that he was. When about to fly 
 from the enemies who had overturned his throne, he 
 selected only his cook and his butler to be the companions 
 of his flight, a ^5 he took the former dear associate with 
 him, in his own covered chair. 
 
 The chief table trait which I can call to mind as con- 
 nected with Vespasian is, that once a month he went 
 without dinner for a day. Such an observance, he said, 
 saved at once his health and his purse. He had so much 
 
THE CJISARS AT TABLE. 403 
 
 the less to pay to his purveyor ; and in consequence of 
 the fast, less also perhaps than if he had feasted, to his 
 physician. Both the sons of Vespasian, Titus and Domi- 
 tian, were modest at the banquet. The former had ceased 
 to be a free liver before he put on the imperial mantle ; 
 and as for Domitian, he could wash dow^n his Malian 
 apple with a draught of water, and then address himself 
 to sleep, as though he were a virtuous anchorite, and not 
 the most thirsty drinker of human blood that ever dis- 
 graced his race. 
 
 The five succeeding emperors, — Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, 
 and the two Antonines, — Antoninus Pius, and Marcus 
 Aurelius, — governed the world during the eighty years 
 which are said, but questionably I think, to have been 
 the happiest years of the human race. There is little on 
 record as to how these potentates disported themselves at 
 table. Trajan, indeed, is known to have been a fearful 
 drinker ; but he loved a quiet, unceremonious dinner at 
 the house of a friend of modest degree, — for there he 
 tippled and talked to his heart's content, and willingly 
 forgot that he was Caesar. Hadrian is remembered as the 
 first Roman emperor who wore a beard. He had warts 
 on his throat, and he did not like that these should be 
 seen by his guests at table. He once gave an entertain- 
 ment which cost upwards of two millions sterling, (when 
 Verus was made Caesar,) and he w^as sorry for it through 
 the remainder of his life. Many a man of far humbler 
 degree has committed the same kind of extravagance, and 
 experienced the same enduring repentance. Antoninus 
 kept the table of a country gentleman ; and Marcus 
 Aurelius dined alone, while Commodus, his son, played 
 at his knee. The board of that son resembled that of 
 Vitellius, and he fell from it one day, full of drugged wine 
 
 DD 2 
 
404 TABLE TRAITS. 
 
 administered to him by a concubine, and was strangled 
 as he lay beneath the table, drunk, and deserving of his 
 fate. 
 
 The modest Pertinax was less happy as emperor than 
 when, as a simple official, he had charge of the provisions 
 of Rome. Didius Julianus was deep in the luxuries of 
 the table, and not nearly so deep in wisdom, when he 
 made a bid for the diadem, a few uneasy dinners in the 
 palace, and death. Septimius Severus, cared less for the 
 splendour of his table than the consolidation of his power, 
 but his banquets were choice things, nevertheless. His 
 sons, Caracalla and Geta, exemplified their fraternal una- 
 nimity by keeping different tables. They never sat down 
 together at the same board ; and there were two factions 
 in the court, something like that of George the Second, 
 at St. James's, and the son whom he hated, Frederick, 
 Prince of Wales, in Leicester Square. Macrinus was a 
 coarse feeder, and in everything he presented a re- 
 markable contrast with his successor Heliogabalus. 
 
 Heliogabalus lay on couches stuifed with hare's down, 
 or partridge feathers, ^lius Yerus reclined on cushions 
 of lily and rose-leaves. The first-named monster had his 
 funny moments ; and sometimes he would invite a certain 
 number of bald men, or of gouty men, or grey-headed 
 men, and he was particularly amused at a company of fat 
 men, so crowded together that they could find room only 
 to perspire. " One of his favourite diversions consisted 
 in filling a leathern table-couch with air instead of wool ; 
 and while the guests were engaged in drinking, a tap, 
 concealed under the carpet, was opened, unknown to 
 them, — the couch sank, and the drinkers rolled pell-mell 
 under the sigma, to the great delight of the beardless 
 emperor." He was the first Eoman emperor who wore 
 garments of pure, unmixed silk. He cared little for 
 poets or philosophers ; but he gave liberal premiums to 
 
THE C^SARS AT TABLE. 405 
 
 the inventors of new sauces, provided these pleased his 
 palate. If he disliked them, the inventor was condemned 
 to eat of nothing else, until he had discovered a new 
 condiment to win the imperial sanction. Heliogabalus 
 and George I. had this in common, that they both 
 liked fish a trifle stale. Thus, it is known that George 
 never cared for oysters till their shells began sponta- 
 neously to gape ; and the Oriental master of the Roman 
 empire, who made a barber pr efect of the provisions, 
 would never eat sea-fish except at a great distance from 
 the sea, when they acquired the taint he loved. His 
 delight then was to distribute vast quantities of the rarest 
 sorts, brought at an immense expense, to the peasants of 
 the inland country. The table of his successor, Alexander 
 Severus, was that of a gentleman. Its, master was the 
 first Roman emperor to whom that title can be incon- 
 testably given ; and he loved to have around him ac- 
 complished guests of all varieties of opinion ; and this is 
 much more than can be said for that huge and hungry 
 Goth, Maximin. The Gordians brought back some of the 
 elegances of social life, which the uncleanness and severity 
 of Maximin had banished ; but at Vjoth the private and 
 public, the humble and the imperial, tables of Rome, 
 there must have been small ceremony and permanent 
 fear during the brief and troubled reigns of the foolish 
 men who purchased the right of dining in an imperial 
 mantle by being speedily enveloped in a bloody shroud. 
 Gallienus, alone, shines out upon the list as the very prince 
 of cooks ; and if Careme had possessed half the enthu- 
 siasm which he so warmly affected, he would have named 
 his son and heir after this imperial inventor of ragouts, — 
 who was also the accelerator of the ruin of Rome. All 
 the temperance of the Gothic Claudius could not restore 
 the remnant of ancient moderation, which had been de- 
 stroyed by that imperial maker of stews, the ever hungry 
 
408 TABLE TRAITS. 
 
 and cruel Gallienus. Aurelian failed, like Claudius, but 
 the emperor Tacitus was more successful, and the de- 
 scendant of the great historian, even during Ms short 
 reign, roused the nobles to a sense of dignity, and 
 honoured science by inviting its disciples to his well- 
 ordered table. 
 
 A subsequent emperor, Carus, was perhaps one of the 
 most frugal, by habit and inclination, that ever wore the 
 imperial sword upon his thigh. Carus was at once mode- 
 rate and mirthful. He was seated on the grass, supping 
 on dry bread and grey peas, when the Persian ambassadors 
 came to him, suing for peace. "The matter just stands 
 thus, gentlemen," said the emperor, opening his mouth 
 widely, at the same time, to insert a shovel-like spoonful 
 of peas ; " if your master does not acknowledge the su- 
 periority of Rome, I will render Persia," — and here he 
 took off the cap which he wore to conceal* his entire 
 baldness, — " I will render Persia as destitute of trees as 
 my head is of hair." Having said which, he resumed 
 swallowing his peas, and left the delegates to digest his 
 remark. 
 
 We are accustomed to consider Diocletian dining at 
 Salona, on the cabbages he had reared there, as an 
 emperor in reduced circumstances; but the truth is, 
 that the palace, gardens, and table of the ex-emperor were 
 all of a splendid character, and if his table was adorned by 
 the cabbages he had tended to a prize perfection, he was 
 far too wise an epicure to confine himself to that dish 
 alone. 
 
 The great Constantine appears under a double aspect, 
 and the least favourable one is offered to us in his 
 maturer years, when he surrendered himself more unre- 
 servedly than before to good living, for which he had 
 peculiar facilities at Byzantium, took to wearing false 
 hair, and became altogether a ridiculous old dandy and 
 
THE CiESARS AT TABLE. 407 
 
 hon vivant; the ridicule of whom, by his clever and 
 unscrupulous nephew, Julian, I am not at all surprised 
 at; for what is so eagerly seized upon by affectionate 
 nephews as the foibles of their indulgent uncles? Julian 
 was possessed just of that scampish sort of nepotism which 
 leads the modest young relative to eat an uncle's dinners 
 and deride the donor. Julian's own table would have 
 ■gained the contempt of an editor of the Almanack des 
 Gourmands, Its frugality was frigidly parsimonious in 
 its character. The philosophic emperor was a vegetarian, 
 and even of vegetables he ate sparingly, but swiftly, 
 leaping up, as it were, from dining thereon, to hurry to 
 his books or the public business, which he quitted re- 
 luctantly when the hour of supper summoned him even 
 to a more frugal meal than the dinner, which he despatched 
 with a celerity not at all admired by those who dined 
 with him. -Nothing disgusted him so much as a gross 
 feeder, and probably nothing ever so greatly surprised 
 him as when, on taking possession of Constantinople, he 
 found one thousand cooks waiting to prepare the imperial 
 dinner! A thousand cooks for a man who could dine on 
 a boiled turnip ! The Constantines had been accustomed 
 to dine upon birds from the most distant climates, fish 
 from the most remote seas; to have a dessert of fruits 
 out of their natural seasons, and to drink foreign wines 
 cooled in the summer snows of the lofty hills. All this 
 was as useless to a man who needed but a crust and an 
 apple to calm his appetite, as were the golden basins and 
 the jewelled combs to an emperor like Julian, who seldom 
 washed even his face, and who not only never cleaned his 
 hair, but felt the lively luxury of leaving it undisturbed. 
 Julian in this respect was like Anthony Pasquin, who 
 was said to have died of a cold caught by washing his 
 face. There was a famous Irish member of Parliament, 
 who, unlike Julian, was a glutton at dinner, but who was 
 
408 TABLE TRAITS. 
 
 remarkable for his religious abstinence from all ablution. 
 His son was one day standing in the bow-window of 
 White's, when the sire was passing down the opposite side 
 of the street. I believe it was the noble lord who, when 
 Mr. Gunter in the hunting-field remarked that his horse 
 was too "hot" to ride comfortably, suggested to the 
 equestrian pastrycook that he should ice him. — I believe 
 it was the same noble lord who, on the first occasion 
 
 alluded to above, said to " Jack T ," " Jack ! what does 
 
 make your father's hands so dirty T' "Well!" said the 
 old Colonel's affectionate son, " I believe it arises from a 
 bad habit he has of putting them up to his face ! " And 
 so of Julian we may say, that if his hands were innocent 
 of water, his famous beard was dirtier than his hands, 
 and that it was not pleasant to lie near the emperor at 
 dinner, unless guardedly ensconced to the leeward of his 
 sacred and dirty person. 
 
 If Gratian, who was the first Roman emperor who 
 refused the pontifical robe, had lived but as became the 
 master of an imperial household, his sacrifice would have 
 had more merit; but the emperors of these times had 
 curious ideas as to duties. Thus the second Yalentinian 
 delighted in giving splendid dinners, but at these enter- 
 tainments he always, himself, fasted;— a most discouraging 
 course for the guests, — but he thought there was merit in 
 the work. But Theodosius was at least as good a man, 
 and we know that he enjoyed the sensual and social 
 pleasures of the table without excess; and the same taste 
 was shown by that emperor Maximus, who is said to 
 have espoused Helena, the daughter of a wealthy Caer- 
 narvonshire lord, and to have renewed the popularity of 
 boiled leeks in Rome; and this was a better taste than 
 that of Honorius, who took to feeding poultry and eating 
 them, while Stilicho ruled the empire, and the eunuchs 
 lived on the very fat of the land. It was decidedly better 
 
THE CiESARS AT TABLE. 409 
 
 too than the taste which led Yalentinian the third, after 
 dining with Petronius Maximus and winning his money, 
 to cany off his wife; a Tarquinian insult, which he paid 
 for, however, with his life. Avitus could indulge in such 
 freaks, however, with impunity; and he not only seduced 
 Roman matrons, but invited their husbands to dinner, 
 where the slaves smiled at the imperial raillery directed 
 against them while the courses were changing! His 
 successor, Majorianus, was a man of another stamp, and 
 I would fain believe the pleasant anecdote which says of 
 him that he went to Carthage in the disguise of his own 
 ambassador, and dined with Genseric the king, who was 
 especially chafed when he afterwards discovered that he 
 had entertained, without knowing it, the Emperor of 
 the Romans. Anthemius, if he be famous for little else, 
 is at least famous for the superb wedding-dinner with 
 which he celebrated the nuptials of his daughter with 
 Count Ricimer, a wicked son-in-law who devoured the 
 dinners of his "beau pere," and robbed him of his 
 estate; — no uncommon course for sons-in-law to take. 
 The count placed on the uneasy and vacant throne the 
 epicurean Glycorius, who, having murdered Julius Nepos 
 after a banquet, was made Archbishop of Milan, as one of 
 the recompenses of the act. And then the empire fell into 
 the delicate hands of the weak and beautiful Augustulus, 
 who could not find wherewith in the treasury to maintain 
 a decent table, and who was glad to accept clemency and 
 an annuity from Odoacer, whereby he was enabled, upon 
 six thousand pieces of gold annually, to keep such state 
 in the Castle of Lucullus in Campania, that the surround- 
 ing gentry visited him in shoals, and ate his dinners by 
 way of proof that they looked upon him as a man of the , 
 highest respectability. 
 
 And this was the end of the " twelve vultures," seen by 
 
410 TABLE TRAITS. 
 
 Eomulus, foreshadowing the " twelve centuries/' more or 
 less, that were to mark the duration of the dominion which 
 he founded; a dominion commenced by a hungry adven- 
 turer, and which crumbled to nothing in the hand of that 
 Augustulus, who was but too rejoiced to take in exchange 
 for it, the bed, board, and six thousand a-year with which 
 he set up as a hospitable country gentleman, in his rustic 
 villa, on the slopes of Campania. 
 
 As for the Caesars of the Eastern Empire, they were 
 rather Oriental despots than either Greek or Roman 
 monarchs, just as the Byzantines were ever more Asiatics 
 than Europeans. The sovereigns, for the most part, ate 
 at golden tables, and were served like gods. Some of 
 them, like Eomanus, were respectable cooks, and more 
 than one was discussing the merits of a new sauce or 
 dish, when the Saracens were knocking at the frontier 
 gates of the empire. The sort of merry humour indulged 
 in by others may be judged of by a single trait of Michael 
 the Drunkard. This amiable sovereign started up, one 
 day, from table, ere the imperial dinner was well over, 
 and assuming an episcopal dress, he descended into the 
 streets |followed by his courtiers. The latter bore the 
 vinegar and mustard that had been on the monarch's side- 
 board, and mixing the condiments together, they stopped 
 all passers-by, compelled them to kneel, and with horrible 
 profanity and mock psalmody, administered the Sacrament 
 with the above-named horribly compounded elements. 
 Such was one of the Eastern Caesars at and after dinner, 
 and the easy Byzantines were not much scandalized thereat. 
 Indeed, they troubled themselves very little about the 
 affairs of the government, or the doings of the governors ; 
 and it would never have entered the head of a Byzantine 
 
THE C^SARS AT TABLE. 411 
 
 subject to say of his son what the American citizen once 
 remarked, touching his heir, to Mrs. Trollope, namely, 
 that he would much sooner that his son got drunk three 
 times a-week than that he should refrain from meddling 
 with the politics of his times. 
 
 From the palaces of the Caesars, let us now pass into 
 the mansions of miscellaneous majesties, and see how the 
 first gentlemen of their respective days comported them- 
 selves "at meat." Yes, at meat; for "la viande du Roi" 
 was the consecrated phrase, and guards presented arms, 
 and courtiers bowed low, as the king's "meat" was 
 solemnly carried to the royal table, or borne to the bed- 
 side, where it remained under the name of an en cas, 
 "in case" the august appetite should be lively before 
 morning. 
 
THEIR MAJESTIES AT MEAT. 
 
 There was an old custom at Pisa, the origin of which 
 may be traced to the anti-judaical days of persecution. On 
 a certain day in the year, I believe, Good Friday or Easter 
 Sunday, every Jew discovered in the streets, was hunted 
 down by the populace. When the game was caught he 
 was weighed, and compelled to ransom himself by paying 
 his own weight of sweetmeats. It was an advantage, then, 
 at Pisa for a Jew to be of a Cassius cast. It was different 
 in other days, and climes, with regard to kings. Nations 
 used to weigh their monarchs yearly, and if the register 
 showed an increase of dignified obesity, great was the 
 popular rejoicing thereat. If, on the other hand, the too, 
 too solid flesh of the potentate had yielded to irresistible 
 influences, and the father of his people exhibited a falhng 
 away in his material greatness, the body of loyal subjects 
 went into mourning and tears, and deplored the evil days 
 on which they had fallen, when monarchs could not be kept 
 up to the old monarchical standard of corpulency. Kings 
 who cared for the affections of their people were, accord- 
 ingly, disinterestedly solicitous to support their corporeal 
 requirements ; for to be fat was to be virtuous, and he was 
 really the greatest of monarchs who required the greatest 
 circumference of belt. You must understand, however, 
 that if kings encouraged their own increase, it was disloyal 
 in the people to imitate them. The monarchs of old, in 
 this respect, were like our Henry VIII, who never stinted 
 
THEIR MAJESTIES AT MEAT. 413 
 
 his own appetite, but who imprisoned the Earl of Surrey 
 in Windsor Castle, for daring to touch a lamb chop on a 
 Friday. 
 
 The most gigantic of royal feeders placed on the record 
 of ancient history, was Thys, king of Paphlagonia, at 
 whose table ^^ the entire animal " was served by hundreds. 
 When he fell into the power of Persia he exhibited more 
 appetite than grief, and banqueted in such a style that 
 the courtiers spoke of it wonderingly to their king Arta- 
 xerxes. He replied significantly, '' Thys is making the 
 most of the shortness of life." 
 
 The kings of Per^a were but sorry hosts to dine with. 
 Their table was in a little recess divided from the outward 
 hall by a low curtain. The king sat alone in his alcove, 
 and could behold, without being seen, the guests in the 
 outer hall. The latter were of the highest rank; mere 
 younger brothers, civilians, and undignified people of that 
 sort, sat at meat in the galleries. It was only on two or 
 three high days that the king sat at the same table with 
 his subjects. The royalty of old Persia had once a repu- 
 tation for temperance, but to be " royally drunk " was no 
 uncommon characteristic of his majesty and the princes 
 of the blood. He generally made drinking parties of a 
 dozen favourites. These sat on the ground, while the 
 king lay on a gold couch, and the conclave drank like 
 dragoons, and got infinitely more tipsy. 
 
 In the banquets of state there were a few singularities. 
 Horses and ostriches appear in the bill of fare, among a 
 hundred other delicacies; but no guest did more than just 
 taste what was placed before him; and what he did not 
 eat, he carried home with him. A dainty bit from the 
 king's table was a present meet for lover to make to his 
 lady; and a wooer who brought a rump steak of horse- 
 flesh in his hand, straight from the regal banquet, was 
 scarcely a man to be refused anything. 
 
414 TABLE TKAITS. 
 
 There was something of grandeur in the banquets of 
 Cleopatra, when Antony dined with her. The service was 
 in gold, and she made a present of it to her visitor. On 
 the following day there was a new service, and it was again 
 presented to "the favoured guest." Antony himself ex- 
 hibited infinitely less taste at Athens. He erected in the 
 public theatre a scene representing the grotto of Bacchus, 
 dressed himself like the god, and, with a party of followers 
 as worthless as himself, sat down at day-break, in presence 
 of an admiring and crowded " house," and got dreadfully 
 drunk before breakfast time. And this knave aspired to 
 rule in Eome! * 
 
 Alexander, and, as may be seen in another page, Au- 
 gustus, was given to this sort of theological masquerading. 
 The first-named accepted banquets from his great officers ; 
 and these exhibited their taste by having all the fruit on 
 the table covered thickly with gold, which, when the fruit 
 itself was presented to the guests, was torn ofi" and flung 
 on the ground, for the benefit of the servants. The father 
 of Alexander had shown in his time a better example of 
 economy. He had but one gold cup, and to prevent that 
 from being stolen, he placed it every night under his pil- 
 low, and went to sleep upon it. The mad Antiochus, of 
 Syria, was of another kidney, for whenever he heard of a 
 drinking bout in his own city, he used to order his chariot, 
 and taking with him a measure of wine and a goblet, he 
 would rush down to the place and take a seat uninvited. 
 He was such indifferent company, however, that the guests 
 could not be prevailed upon to tarry, and even the offer of 
 his golden goblet was unable to bribe a man to sit and get 
 drunk with a witless king. 
 
 But the most extraordinary meal I have ever heard of 
 was that made by Cambes, king of Lydia. He was a 
 great eater, a great drinker, and of insatiable voracity. It 
 is told of him that he one night cut up his wife and de- 
 
THEIR MAJESTIES AT MEAT. 415 
 
 voured her, and that he awoke the next morning, with one 
 of her hands sticking in his mouth. But I have little 
 doubt that something of an allegory lies under this royal 
 story. Cambes probably had had an argument with his 
 consort, — a lady of the sort spoken of by Dr. Young as 
 one who 
 
 Shakes the curtain with her good advice. 
 
 His logic " cut up " her assertions, and thereon he ad- 
 dressed himself to sleep; but he no sooner awoke in the 
 morning than her hand was upon his mouth, to prevent 
 his speaking while slie reiterated her follies of the previous 
 night. Poor Cambes ! he cut his throat in order to escape 
 from a too loquacious consort, of whom he is accused of 
 being the murderer by the libelling Xanthus. 
 
 I may add to the record of these exemplary persons, the 
 name of Dionysius of Heraclea, who, through good living, 
 fell into such a condition of obesity and somnolency that 
 he could only be made conscious by running fine gold 
 needles into his flesh. What a droll thing it must have 
 been for his morning visitors who found the huge mass fast 
 asleep at table ! Shaking hands with him, or any other 
 equivalent ceremony, would have been useless. They ac- 
 cordingly took a gold needle from his girdle and tenderly 
 run it into his fat. When it reached a vital point, the un- 
 easy monarch snorted and opened one eye ; and this being 
 taken as an acknowledgment of their presence, he straight- 
 way went to sleep again. Ptolemy, the seventh king of 
 Egypt, was in nearly as deplorable a condition, and Magas 
 of Cyrene was perhaps even worse. The Ephori, it will be 
 remembered, had a^ horror of the Lacedaemonians getting 
 fat, and to prevent this undesirable consummation, the 
 youth were obliged to present themselves undraped to the 
 magistrates. Woe to the offenders with prominent sto- 
 machs, for they had them punched till the owners hardly 
 
416 TABLE TRAITS. 
 
 knew whether they stood on their head or their heels, and 
 could not digest a dinner for a month afterwards. 
 
 They were beaten almost as badly as the unlucky official 
 who went, in Parthia, by the name of the king's friend. It 
 was the duty of this minister to seat himself on the "ground 
 at the foot of the lofty couch on which the king lay, and 
 from which the sovereign flung refuse bits to his " friend." 
 If the latter ate too voraciously, his meat was snatched 
 from him, and he was beaten with rods till he had hardly 
 strength left to thank his majesty for the entertainment. 
 Of course, if he ate too slowly, he was subject to similar 
 castigation. The moral, perhaps, is, that ''fast" or "slow," 
 it is safer not to be "friends" with the king — of the 
 Parthians. 
 
 But let us turn from the ancient records of how the 
 monarchs of old deported themselves at their solemn 
 boards, and contemplate a few brief table traits in con- 
 nexion with the sovereigns of more modern times. 
 
 Clovis was a Christian king, but his behaviour at dinner 
 was not always so exemplary as might have been desired. 
 But the Chesterfields of his time were not exacting, and 
 they probably thought Clovis a gentleman when, on Bishop 
 (St. Gerome) taking leave of him after dinner, the monarch 
 pulled out a hair and placed it in the bishop's palm ; the 
 civil ceremony was imitated by the courtiers, and the pre- 
 late left the rude palace with more hairs on his hand than 
 he had on his head. 
 
 But dismissing the idea of running regularly through 
 the "' Tables of the Sovereigns of Europe," and elsewhere, 
 I will simply relate such incidents as are exemplary of 
 royal table life, without pausing to be very nice with re- 
 gard to chronological order. Thus it occurs to me that 
 Russia, in modern times, exhibits as much barbarism as 
 the court of Clovis, where Christianity and civilization 
 were, as yet, hardly known. 
 
THEIR MAJESTIES AT MEAT. 417 
 
 When Peter the Great and his consort dined together, 
 they were waited on by a page and the empress's favourite 
 chambermaid. Even at larger dinners, he bore uneasily 
 the presence and service of what he called listening 
 lacqueys. His taste was not an imperial one. He loved, 
 and most frequently ordered, for his own especial enjoy- 
 ment, a soup with four cabbages in it ; gruel ; pig, with sour 
 cream for sauce ; cold roast meat, with pickled cucumbers or 
 salad j lemons and lampreys ; salt meat, ham, and Limburgh 
 cheese. Previously to addressing himself to the "con- 
 summation" of this supply, he took a glass of aniseed 
 water. At his repast he quaffed quass, a sort of beer, 
 which would have disgusted an Egyptian ; and he finished 
 with Hungarian or French wine. All this was the repast 
 of a man who seemed, like the nation of which he was the 
 head, in a transition state, between barbarism and civiliza- 
 tion ; beginning dinner with cabbage water, and closing 
 the banquet with goblets of Burgundy. 
 
 Peter and his consort had stranger tastes than these. 
 This illustrious pair once arrived at Stuthof, in Germany, 
 where they claimed not only the hospitality of the table, 
 but a refuge for the night. The owner of the country 
 house at which they sought to be guests was a Herr 
 Schoppenhauer, who readily agreed to give up to them a 
 small bed-room, the selection of which had been made by 
 the emperor himself. It was a room without stove or 
 fire-place, had a brick floor, the walls were bare ; and the 
 season being that of rigorous winter, a difficulty arose as 
 to warming this chamber. The host soon solved the diffi- 
 culty. Several casks of brandy were emptied on the floor, 
 the furniture being first removed, and the spirit was then 
 set fire to. The czar screamed with delight as he saw the 
 sea of flames, and smelt the odour of the Cognac. The 
 fire was no sooner extinguished than the bed was replaced, 
 and Peter and Catherine straightway betook themselves to 
 
 E E 
 
418 TABLE TRAITS. 
 
 their repose, and not only slept profoundly all night in this 
 gloomy bower, amid the fumes and steam of burnt brandy, 
 but rose in the morning thoroughly refreshed and delighted 
 with their couch, and the delicate vapours which had 
 curtained their repose. 
 
 The emperor was pleased, because when an emergency 
 had presented itself, provision to meet it was there at 
 hand. Napoleon loved to be so served at his tables when 
 in the field. He was irregular in the hours of his repasts, 
 and he ate rapidly and not over delicately. The absolute 
 will which he applied to most things, was exercised also 
 in matters appertaining to the appetite. As soon as a 
 sensation of hunger was experienced, it must be appeased ; 
 and his table service was so arranged that, in any place 
 and at any hour, he had but to give expression to his will, 
 and the slaves of his word promptly set before him roast 
 fowls, cutlets, and smoking coffee. He dined off mutton 
 before risking the battle at Leipsic ; and it is said that he 
 lost the day because he was suffering so severely from 
 indigestion, that he was unable to arrange, with sufficient 
 coolness, the mental calculations which he was accustomed 
 to make as helps to victory. 
 
 As Napoleon, the genius of war, was served in the field, 
 Louis XV., the incarnation of selfishness and vice, was 
 served in his mistress's bower. That bower, built at 
 Choisy for Pompadour, cost millions ; but it was one of 
 the wonders of the world. For the royal entertainments, 
 there were invented those little tables, called " servants " 
 or " waiters ; " they were mechanical contrivances, that 
 immortalized the artist Loriot. At Choisy, every guest 
 had one of these tables to himself No servant stood by 
 to listen, rather than lend aid. Whatever the guest 
 desired to have, he had but to write his wish on paper, 
 and touch a spring, when the table sunk through the 
 flooring at his feet; and speedily re-appeared, laden with 
 
THEIR MAJESTIES AT MEAT. 419 
 
 fruits, with pastry, or with wine, according to the order 
 given. Nothing had been seen like this enchantment in 
 France before ; and nothing like it, it is hoped, will ever 
 be seen there or elsewhere again. The guests thought 
 themselves little gods, and were not a jot more reasonable 
 than Augustus and his companions, who sat down to 
 dinner attired as deities. When kings ape the majesty of 
 gods, it is time for the people to shake the majesty of 
 kings. 
 
 Perhaps Louis XY. never looked so little like a king as 
 when he dined or supped in public, — a peculiar manifesta- 
 tion of his kingly character. The Parisians and their 
 wives used .to hurry down to Versailles on a Sunday, to 
 behold the feeding of the beast which it cost them so 
 much to keep. On these occasions he always had boiled 
 eggs before him. He was uncommonly dexterous in 
 decapitating the shell by a single blow from his fork ; and 
 this feat he performed weekly at his own table, for the 
 sake of the admiration which it excited in the Cockney 
 beholders. But an egg broken by the king, or Damiens 
 broken alive upon the wheel, and torn asunder by wild 
 horses, — each was a sight gazed upon, even by the youthful 
 fair, with a sort of admiration for the executioner ! 
 
 The glory of the epicureanism of Louis XV. was his 
 " magic table," and the select worthless people especially 
 invited to dine with him thereat. In 1780 the Countess 
 of Oberkirch saw this table, even then a relic and wreck 
 of the past. She and a gay party of great people, who 
 yet hoped that God had created the world only for the 
 comfort of those whom He had honoured by allowing 
 them to be born " noble," paid a visit '' to the apartments 
 of the late king" in the Tuileries. There, among other 
 things, she saw the celebrated magic table, the springs of 
 whidh, she says, "had become rusty from disuse." The 
 good lady, who had not the slightest intention in tLe 
 
 E E 2 
 
420 TABLE TRAITS. 
 
 world to be satirical, thus describes the wondrous article, 
 at the making of which Pompadour had presided :— " It 
 was placed in the centre of a room, where none were 
 allowed to enter but the invited guests of Louis XV. It 
 would accommodate thirty persons. In the centre was a 
 cylinder of gilt copper, which could be pressed down by 
 springs, and would return with its top, which was sur- 
 rounded by a band, covered with dishes. Around were 
 placed four dumb waiters, on which would be found every- 
 thing that was necessary." In 1789 the Countess says, — 
 " This table no longer exists, having been long since de- 
 stroyed, with everything that could recall the last sad years 
 of a monarch, who would have been good if he had not 
 been perverted by evil counsels." 
 
 After all, the gastronomic greatness of Louis XV. was 
 small compared with that of his predecessor, Louis XIV. 
 The " state " of the latter was, in all things, more " cum- 
 bersome." To be helpless was to be dignified ; and to do 
 nothing for himself, and to think of nothing hut himself, 
 was the sole life-business of this very illustrious king. A 
 dozen men dressed him ; there was one for every limb that 
 had to be covered. Poor wretch ! His breakfast was as 
 lumbering a matter as his toilette; and he tasted nothing 
 till it had passed through the hands of half-a-dozen dukes. 
 It took even three noblemen, ending with a prince of the 
 blood, to present him a napkin with which to wipe 
 his lips, before he addressed himself to the more serious 
 business of the day. 
 
 Louis XIV. could not be properly got to the dinner-table, 
 entertained there, and removed, without a still more fussy 
 world of ceremony, and that of a very Chinese or Ko Ton 
 character. The ushers solemnly summoned the guard 
 \Fhen the cloth w^as to be laid, and a detachment of men 
 under arms were at once spectators and guardians at the 
 dressing of the table. They stood by, exceedingly edified, 
 
THEIR MAJESTIES AT MEAT. 421 
 
 no doubt, while the appointed officers touched the royal 
 napkin, spoon, plate, knife, fork, and tooth-picks, with a 
 piece of bread, which they subsequently swallowed. This 
 was the "trial" against poisoning. The dishes in the kitchen 
 were tried in the same way, and were then carried to table 
 escorted by a file of men with drawn swords. As the dishes 
 were placed on the table, the loyal officials bowed as though 
 some saintly relics were on the platter ! 
 
 If there was ceremony at the coming in of the meat, how 
 much more was there at the coming in of him who was 
 about to eat it ! Unhappy wretch! what splendid misery 
 enveloped his mutton-chop ! He was looked upon as very 
 august, but decidedly helpless. Did he wish to wipe his 
 fingers; three dukes and a prince only could present him 
 with a damp napkin ; but a dry one might be offered him 
 at dinner, without insult, by a simple valet. Philosophical 
 distinction ! Changing his plate required as much attendant 
 ceremony as would go to the whole crowning of a modern 
 constitutional king ; and when he asked for drink, there 
 was thunder in heaven, or something like it. The cup- 
 bearer solemnly shouted the king's desire to the buffet ; and 
 the bufFeteers presented goblets and flasks to the cup-bearer, 
 who carried them to the thirsty but necessarily patient 
 monarch ; and, when he finally received the draught into his 
 extended throat, all loyal men present seemed the better 
 for the sight. 
 
 But Louis XIV. was so well-used to this, and much more 
 ceremony than I have space to detail, that it interfered in 
 nowise with the comfortable indulgence of his appetite. 
 He was a very gifted eater. The rough old Duchess of 
 Orleans declares in her Memoirs, that she " often saw him 
 eat four platesful of different soups, a whole pheasant, a 
 partridge, a platefuU of salad, mutton hashed with garlick, 
 two good-sized slices of ham, a dish of pastry, and after- 
 wards fruit and sweetmeats !" At the end of such a repast 
 
422 TABLE TRAITS. 
 
 as this, this "most Christian" king (very ir^uch so, indeed I) 
 must have been in something of the condition of the young 
 gentleman who went out to dine, and who, after taking 
 enough for three boys of his size, and being invited to take 
 more, answered that he thought he could, if they would 
 allow him to stand ! 
 
 The Duchess of Orleans, however, is by no means 
 astonished at the Baal-like ability of the king. Of her own 
 performances in that way she says, "I am not good at 
 lying in bed ; as soon as I awake, I must get up. I seldom 
 breakfast, and then only on bread and butter. I take 
 neither chocolate, nor coffee, nor tea, not being able to 
 endure those foreign drugs. I am German in all my habits, 
 and like nothing in eating or drinking which is not con- 
 formable to our old customs. I eat no soup but such as I 
 can take with milk, wine, or beer. I cannot bear broth ; 
 whenever I eat anything of which it forms a part, I fall 
 sick instantly, my body swells, and I am tormented with 
 colics. When I take broth alone, I am compelled to vomit 
 even to blood, and nothing can restore the tone of my 
 stomach but — ham and sausagesF' Poor lady ! she reminds 
 me of the converted cannibal Carib, who was once sick, and 
 who being asked by a missionary what he could eat, an- 
 swered sentimentally, that he thought he could pick a bone 
 or two of a very delicate hand of a young child ! 
 
 At a later period even than that of the Duchess of 
 Orleans above-mentioned, the German taste could hardly 
 be said to have improved. For instances of this, I need 
 only refer to the Memoirs of the Margravine of Bareuth. 
 This lady was the daughter of that Frederic William of 
 Prussia, whose portrait is graphically drawn also by his own 
 son, and with additional light and shade by Voltaire. The 
 Princess Frederica subsequently married the Prince of 
 Bareuth — a mesalliance which did not displease her easy 
 parents; — they were not as proudly vexed at it as Isaac and 
 
THEIR MAJESTIES AT MEAT. 423 
 
 Eachel were at the marriage of their son Esau with the 
 daughter of Beeri the Hittite, which certainly sounds as if 
 Esau's father-in-law had been a pugilistic publican ; — the 
 Princess Frederica, I say, paints a portrait of her father 
 in very broad style. He used to compel her and his other 
 children to come to his room every morning at nine o'clock, 
 whence they were never allowed to depart till nine in the 
 evening, " pour quelque raison que ce fut." The time was 
 spent by the affectionate sovereign in swearing at them^ 
 and he added injury to insult by half-famishing them. 
 He begrudged them even a wretched soup made of bare 
 bones and salt. Occasionally, they were kept fasting the 
 whole day ; or, if he graciously allowed them a meal at his 
 own table, the royal beast would spit into the dishes from 
 which he had helped himself, in order to prevent their 
 touching them. At other times he forced them to swallow^ 
 compositions of the most disgusting description — '' ce qui 
 nous obligeait quelquefois de rendre, en sa presence, tout 
 ce que nous avions dans le corps ! " He would then throw 
 the plates at their heads ; and, as his children rushed by 
 him to escape his fury, the paternal brute, whom it is too 
 much flattery to himself, and too much injustice to the 
 brute creation so to name, would strike fiercely at them 
 with his crutch, and was eminently disappointed when he 
 failed to crack their little, hard, royal, but very dirty skulls. 
 It is known that this madman would have slain his own 
 son, "the rascal Fritz," as he, "the great Frederic," 
 as the world afterwards was used to call him; and 
 little doubt can exist that the great Frederic owed most 
 of his great vices, and none of his great qualities, to the 
 education which he received at the knees of his infamous 
 sire. 
 
 The history of the German courts abounds in traits 
 connected with the table, but I am compelled to go little 
 beyond the announcement of such a fact. One or two 
 
4S4 TABLE TRAITS. 
 
 more, however, I may be permitted to notice before finally 
 leaving this section of my multifaced subject. 
 
 Ernest the " Iron " was, perhaps, the least luxurious of 
 his race. He married Cymburga of Poland, the lady who 
 brought into the Austrian family the thick lips, which to 
 this day form a characteristic feature in the imperial 
 physiognomy. Cymburga cracked her nuts with her 
 fingers ; and when she trained her fruit-trees, she hammered 
 the nails into the wall with her clenched knuckles 1 Their 
 table was at once copious and simple. Their son Frederic 
 had less strength both of body and judgment. At near 
 fourscore years of age he sufi'ered amputation of the leg, 
 in order to get rid of a cancerous affection. He was " doing 
 well" after the operation, when he resolved upon dining 
 on melons. He was told that such a diet would be fatal 
 to him, as it had already been to one Austrian archduke 
 of his house. Frederic reflected that he would probably 
 die at all events, and that he had already reigned long'er 
 than any emperor since the days of Augustus, namely, 
 fifty-three years. " I will have melons," said he, *' betide 
 what may!" He ate unsparingly, and death followed close 
 upon the banquet. 
 
 Frederic would neither drink wine himself, nor allow 
 his consort to do so, although physicians declared that, 
 without it, she was not likely to achieve the honours of 
 maternity. She did abstain, and despite what the oracular 
 doctors had asserted, she became the mother of Maximilian, 
 a prince who drank wine enough to compensate for the 
 abstinence of both his parents. His second wife, Bianca of 
 Milan, whom Maximilian the "Moneyless" married for her 
 dowry, was, like the lady in Young's Satires, by no means 
 afraid to call things by their very broadest names ; and 
 she died of an indigestion, brought on by eating too 
 voraciously of snails ! They were of the large and lively 
 sort, still reared for the market in the field-presei*ves near 
 
THEIR MAJESTIES AT MEAT. 425 
 
 Ulm. If my readers should feel sick at the thought, let 
 them remember their juvenile days, and "periwinkles," 
 and be gentle in their strictures. Leopold the " Angel," 
 the second son of the Emperor Ferdinand, surpassed even 
 his father in abstinence. He reared the most odoriferous 
 of plants, but inflicted on himself the mortification of 
 never going near enough to scent them ; and, poor man ! 
 he thought that thereby he was adding a step to a ladder 
 of good works, by which he hoped to scale heaven ! 
 
 The grandson of Ferdinand, Joseph I., was a somewhat 
 free liver, and his intemperate diet was against him when 
 he caught the small-pox. But the medical men were 
 fiercer foes than his way of life ; for when the eruption was 
 at its worst, they hermetically closed his apartment, kept 
 up a blazing fire in^it, gave him strong drinks, swathed 
 him in twenty yards of English scarlet broadcloth, and 
 then published, on his dying, that his majesty's decease 
 was contrary to all the rules of art. His brother and 
 successor, Charles, did for himself what the doctors did for 
 Joseph. In 1740 he had the gout, and would go out 
 hunting in the wet. He was subsequently seized with 
 what would now be called incipient cholera, and he would 
 eat — not melons, like some of his obstinate and imperial 
 predecessors, but that delicate dish for an invalid, mush- 
 rooms stewed in oil! He ate voraciously, and the next 
 day symptoms ensued which, he was informed, heralded 
 death. Charles, like Louis Philippe, would not believe his 
 own medical advisers; and there was some reason in this, 
 for they stood at his bed-side, disputing as to whether 
 mushrooms were a digestible diet or the contrary. The 
 emperor dismissed them from his presence, ordered 
 his favourite mushrooms, ate the forbidden "fruit" with 
 intense gastronomic delight, and died in peace. 
 
 The table of the great Frederic of Prussia was regu- 
 lated by himself. There were always from nine to a dozen 
 
426 ^ TABLE TRAITS. 
 
 dishes, and these were brought in one at a time. The 
 king carved the solitary dish, and helped the company. 
 One singular circumstance connected with this table was, 
 that each dish was cooked by a different cook, who had a 
 kitchen to himself ! There was much consequent expense, 
 with little magnificence. Frederic ate and drank, too, 
 like a boon companion. His last work, before retiring to 
 bed, was to receive from his chief cook the bill of fare for 
 the next day; the price of each dish, and of its separate 
 ingredients, was marked in the margin. The monarch 
 looked it cautiously through, generally made out an im- 
 proved edition, cursed all cooks as common thieves, and 
 then flung down the money for the next day's expenses. 
 
 The late King of Prussia was a sensible man with respect 
 to his table arrangements. On ^ala days, and when 
 it concerned the honour of Prussia that the royal hospi- 
 tality should assume an appearance of splendour, his table 
 was as glittering and gastronomic as goldsmiths and cooks 
 could make it. But in the routine of private and unoffi- 
 cial life, it was simply that of an opulent merchant, 
 something, perhaps, like that of Sir Balaam after he had 
 grown rich. Even then he partook only of the least 
 savoury dishes, and it was seldom, indeed, that he exceeded 
 a third glass of wine. His example enforced moderation, 
 but it did not mar enjoyment, for he loved every man 
 around him to be merry and wise. 
 
 His own wisdom he manifested by a characteristic trait 
 in 1809. The royal family had returned to Berlin for the 
 first time since the war had broken out in 1806. The 
 court marshal, deeming that the piping times of peace 
 were going to endure for ever, waited on Frederic William, 
 and asked what amount of champagne he should order for 
 the royal cellars. " None," replied the king ; '^ I will 
 drink neither champagne nor any other wine, until all my 
 subjects — even the very poorest — can afford to drink beer 
 
THEIR MAJESTIES AT MEAT. 427 
 
 again." The incident was made public, and the king's 
 poor neighbours were especially delighted. Many of them 
 testified their gratitude by sending from their gardens or 
 little farms various articles for his table. The king ate 
 thereof with pleasure, and did not forget the givers. 
 
 I have spoken of his moderation, but here is an ad- 
 ditional trait from his table worth mentioning. When he 
 came to the crown, the grand marshal proposed a more 
 extended list of viands for* the royal table. " Marshal," 
 said the king in reply, " I do not feel that my stomach 
 has become more capacious since I became king. We will 
 let well alone, and dine to-day even as we have done 
 heretofore." 
 
 In another page I have spoken of Bishop Eglert supping 
 with the king. Such a guest was not an unfrequent one 
 at the royal dining-table. On one occasion the bishop had 
 preached before the court in the morning from Luke 
 xiv. 8 — 11: "When thou art bidden of any man to a 
 wedding, sit not down in the highest room, lest a more 
 honourable man than thou be bidden of him ; and he that 
 bade thee and him come and say unto thee. Give this man 
 place, and thou begin with shame to take the lower room," 
 &c. kc. 
 
 The bishop profited by the opportunity to expatiate on 
 the virtues of diffidence and humility, insisting on their 
 observance as necessary for the preservation of our happi- 
 ness. Now, many dignified officials were present at the 
 banquet in question, and the bishop, who had entered the 
 saloon last, (which does not say much for the courtesy of 
 those who preceded him,) meekly took his place at the 
 lower end of the table. There the king's scrutinizing eye 
 fell upon him ; and " Eglert," said Frederic William, " I 
 see you are self-applying the text from which you preached 
 to us to-day. But, if I remember rightly, it is also written, 
 ^ Friend, go higher.' Come, then, take this chair that is 
 
428 TABLE TRAITS. 
 
 near to me!" and the simple but highly embarrassed 
 prelate walked blushingly to the station appointed him, and 
 all in his vicinity began to recognise a man whom the 
 king himself delighted to honour. 
 
 This anecdote reminds me, albeit it be ^^rue with a 
 difference," of one told of the second of the seven Dukes 
 of Guise, Duke Francis. This celebrated individual was, 
 during one part of his bloody career, engaged in the ser- 
 vice of the Pope, to fight the ^battles of the latter against 
 the King of Naples. He was not successful, and his ho- 
 liness showered down upon him mordant epigrams and 
 invitations to dinner. He had accepted one of the latter, 
 and repaired to the sacro-regal board, after a day in the 
 course of which he had been engaged serving as acolyte 
 in the Papal chapel, and holding up the trains of very 
 obese cardinals. In the banqueting-hall of the descendant 
 of the poor fisherman, he meekly took the lowest seat. He 
 had scarcely done so, than a French lieutenant endea- 
 voured to thrust in below him. " How now, friend!" 
 said the haughty enough Guise ; ^' why pushest thou so 
 rudely to come where there is no room for thee ? " " Marry ! " 
 said the soldier, "for this reason, that it might not be 
 said that the representative of a king of France had taken 
 the last place at a priest's table ! " It was a bold piece of 
 table-talk to so powerful a man as Guise, who recovered, 
 and added to his reputation when he subsequently re- 
 gained, Calais from the English. Previously to this last 
 feat, when the occupation of Calais formed the subject of 
 conversation at social boards, there arose the proverbial 
 expression applied to the bravest of untried men, and ho- 
 nourable to the reputation of our own ancestors, — " He is 
 not the sort of man to drive the English out of France ! " 
 The proverb died out of French society from the day 
 when Guise drove old Lord Wentworth out of Calais, and 
 cheated his duchess out of the silks which he found 
 
THEIR MAJESTIES AT MEAT. 429 
 
 therein, and in which he attired the courtesans whom he 
 invited to his ducal but not dignified table. 
 
 It may fairly be asserted that kings may wear as graceful 
 an aspect as guests at others' tables, as they do when 
 enacting the host at their own. The Prince Regent, dining 
 off the mutton which he had helped to cook at Colonel 
 Hanger's, is indeed no very edifying spectacle. I will in- 
 troduce my readers to a jfoyal guest of what Hamlet would 
 call ^^ another kidney." 
 
 When the Prussian general Koeckeritz had completed 
 his fiftieth year of service in 1809, he was residing in 
 modest apartments, becoming his celibate condition, near 
 the Neustadt Gate at Potsdam. On the dawn of the day 
 of his martial jubilee, he was harmoniously greeted by the 
 bands of the garrison ; but the hautboys did not discourse, 
 such sweet music as was conveyed to him in a letter from 
 the king, full of expressions of gratitude for services ren- 
 dered by him during a long half-century to the crown. At 
 a grand review held in honour of the day, the king em- 
 braced him in presence of the army, giving in his person 
 the accolade to eVery other faithful soldier who had served 
 as long ; and when this had been done, Frederic William 
 not only declared he would escort the old warrior to his 
 plainly furnished lodgings, but requested to be invited to 
 the dejeuner ct la fourchette, which he assumed must then 
 be wanting. Koeckeritz had the pride of Caleb Balder- 
 stone, and he turned pale at the idea of exposing his do- 
 mestic economy to the eyes of a king and court. He 
 grew eloquent in excuses, protested that he was unworthy 
 of the honour designed for him, and piteously muttered an 
 apologetical phrase about ^^ old bachelors." " Then why are 
 you a bachelor f asked the monarch : *^ I have often coun- 
 selled you to marry, and this very day you shall be pu- 
 nished for your disobedience." '^ Well," said the general, 
 with a sigh, denoting the resignation of despair, ^4f it 
 
430 TABLE TRAITS. 
 
 must be so, I trust your majesty will allow me a few hours 
 in order to make fitting preparation." The spirit that 
 possessed Caleb Balderstone suggested this petition. " Not 
 five minutes 1" exclaimed the sovereign ; " you surely have 
 a crust of bread and a glass of wine to give to us who are 
 your comrades, and we desire no more ! Come along, 
 gentlemen !" 
 
 Of course, no further resistance was to be thought of, 
 and the gay and brilliant escort led the grave Koeckeritz 
 along, looking very much like a criminal who was about to 
 be hanged with riotous solemnity at his own gates. 
 
 But, when he reached those gates, his surprise was ex- 
 treme. The threshold was covered with flowers, the little 
 hall was lined with the royal servants in their state suits, 
 and the space in front of the house was partly occupied by 
 a score of " trumpets," who no sooner perceived the ap- 
 proach of the hero of the day than they received him, as 
 our theatrical orchestras do stage kings, with a " flourish." 
 It is hardly neces3ary to add, that when the old general 
 conducted his guests within, he found there such a banquet 
 as Aladdin furnished his widowed mother with by means 
 of the lamp. Everything was there, whether in or out of 
 season j and the rare-looking flasks promised pleasure less 
 equivocal than that held out by a Calais Boniface upon his 
 cards, whereon his English visitors were told, that " the 
 wine shall leave you nothing to hope for !" 
 
 " Oh ! oh 1" exclaimed the king, '' here is bachelor's fare 
 with a vengeance ! Let us be seated, and show that our 
 appetites can appreciate what our comrade Koeckeritz has 
 provided for them." Monarch and servant, honouring and 
 honoured, sat side by side; and so gay and so prolonged 
 was the festival, that the king surprised all those who knew 
 how strictly he lived by rule, by ordering the dinner at 
 the palace to be retarded for a couple of hours. At that 
 banquet he entertained the veteran^ aflecting to do so in 
 
THEIR MAJESTIES AT MEAT. 431 
 
 return for the hospitality displayed by the latter in the 
 morning. The scene was not without its moving incidents, 
 for the king had contrived another surprise whereby to 
 gratify his old friend and servant. As the monarch led 
 him by the hand to the dining-room, there stood before 
 him three of the surviving friends of his youth who had 
 fought with him in the Seven Years' War, and whom he 
 had not seen for years. The king had got them together, 
 not without difficulty ; the general joy that ensued was as 
 unalloyed as humanity could make it, and never did 
 monarch sit at meat with more right to feel pleased, than 
 Frederic William on this day of Koeckeritz's jubilee. It 
 was a day that Henri IV. of France would have delighted 
 in. That king is said never to have dined better than one 
 evening previous to the battle of Ivry, when he was so- 
 journing in a country house under the name of a French 
 officer. There were no provisions there, but the solitary 
 lady who was the chatelaine intimated that there was a 
 retired tradesman who lived near, who was the possessor 
 of a fine turkey, and who would contribute it towards a 
 dinner, if he were only invited to partake of it. " Is he a 
 jolly companion?" asked the supposed officer. The reply 
 being affirmatively, the citizen and turkey were invited to- 
 gether, and two merrier guests never sat down with a lady 
 to cut up a bird and crush a bottle. Henri was in the 
 most radiant of humours ; and it was when he was at his 
 brightest, that the bourgeois avowed that he had known him 
 from the beginning, and that after dining with a king of 
 France, he trusted that the monarch would not object to 
 grant him letters of nobility. Henri laughed, which was 
 as good as consenting, and asked what arms his countship 
 would assume? *^ I will emblazon the turkey that founded 
 my good fortune," answered the aspirant for nobility. 
 " Ventre Saint -Oris !" exclaimed the king, laughing more 
 imn.oderately, '^ then you shall be a gentleman, and bear 
 
432 TABLE TRAITS. 
 
 your turkey ^en pal' on a shield!" The happy citizen 
 purchased a territorial manor near Alengon, and le Comte 
 Morel d'Inde was uot a conte pour rive. 
 
 The Russian Empress Catherine used to affect the good 
 fellowship that was natural to the first of the Bourbon 
 kings of France. When she dined with the highly 
 honoured officers of the regiment of which she was 
 colonel, she used to hand to each a glass of spirits before 
 the l:^nquet commenced. At her own table the number 
 of guests was usually select, generally under a dozen. 
 The lord of the bedchamber sat opposite to her, her own 
 seat being at the centre of one of the sides, carved one of 
 the dishes, and presented it to her. She took once of 
 what was so offered, but afterwards dispensed with such 
 service. In her days, many of the Russian nobility kept 
 open tables. Any one who had been duly introduced, 
 and knew not where to dine, had only to call at a house 
 where he was known, and to leave word that he intended 
 to dine there in the afternoon. He was sure to be 
 welcomed. At the present time, the Russians are more 
 civilized and less hospitable. 
 
 J^rmann describes the imperial kitchen at St. Petersburg 
 as good, delicate, and " meagre,"- — the latter being a con- 
 sequence of the continual eating that is going on, and 
 the necessity which follows of providing what is light 
 of digestion. The imperial household tables in the days 
 of Paul were divided into ^^ stations," an arrangement 
 which took its rise from a singular incident. The late 
 empress, like our own Queen Adelaide, was given to 
 inspect the ^^ domestic accounts," and she was puzzled by 
 finding among them "a bottle of rum" daily charged to 
 the Naslednik, or heir apparent! Her imperial Majesty 
 turned over the old " expenses" of the household, to dis- 
 cover at what period her son had commenced this reprobate 
 course of daily rum-drinking; and found, if not to her 
 
THEIR MAJESTIES AT MEAT. 433 
 
 horror, at least to the increase of her perplexity, that it 
 dated from the very day of his birth. The "bottle of 
 rum" began with the baby, accompanied the boy, and 
 continued to be charged to the man. He was charged as 
 drinking upwards of thirty dozen of fine old Jamaica 
 yearly ! The imperial mother was anxious to discover if 
 any other of the Czarevitch babies had exhibited the 
 same alcoholic precocity; and it appears that they were 
 all alike ; daily, for upwards of a century back, they Stood 
 credited in the household books for that terrible " bottle 
 of rum." The empress continued her researches with the 
 zeal of an antiquary, and her labours were not unre- 
 warded. She at last reached the original entry. Like all 
 succeeding ones, it was to the effect of ^^a bottle of rum 
 for the Naslednikj" but a sort of editorial note on the 
 margin of the same page intimated the wherefore : ^* On 
 account of violent toothache, a teaspoonful with sugar to 
 be given, by order of the physician of the imperial court." 
 The teaspoonful for one day had been charged as a bottle, 
 and the entry once made, it was kept on the books to the 
 profit of the unrighteous steward, until discovery checked 
 the fraud, — a fraud, more gigantically amusing than that 
 of the illiterate coachman, who set down in his harness- 
 room book, " Two penn'orth of whipcord, 6d" The 
 empress showed the venerable delinquency to her husband, 
 Paul ; and he, calculating what the temporary toothache of 
 the imperial baby Alexander had cost him, was affrighted 
 at the outlay, and declared that he would revolutionise 
 the kitchen department, and put himself out to board. 
 The threat was not idly made, and it was soon seriously 
 realized. A gastronomic contractor was found who 
 farmed the whole palace, and did his spiriting admirably. 
 He divided the imperial household into "stations." The 
 first was the monarch's especial table, for the supply of 
 which he charged the emperor and empress fifty roubles 
 
 F F 
 
434 TABLE TRAITS. 
 
 each daily; the table of the archdukes and archduchesses 
 was supplied at half that price ; the guests of that table, 
 of whatever rank, were served at the same cost. The 
 ladies and gentlemen of the household had a "station," 
 which was exceedingly well provisioned, at twenty roubles 
 each. The graduated sliding scale continued to descend 
 in proportion to the status of the feeders. The upper 
 servants had superior stomachs, which were accounted 
 of aS being implacable at less than fifteen roubles each. 
 Servants in livery, with finer lape but coarser digestions, 
 dieted daily at five roubles each; and the grooms and 
 scullions were taken altogether at three roubles a-head. 
 ^^ A wonderful change," says Jermann, " ensued in the 
 whole winter palace. The emperor declared he had 
 never dined so well before. The court, tempted by the 
 more numerous courses, sat far longer at table. The 
 maids of honour got fresh bloom upon their cheeks, and 
 the chamberlains and equerries rounder faces; and most 
 flourishing of all was the state of the household expenses, 
 although these diminished by one-half. In short, every 
 one, save cook and butler, was content; and all this was 
 the result of ' a bottle of rum,' from which the Emperor 
 Alexander, when heir to the crown, had been ordered 
 by the physician to take a spoonful for the toothache." 
 
 Herr Jermann, who was manager of the imperial com- 
 pany of German actors in St. Petersburg, frequently 
 dined at the table of the "second station," or officials* 
 table. There were six dishes and a capital dessert. Hq 
 describes the "drinkables" as consisting of one bottle 
 of red and one of white wine, two bottles of beer, one of 
 kislitschi, and quass ad libitum. The dinner he speaks 
 lightly of, as inferior on the point of cookery to that of the 
 best restaurants in the capital. The wine was a light 
 Burgundy ; the beer heavy and Russian. The kislitschi 
 must have been a powerful crusher of the appetite, it 
 
THEIR MAJESTIES AT MEAT. 435 
 
 being a sour-sweet drink, prepared from honey, water, 
 lemon-juice, and a decoction of herbs. Quass is a plain, 
 cheap beverage, the better sort of which is extracted from 
 malt, while an inferior sort is an extract of bread-crusts. 
 It is the national drink of the lower orders. A stranger 
 finds it at first detestable ; but he not only soon becomes 
 reconciled to it, but generally prefers it to any other 
 beverage, especially in the brief scorching summer of St. 
 Petersburg, when the cooling properties of quass are its 
 great recommendation. 
 
 To talk of the fierceness of a Russian summer seems 
 paradoxical, but it is simple truth ; and probably the 
 court of Naples itself, throughout its long season of heat, 
 does not consume so much ice as their imperial Muscovite 
 majesties do in the course of their slow-to-come, quick- to- 
 go, and sharp-while-it-lasts summer. Nay, the whole 
 capital eats ice at this season. Ice is thought such a 
 "necessary" of life, that the first question in taking a 
 house is, probably, touching the quality and capability of 
 the ice- cellar, wherein they pack away as much of the 
 Neva as they can in solid blocks. They eat it and drink 
 it, surround their larders with it, and mix it with the 
 water, beer, quass — in short, with whatever they drink. 
 Nay, more, when there is a superabundance of the mate- 
 rial, they place it under their beds and on their stoves to 
 cool their apartments. So tremendous is the dust and 
 heat of a Russian summer, that, for inconvenience, it is only 
 the opposite extreme of annoyance to that experienced in 
 the wintry visitations of frost. The ice-tubs of the popular 
 vendors in the streets are enveloped and covered with wet 
 cloths, to protect them from the heat of the sun. I need 
 not say that this is not the season at which a visitor should 
 resort to the capital. St. Petersburg in January, and 
 Naples in July, are the respective times and places to be 
 observed by those who can bear the consequences. 
 
 F F 2 
 
436 TABLE TRAITS. 
 
 I do not know what may be the case with regard to the 
 fruit 6aten at the imperial table ; but, generally speaking, 
 fruit is never eaten by a Eussian until it has been blest by 
 a priest. Jermann, alluding to this custom, praises it on 
 sanitary grounds, for, he says, the fruit has no chance of 
 earning a benediction unless it be ripe ; but if it then be 
 taken to church, the blessing is granted with much attend- 
 ant solemnity. 
 
 I do not believe that the czars were ever accustomed to 
 dine in such state as the kaisers. The old emperors of 
 Germany, on state occasions, were waited on at dinner by 
 the two happy feudatory princes, of the empire. On one 
 of these occasions, we are told that old General Dalzell, 
 the terrible enemy of the Scottish Covenanters, was invited 
 to dine with the kaiser, and the prince-waiter nearest to 
 him in attendance was no less a personage than the 
 Prince of Modena, head of the house of Este. Some 
 years afterwards, the Duke of York (James TI.) invited 
 Dalzell to dine with himself and Mary of Modena. That 
 proud lady, however, made some show of reluctance to sit 
 down en famille with the old general ; but the latter 
 lowered her pride by telling her, that he was not unac- 
 quainted with the greatness of the princes of Modena, and 
 that the last time he had sat at table with the Emperor of 
 Germany, a prince of that house was standing in attend- 
 ance behind the emperor's chair. 
 
 There were other good points about Dalzell's character ; 
 in proof of which may be cited his dining with Dundas, 
 an old Covenanting Scotch laird, who would not forego 
 his long prayers before dinner, and who especially prayed 
 that Dalzell and his royal master might have their hard 
 hearts softened towards the Covenanting children of the 
 Lord. When the prayer was ended, and dinner about to 
 begin, Dalzell complimented his host on his courage in 
 fearing man less than God. The anecdote reminds me of 
 
THEIR MAJESTIES AT MEAT. 437 
 
 one in connexion with a dinner given by a gentleman of 
 one of our ^' Protestant denominations," in honour of the 
 presence of a new minister and his bride. Prayer preceded 
 the repast, and it was given by the host, who, introducing 
 therein the welcomed strangers, said, "We thank thee, 
 O Lord, that thou hast conducted hither in safety thy 
 servants, our new minister and his wife. It is thou, 
 Lord, who preservest both man and beast ! " This was 
 more like a kick than a compliment ; but it only called 
 up a smile on the pretty features of the minister's lady. 
 
 Let us now cross the Atlantic, with Cortez and his com- 
 panions, and contemplate Montezuma in his household and 
 at his table. Barbarian as the Spanish invaders accounted 
 him to be, he was superior in many respects to most of 
 his royal contemporaries in Europe. He was not less 
 magnificent than Solomon, and he was far more cleanly 
 than Louis XIV. 
 
 On the terraced roof of his palace, thirty knights could 
 tilt at each other, without complaining of want of space. 
 His armouries were filled with weapons almost as destruc- 
 tive as any to be found in the arsenals of civilized Christian 
 kings. His granaries were furnished with provisions paid 
 by tributaries ; three hundred servants tended the beauti- 
 ful birds of his aviaries ; his menageries were the wonder 
 and terror of beholders ; and his dwarfs were more hideous, 
 and his ladies more dazzling, than potentate had ever before 
 looked upon with contempt or admiration. His palace 
 within and without was a marvel of Aztec art. It was 
 surrounded by gardens, glad with fountains and gay 
 flowers. One thousand ladies shared the retirement of 
 this splendid locality, with a master more glittering than 
 anything by which he was environed, — who changed his 
 apparel four times daily, never putting on again a garment 
 he had once worn, and who, eating off and drinking from 
 gold, (except on state occasions, when his table was covered 
 
438 TABLE TRAITS. 
 
 with services of Cholulan porcelain,) never used a second 
 time the vessels which had once ministered to the in- 
 dulgence of his appetite. 
 
 It is said eulogistically of his cooks, that they had thirty 
 different ways of preparing meat, — a poor boast, perhaps, 
 compared with that of the Parisian chefs, who have six 
 hundred and eighty-five ways to dress eggs ! Three 
 hundred dishes were daily placed before the monarch ; and 
 such as were required to be kept hot at table were in 
 heated earthenware stands made for the purpose. And it 
 is even asserted, that this autocrat occasionally killed time 
 before dinner by watching the cooking of his viands, a 
 practice in which, according to Peter Pinder, that honest 
 old English king used to indulge, who dined off boiled 
 mutton at two, and to whom the funniest sight in the world 
 was the clown in a pantomime swallowing carrots. 
 
 The ordinary dishes of Montezuma consisted of very 
 dainty fare; namely, domestic fowls, geese, partridges, 
 quails, venison, Indian hogs, pigeons, hares, rabbits, and 
 other productions of his country, including — it is alleged 
 by some and denied by others — some very choice dairy-fed 
 baby, when this choice article happened to be in season! 
 In cold weather enormous torches, that flung forth not 
 only light but warmth and aromatic odours, lent ad- 
 ditional splendour to the scene; and to temper at once the 
 glare and the heat, screens with deliciously droll devices 
 upon them, framed in gold, were placed before the bril- 
 liant flame. 
 
 The sovereign sat, like his links, also protected by a 
 screen. He was not as barbarous as the most Christian 
 kings of France, who fed in public ; nor was he personally 
 tended like them by awkward Ganymedes of a middle age. 
 Four Hebes stood by the low throne and table of their 
 master, and these poured water on his hands, and offered 
 him the napkin, white as driven snow, or as the cloth on 
 
THEIR MAJESTIES AT MEAT, 439 
 
 t^^hich the four hundred dishes stood waiting his attention. 
 Women as fair presented him with bread ; but even these 
 fair ministers retired a few steps, when his sacred majesty 
 addressed himself to the common process of eating. Then 
 a number of ancient bat sprightly nobles took their place. 
 With these Montezuma conversed; and, when he was par- 
 ticularly pleased with a sage observation or a sprightly 
 remark, a plate of pudding bestowed by the royal hand 
 made one individual happy, and all his fellows bitterly 
 jealous. The pudding, or whatever the dish might be, 
 was eaten in silent reverence; and while an Aztec emperor 
 was at meat, no one in the palace dared, at peril of his life, 
 speak above his breath. Montezuma is described as being 
 but a moderate eater, but fond of fruits, and indulging, 
 with constraint upon his appetite, in certain drinks which 
 were of a stimulating quality, such as are found in coun- 
 tries where civilization and luxury are at their highest. 
 
 " One thing I forgot, and no wonder," says Bernal 
 Diaz, "to mention in its place, and that is, during the 
 time Montezuma was at dinner, two very beautiful women 
 were busily employed making small cakes, with eggs and 
 other things mixed therein. These were delicately white, 
 and when made, they presented them to him on plates 
 covered with napkins. Also, another kind of bread was 
 brought to him on long leaves, and plates of cakes re- 
 sembling wafers. After he had dined, they presented to 
 him three little canes, highly ornamented, containing 
 liquid amber, mixed with a herb they call tobacco ; and 
 when he had sufficiently viewed and heard the singers, 
 dancers, and buffoons, he took a little of the smoke of 
 one of those canes, and then laid himself down to sleep. 
 The meal of the monarch ended, all his guards and atten- 
 dants sat down to dinner, and, as near as I could judge, 
 about a thousand plates of those eatables that I have 
 mentioned, were laid before them, with vessels of foaming 
 
440 TABLE TRAITS. 
 
 chocolate, and fruit in immense quantities. For his women 
 and various inferior servants, his establishment was of a 
 prodigious expense, and we were astonished, amid such a 
 profusion, at the vast regularity that prevailed." 
 
 What a contrast with the meal of this splendid barbarian 
 is that of princes of the same complexion, but of different 
 race, the Arab ! We may fittingly include among sove- 
 reigns those Arab princes whose word, if it be not heeded 
 far, is promptly obeyed within the little circle of their rule. 
 Skins on the ground serve for tablecloths ; the dishes are, 
 in their contents, only the reflection of each other, and 
 in the centre of the array whole lambs or sheep lie boiled 
 or roasted. The chief and his followers dine in successive 
 relays of company. Sometimes the skin is spread before 
 the door of the tent, whether in a street or in the plain, and 
 the passers-by, even to the beggars, invited with a '^ Bis- 
 millah," In God's name, fall to ; and having eaten, exclaim, 
 ^^ Hamdallilah !" God be praised ! and go their way. 
 
 Not less may we include, in the roll of Majesty at Meat, 
 those Pilgrim Fathers who were the pioneers of civiliza- 
 tion and liberty in America. Scant indeed was the table 
 of that " sovereign people," until they found security to 
 sow seed, and reap the harvest in something like peace. 
 The first meal which they enjoyed, after long months of 
 labour, disease, and famine, was when they had constructed 
 the little fort at Plymouth, behind which they might eat 
 in safety and thankfulness. "The captain," says Mr. 
 Bartlett, in his " Pilgrim Fathers," " had brought with 
 him ^ a very fat goose,' and those on shore had ^ a fat crane, 
 and a mallard,' and ^a dried neat's tongue.' This fare 
 was, no doubt, washed down with good English beer and 
 strong waters ; and thus, notwithstanding the gloom that 
 hung over them, the day passed cheerfully and sociably 
 away." Such was the first official dinner of the " majesty 
 of the people " beyond the Atlantic. 
 
THEIR MAJESTIES AT MEAT. 441 
 
 And having got to the "majesty of the people/' I am 
 reminded of a . " popular majesty/' the citizen king, Louis 
 Philippe. He was a monarch economically minded, and 
 kept the most modest yet not worst furnished of tables. 
 His family often sate down before he arrived, detained as 
 he often was by state affairs. When all rose as he quietly 
 entered the dining-room, his stereotyped phrase was, 
 " Que personne ne se derange pour moi," and therewith 
 ensued as little ceremony as when '^William Smith" and 
 his household sate down to an uncrowned dinner at the 
 little inn at Newhaven. 
 
 They who are curious to see how admirably Louis 
 Philippe was constituted for making a poor-law com- 
 missioner, or a parochial relieving overseer, should peruse 
 the graphic biography of the king written by Alexander 
 Dumas. Therein is a list, made out by tlie monarch, of 
 what he thought was sufficient for the table of the princes 
 and princesses ; and Louis of Orleans condescends to name 
 the number of plates of soup, or cups of coffee, that he 
 deemed sufficient for the requirement and support of the 
 younger branches of his house. It shows that the soul of 
 a crafty "gargottier" was in the body of the citizen king. 
 But we have not yet contemplated the appearance and 
 behaviour of our own sovereigns at table, out of respect 
 for whom we now allot a chapter, but a brief one, t\. 
 themselves. 
 
ENGLISH KINGS AT THEIR TABLES. 
 
 The utilitarians of history have declared that half our 
 treasured incidents of story are myths. Rufus was not 
 slain by Sir Walter Tyrrell ; Richard III. was a marvel- 
 lously proper man ; and the young princes were not 
 smothered in the Tower. They have laid their hands on 
 our legends, as Augustus did his on the nose of the dead 
 Alexander, and with the same effect, — under the touch it 
 crumbled into dust. The infidels refuse even to have 
 faith in that table trait of Alfred, which showed him 
 making cakes, or rather marring them, in the neat-herd's 
 cottage. Mr. Wilkie may have prettily painted the inci- 
 dent, but its existence, anywhere but on canvas and in 
 the poet's brain, they ruthlessly deny. I do not know 
 but that they are right. 
 
 We march into the bowels of more trustworthy ground, 
 when we pass the frontier of the Roman period. William 
 the Norman we know had a huge appetite for venison ; 
 and the Saxon chronicler says, that he loved the "high 
 deer " as if he had been their father, which is but an 
 equivocal compliment to his paternal affection. His table 
 indulgences cost the life of hundreds, and the ruin of tens 
 of hundreds. It brought on corpulency ; his corpulency 
 begot a poor joke in Philip of France ; and of this joke 
 was born such wrath in the soul of William, that he 
 carried fire and sword into that kingdom, and was cut 
 
ENGLISH KINGS AT THEIR TABLES. 443 
 
 short in his career, ere he had accomplished the full 
 measure of his revenge. 
 
 Kufus was as fat as his father, and as majestic both in 
 his oaths and his appetites. To every passion he yielded 
 himself a slave ; and he feasted, like so many who would 
 affect to be disgusted at his dishonesty, without troubling 
 himself as to who " suffered." He never paid a creditor 
 whom he could cheat ; and again, like many of the same 
 class, he was most affable at table ; his drinking com- 
 panions were on an equality with him ; and in such fel- 
 lowship, over gross food and huge goblets mantling to the 
 brim, he cut unclean jokes on his own unclean deeds, at 
 which his servile and drunken hearers roared consumedly, 
 and swore he was a god. There was some grandeur in his 
 ideas, however, for he built Westminster Hall, as a vesti- 
 bule to a palace, wherein he intended to hold high revel 
 such as the world had never seen ; and a vestibule it has 
 now become, but to a palace wherein sits a different sort 
 of dignity to that dreamed of by the low-statured, fat, 
 fierce, and huge feeding Rufus. 
 
 All the Norman kings were fearful objects at which to 
 fling jokes ; and the appetite of Henry I. was ruined, and 
 his sanguinary ire aroused, by a derisive passage in a poem 
 by Luke de Barr6. The king made the table shake as he 
 declared that he would let wretched versifiers know what 
 they were to expect if they offended the King of England ; 
 and Barre suffered the loss of his eyes. Henry ate and 
 drank none the less joyously for the dead. But Beauclerc 
 was a more refined gastronome than his brothers, as 
 befitted his name ; and though in many respects his court 
 was horribly licentious, yet when he went from one 
 demesne to another, to consume its revenues upon the 
 spot, the feasting there seems to have been attended by as 
 much moderation as merriment. 
 
 Stephen had more to do with fighting than feasting, and 
 
444 TABLE TRAITS. 
 
 with keeping castles rather than cooks ; but he knew how 
 to gain allies by the fine science of giving dinners, and 
 there was no more courteous host than he. While the 
 king and the barons kept high mirth, however, the 
 people were in the lowest misery. While the king gave 
 political feasts, his subjects were perishing of starvation by 
 thousands. 
 
 His successor, the Second Henry, was but a poor patron 
 of cooks, as was to be expected of a monarch who had 
 continually to defend himself against the rebellions, not 
 only of subjects, but of' his own children. Of the latter, 
 the only one who loved him was his natural son Geoflfrey. 
 It is no wonder that this melancholy king was the first to 
 do away with the old custom of having a coronation 
 dinner thrice every year, on assembling the States at the 
 three great festivals. He was ever in the midst of affrays; 
 and once he fell among a body of monks, who checked 
 their turbulence to complain to the king ; their complaint 
 being that their abbot, the Bishop of Winchester, had 
 cut off three dishes from their table. "How many has 
 he left you 1 " said the king. ^^ Good heavens ! " said the 
 monks, '^ he has only left us ten." " Ten 1 " said the 
 monarch ; " I am content with but three ; and I hope 
 your bishop will reduce you to a level with your king." 
 They, of course, were highly disgusted at the remark, 
 
 Eichard Coeur de Lion, that copper monarch, was too 
 busy with mischief to have leisure for much banqueting ; 
 but he loved one thing, and that was venison, the poor 
 stealers of which he punished by the most horrible of 
 mutilations. In his reign, an ox and a horse cost four 
 shillings each ; a sow was to be bought for a shilling ; 
 a sheep with fine wool, for tenpence, and with coarse 
 wool, for sixpence ; so that, taking into account the 
 difference in the valuation of money, people who had the 
 money to purchase with, could procure mutton and pork 
 
ENGLISH KINGS AT THEIR TABLES. 445 
 
 at a rate about a dozen times cheaper than the same 
 articles can be procured at now. The sovereign did not 
 trouble himself about paying anybody ; and when he gave 
 a banquet, the very last thing he thought of was whether 
 it were ever paid for or not. 
 
 Richard had no virtue but courage ; and John resem- 
 bled his worthless brother in every thing hut courage. 
 He had the same love for venison ; and a joke at dinner 
 upon a fat haunch, which he said had come fron^a noble 
 beast that had never heard mass, was looked upon by the 
 clerical gentlemen present as a reflection upon their 
 corpulency. They never forgot it ; and it was, perhaps, 
 partly a consequence of their retentive memory, that the 
 monks of Swineshead poisoned the dish of which the king 
 partook on the occasion of almost his last dinner. He 
 certainly never enjoyed another. 
 
 Henry III. was the first of our kings whose reign ex- 
 ceeded half-a-centurv in duration. He was a moderate 
 man, loved plain fare, and cared more for masses than 
 merriment. He was an easy, indolent monarch, with 
 troubles enough to have fired him to activity; but he 
 would have given half his realm for the privilege of daily 
 dining in peace and quietness, a boon seldom vouchsafed 
 to him. His subjects must have dined as ill as himself, if 
 we may judge by the extraordinary variation in the prices 
 of articles of consumption during his reign. Thus the 
 price of v/heat, for instance, varied from one shilling to a 
 pound a quarter. The royal statute upon ale rather dis- 
 pleased all citizens of this period, for by it the price was 
 fixed at a halfpenny per gallon in cities, while in the 
 country the same quantity might be sold for a farthing. 
 A gallon of ale for a halfpenny ought, however, to have 
 satisfied the most thirsty of drinkers. 
 
 The frugal Edward I. very little patronised either eating 
 or drinking, beyond what nature required. He was a very 
 
446 TABLE TRAITS. 
 
 moderate wine-drinker, but he exceedingly offended those 
 who were otherwise, by imposing a duty of two shilHngs a 
 tun on all wine imported, over and above the old existing 
 duty. The unlucky Edward II. was to the first Edward, 
 what Louis XVI. was to Louis XIY., the scape-goat for 
 the crimes of a predecessor and tyrant too powerful to be 
 resisted. The banqueting-room of this Edward, however, 
 was, as is often the case with such princes, oftener used 
 than the council-room, and the favourites feasted with 
 their weak lord until rebellion marred the festivity. There 
 never was a merrier reign (despite public calamity) closed 
 by so terrible a murder as that of this king, whose last 
 dinner would have almost disgusted a dog. 
 
 Edward III. was a gorgeous patroniser of the culinary 
 art ; the cooks and his guests adored him ; and Windsor 
 Castle, which he built as a fortress and a pleasaunce, is a 
 monument of his power and his taste. But his love for 
 good cheer was imitated by his subjects to their ruin j ajid 
 king and parliament interfered to remedy by penalty, 
 what might have been obviated by good example. Ser- 
 vants were prohibited from eating flesh, meat, or fish, 
 above once a-day. By another law, it was ordained that 
 no one should be allowed, either for dinner or supper, 
 above three dishes in each course, and not above two 
 courses ; and it is likewise expressly declared that soused 
 meat is to count as one of these dishes. And of 
 these laws I will only observe, that if they were obeyed, 
 servants and citizens of the days of Edward III. were a 
 very difierent class of people from what they are at 
 present. 
 
 When it is stated of Richard II. that two thousand 
 cooks and three hundred servitors were employed in the 
 royal kitchen, we think we become acquainted with the 
 gastronomic tastes of that unhappy king. But as be was 
 one of those whose virtues were his own, and his vices were 
 
ENGLISH KINGS AT THEIR TABLES. 447 
 
 of others' making, so this Sardanapalian array of cooks was 
 kept up by those who ruled from behind the throne, and 
 finally left the king to starve, despite his counting cooks 
 by thousands. His chief cuisinier is known only by the 
 initials C. S. S., under which he wrote a culinary work in 
 English, " On the Forme of Cury." In this work, he 
 speaks of poor Richard, his royal master, as the " best and 
 royallest viander of all Christian kynges." 
 
 Henry IV. kept a princely but not a profuse table. 
 He was the first king in England whose statutes may be 
 said to have acted as a check on the freedom of after- 
 dinner conversation upon religious matters; for in his 
 reign took place the first execution in England, on 
 account of opinions connected with matters of faith. The 
 household expenses of this monarch are set down at some- 
 thing less than £20,000 per annum of the money of the 
 time; and this sum, moderate enough, appears to have 
 been fairly applied to the purposes for which it was 
 intended. A porpoise was a fashionable dish in the time 
 of Henry V., who first had it at the royal table, and thus 
 sanctioned its use at tables of lower degree. Loyal folks 
 in those days copied the example set them by their 
 sovereign, as they did in the later days of George III. 
 boiled mutton and caper sauce, when country gentlemen 
 ■^ dined like the king, sir, at two o'clock." But Henry V. 
 was oppressed with debts, and, like many men in similar 
 positions, his banquets were all the more splendid, and his 
 prodigality was equal to his liabilities. So extravagant 
 a monarch bequeathed but a poor inheritance to Henry VI., 
 who was occasionally as hard put to it for a dinner as ever 
 the Second Charles was. When Edward IV. jumped into 
 poor Henry's seat, he found a host of angry persons who 
 disputed his power, and these he took care to conciliate 
 by the most powerful, nay irresistible means that were 
 ^v^r applied to the solution of a difficulty, or the removal 
 
448 TABLE TRAITS. 
 
 of an obstruction. He simply invited them to dinner ; 
 and, certainly, up to that time England had never seen 
 a king who gave dinners on so extravagantly profuse a 
 scale. They were marked, however, by something of a 
 barbaric splendour; and the monarch, gay and glittering 
 as he was, dazzling in dress, and overwhelmingly exu- 
 berant of spirits, was more like William de la Marck than 
 any more knightly host. In short, Edward was but a 
 coarse beast at table. " In homine tam corpulento," says 
 the Croyland chronicler, ^Hantis sodalitiis, vanitatibus, 
 crapulis, luxuriis et cupiditatibus dedito," — a sort of testi- 
 monial to character which neither monarch nor man could 
 be justified in being proud of. The young Edward Y. is the 
 " petit Dauphin " of English history, but with a less cruel 
 (iestiny, for he was at least not starved to death, amid dirt, 
 darkness, and terror, but mercifully, if roughly, murdered, 
 and so saved from the long and yet unexpiated assassi- 
 nation of the innocent and helpless Louis XYII. His 
 murderer sought to make people forget the heinousness 
 of his crime, by the double splendour of his coronation 
 dinners. The ceremony and the festival took place, not 
 only in London, but in York; and Eichard hoped he had 
 feasted both the northern and southern provinces into 
 sentiments of loyalty. A curious incident preceded the 
 first dinner, — the anointing of himself and consort at the 
 coronation. There is nothing singular in the fact, but 
 there is in the manner of it. Richard and his queen 
 stripped themselves naked to the waist, in order that the 
 unction might be more liberally poured over them, — and 
 in Richard's own case, perhaps for another reason, that 
 the great nobles who were present might see that they 
 were not about to sit down to dinner with a sovereign 
 who was as deformed in body as his enemies declared 
 him to be. 
 
 Almost all young readers of history take their first 
 
ENGLISH KINGS AT THEIR TABLES. 449 
 
 permanent idea of Henry VII. from that gallant Rich- 
 mond, in Shakspeare's Tragedy, who comes in like an 
 avenging angel, at the beginning of the fifth act, and has 
 it all his own generous way, until he sticks " the bloody 
 and devouring bear," and sends a note to Elizabeth to 
 come and be married. This Elizabeth, by the way, was 
 the good mother of Henry VIII., and she was the only 
 woman for whom that capricious prince ever felt a spark 
 of pure affection. His love and respect for her were 
 permanent, and the fact merits to be recorded. But to 
 return to Henry VII., and to conduct him to the dinner- 
 table, where alone we have present business with him ; I 
 do not know that I can find a better " trait " touching 
 himself and his times, than one connected with his royal 
 visit to York. 
 
 He was received in the city with more than ordinary 
 ceremony, and loudly-expressed delight at the sight of 
 his '' sweet -favoured" face ; ^^ some casting out of oblesand 
 wafers, and some casting out of comfits in great quantities, 
 as it had been hailstones, for joy and rejoicing of the 
 king's coming." But I must pass over the outward 
 show — how Augustans, Franciscans, Carmelites, and 
 Dominicans met him at Micklegate, and how these, with 
 priors, and friars, and canons of hospitals, and priests, and 
 knights, and noble, and gentle, and simple, accompanied 
 the monarch to the Minster, and thence to the arch- 
 bishop's palace, where Henry resided during his stay in 
 the northern capital. The grandest banquet given to 
 him during his sojourn, was in this palace, on the eve of 
 the festival of St. George : the great hall was divided . 
 into a centre and two aisles. In each division there were 
 two tables, half-a-dozen in all. The king sat at the 
 centre table, arrayed in all the pomp and glory of a 
 king ; — George and garter, crown, and England's sceptre. 
 One individual only was esteemed worthy of being seated 
 
 G G 
 
450 TABLE TKAITS. 
 
 at the same table, namely, the Archbishop of York, who^ 
 was quite as powerful a man, in his way, as Henry Tudor 
 himself. Knights carved the joints, and earls waited 
 upon prince and prelate. Lord Scrope, of Bolton, because 
 he was a Knight of the Garter, served the king with 
 water ; another member of chivalry handed the cup, and 
 the sovereign's meat was especially carved for him by a 
 Welsh cousin. Sir David Owen. The distribution of the 
 other tables exhibited a judicious mixture of priest and 
 layman. At the first table in the centre of the hall (the 
 cross-table at the top being occupied by the king and the 
 archbishop) sat two secular dignitaries, the Lords Chan- 
 cellor and Privy Seal, and with them, the Abbots of 
 St. Mary and Fountains, with the archbishop's suffragans, 
 other prelates, and the royal chaplains; thus the chief 
 members of the clergy were seated in greatest numbers 
 near the king. The second table was entirely occupied 
 by lay nobility, earls, barons, knights and esquires of the 
 king's body. Of the two tables in the right aisle, the 
 city clergy and the Minster choir occupied one to them- 
 selves. At the upper end of the other table were several 
 knights of the garter, all sitting on one side, " and beneath 
 them a void space, and then other honest persons filled 
 that table." We are glad to fall on the term ^' other 
 honest," or we might have been tempted to believe that a 
 distinction was made between honesty and nobility. The 
 tables in the left aisle were occupied, one by the municipal 
 authorities and other citizen guests ; the second by the 
 judges, " and beneath them other honest persons," again. 
 At the rear of the king's table a stage was erected, on which 
 stood the royal ofiicer of arms, who cried his " largesse " 
 three times, in the usual manner, and doubtless with 
 something of the stentorian powers made familiar to us 
 by the late Mr. Toole, and the present loud and lively 
 Mr. Barker. " The surnape," we are told, " was drawn 
 
ENGLISH -KINGS AT THEIK TABLES. 451 
 
 by Sir John Turberville, the knight-marshal; and after 
 the dinner there was a voide, when the king and his nobles 
 put off their robes of state, except such as were knights 
 of the garter, who rode to even-song, attired in the habit 
 of their order ;" and a very fitting close to a feast, — and a 
 good example is held forth therein to all who rise from a 
 festival without any more thought of being thankful for 
 it, than is implied by trying to find out the reflection of 
 their nose in the mahogany. 
 
 The following table story, cited by Southey, furnishes 
 another illustration of social, and, indeed, of political, life 
 about this time : — 
 
 '^ Henry (then Eichmond), on his march from Milford, 
 lodged one night with his friend David Llwyd, at Matha'- 
 farn. David had the reputation of seeing into the future, 
 and Eichmond, whether in superstition or compliment, 
 privately inquired of him, what would be the issue of his 
 adventure. Such a question, he was told, was too im- 
 portant to be immediately answered, but in the morning 
 a reply should be made. The wife of David saw that her 
 husband was unusually grave during the evening ; and 
 having learnt the cause,. she said, ' How can you have any 
 difficulty about your answer 1 Tell him he will succeed 
 gloriously. If he does, you will receive honours and 
 rewards. But, if it fail, depend upon it, he will never 
 come here to reproach you.' " Hence, it is said, a Welsh 
 proverb, " A wife's advice without asking it." 
 
 Henry VIII. loved to take a quiet dinner, occasionally, 
 with his chancellor, at Chelsea ; and there he would walk 
 in the garden, with his arm round that neck which he 
 afterwards flung beneath the axe of the executioner. He 
 was given to indulgences of all sorts, and with respect to 
 those of the appetite and palate, he was well served by 
 his incomparable clerk of the kitchen, honest and clever 
 William Thynne, who was not a mere clerk of the kitchen, 
 
 gg2 
 
452 TABLE TRAITS, 
 
 but a gentleman and scholar to boot ; loving poetry though 
 he was no poet, and editing Chaucer with as much zeal as 
 that with which he regulated the accounts of his kitchen 
 clerkship. Henry ate not wisely, but too well ; and this 
 huge feeding brought him at last to such a size, that he 
 could not be moved but by aid of " a machine." In other 
 words, T suppose, he could not walk, and was compelled 
 to submit to locomotion in a chair. Among the sove- 
 reigns who assembled at the Congress of Vienna, and who 
 were as strangely there together as the half-dozen kings 
 whom Candide met at the table d'hdte in Venice, was that 
 monster of a man, the Knig of Wurtemburg. This 
 mountain of flesh dined daily at the imperial table, where 
 a semicircular piece was cut out of the mahogany, in 
 order that the stomach of the monarch might rest com- 
 fortably against the table, when engaged in its appropriate 
 work. He did not lack wit for abounding in fatness, and 
 to him, I believe, is properly attributed the neat saying, 
 when he saw Lord Castlereagh in simple civilian's dress, 
 without a star, amid the gold lace, gems, jewels, ties, tags, 
 and glittering uniforms of the crowd around him. The 
 king asked who he was, and on being informed, he 
 remarked : " Ma foi ! il est hien distingue ! " He could not 
 have paid the same compliment to the noble Stewart's wife, 
 if it be true, as was reported, that at one of the state 
 dinners, or state balls, she appeared with her husband's 
 jewelled garter, worn as a bandeau, and " Honi soit qui 
 mal y pense " burning in diamonds upon her forehead. 
 
 May it not have been the unpleasant effects of Henry's 
 gastronomic indulgences that made of him a dabbler in 
 medicine? Many of his prescriptions in his own hand- 
 writing are still extant, and some of them are in the 
 British Museum. He invented a plaister, and was the 
 <;oncocter of more than one original ointment for the cure 
 of indigestion. He also prepared "a plaister for the Lady 
 
ENGLISH KINGS AT THEIR TABLES. 453 
 
 Ann of Cleves, to mollify and lessen certain swellings 
 proceeding from cold, and to dissipate the boils on the 
 stomach." His majesty in some of his after-dinner 
 ruminations professed also to have discovered a remedy 
 for the plague ; the prescription for which he sent to the 
 lord mayor. He was very tender of the health of Wolsey, 
 when the cardinal little regarded his own. His majesty, 
 on one occasion, counsels his minister, if he would soon 
 be relieved from ^Hhe sweating," to take light suppers, 
 and to drink wine very moderately, and to use a certain 
 kind of pill. I do not know if Henry's cookery and 
 kitchen at all smelt of unorthodoxy before the Refor- 
 mation, but it is a fact that, when Cardinal Campeggio 
 came over here on the business of the divorce of Henry 
 and Catherine, he was especially charged by the Pope 
 to look into the state of cookery in England generally, 
 and in the royal palace in particular. 
 
 The royal table of Elizabeth was a solemnity indeed. 
 But it was all a majestically stupendous sham. The 
 attendants thrice bent their knee as they approached 
 to offer her the different dishes; and when these cere- 
 monies had been gone through, the queen rose and retired 
 to a private room, where the meats were placed before 
 her, and she was left to dine as comfortably as the citizens 
 and their wives of Eastcheap and Aldersgate. 
 
 Among the numerous new year's gifts made to Eliza- 
 beth, and by which she contrived to maintain a splendid 
 wardrobe, gifts of good things for her table were not 
 wanting. One of her physicians presented her with 
 a box of foreign sweetmeats; another doctor with a 
 pot of green ginger; while her apothecaries gave her 
 boxes of lozenges, ginger-candy, and -other conserves. 
 " Mrs. Morgan gave a box of cherries and one of apricots." 
 The queen's master-cook and her Serjeant of the pastry 
 presented her with various confectionary and preserves. 
 
454 TABLE TRAITS. 
 
 Elizabeth and her '^ maids"" both dined and breakf^^sted 
 upon very soUd principles and materials. Beef and beer 
 were consumed at breakfast, — ^^a repast for a ploughman!" 
 it may be said. Alas! ploughmen are content, or seem 
 so, to strengthen their sinews as they best may of a 
 morning with poor bread and worse tea. Elizabeth made 
 a truly royal bird of the goose, — a distinction which her 
 sister Mary failed to give to the cygnet, the stork, and the 
 crane. These no more suited the national taste than 
 that Crimean delicacy, a Russian oyster, and which all 
 Englishmen who have tasted thereof pronounce to be 
 a poisonous dab of rancid putty. Yet Russian princes 
 are fond thereof, and Russian sovereigns order them for 
 especial favourites; — just as the Prince Regent, whenever 
 Lord Eldon was to dine at Carlton-house, always com- 
 manded the chancellor s favourite dish to be placed near 
 him, — liver and bacon. 
 
 The household expenditure of James I. amounted to 
 £100,000 sterling yearly; double the sum required for 
 the same purpose by Elizabeth; and if '^cock a leekie" 
 and ^^ haggis" were dishes to which his national taste 
 gave fashion, the more foreign delicacies of snails and 
 legs of frogs, dressed in a variety of ways, were readily 
 eaten by the very daintiest of feeders. The taste of the 
 purveyors was, however, something clumsy. What would 
 now be said if a chef sent up to table four huge pigs, 
 belted and harnessed with ropes of sausages, and all tied 
 together to a monstrous bag-pudding ? 
 
 The court of James I . was uncleanly enough, but it was 
 made worse by the example of the Danish king and his 
 courtiers, on the royal visit to the Stuart. " The Danish 
 custom of drinking healths was scrupulously observed, and 
 in a company of even twenty or thirty, every person's 
 health was required to be drunk in rotation; sometimes 
 a lady or an absent patron was toasted on the knees, and, 
 
ENGLISH KINGS AT THEIR TABLES. 455 
 
 as a proof of love or loyalty, the pledger's blood was even 
 mingled with the wine." It is well known that the 
 ladies of the court, as well as the gentlemen, got " beastly 
 drunk," in honour of the visit of the King of Denmark 
 to his sister, the consort of James I. 
 
 James, whose taste in gastronomy was not a very 
 delicate one, used to say that if ever he were called upon 
 to provide a dinner for the devil, his bill of fare should 
 consist of ^^a pig, a poll of ling and mustard, and a pipe of 
 tobacco for digestion." 
 
 There was more temperance under Charles I., and 
 increased moderation under the Commonwealth, when 
 Cromwell's table was remarkable for its simplicity. The 
 civic feasts of those days were also distinguished by their 
 decorous sobriety; and it is, perhaps, worth noticing that 
 the " show" followed, and did not precede the dinner. 
 
 Charles I. was served with a world of old-fashioned cere- 
 mony, not unlike that which ought to have made Louis XIV. 
 very uncomfortable. The fact, however, is, that both 
 monarchs were pleased with the cumbrous solemnities of 
 state, and nothing affected our English king more in his 
 fallen fortunes than the rude service which he received gtt 
 the hands of the Puritan servitors of whose masters he 
 was the captive. When he was in durance at Windsor, 
 his meat was brought to him uncovered, and carried with- 
 out any observance of respectful form, by the common 
 soldiers. No trial or " say" of the meats was made ; no 
 cup presented on the knee. This absence of ceremony 
 wounded Charles to the very quick. It chafed him more 
 than greater sorrows did subsequently. It was, he observed, 
 the refusal to him of a service which was paid, according 
 to ancient custom, to many of his subjects; and rather 
 than submit to the humiliation, he chose jbo diminish the 
 number of dishes, and to take his meals in strict privacy. 
 
 There are few kings who had such variety of experience 
 
4o6 TABLE TRAITS. 
 
 ill matters of the table as Charles II. The first spoonful 
 of medicine that was offered him he resisted with a deter- 
 mined aversion which never left him for that sort of pabu- 
 him. His table was but simple enough during the latter 
 years of his father, but it was worse after the fatal day of 
 Worcester. He was glad then, at White Lady's, to eat 
 '' bread and cheese, such as we could get, it being just 
 beginning to be day ; " and " bread, cheese, small beer, and 
 nothing else," sufficed him in the oak. Bread, butter, ale 
 and sack, he swallowed in country inns, and seemed rather 
 to look on the masquerade and the meals as a joke. . 
 
 When he was lying hid in Spring Coppice, the goodwife 
 Yates brought to his most sacred majesty '^ a mess of milk, 
 some butter, and eggs," — better fare than the parched peas 
 w^hich were found, in after days, in the pocket of the fugi- 
 tive Monmouth. The women provided for him as tenderly 
 in his hour of hunger and trial, as their ebony sisters did 
 for Mungo Park in his African solitude. When Charles 
 arrived at the house at Boscobel, he '' ate bread and cheese 
 heartily," and (as an extraordinary), William Penderell's wife 
 made his majesty a posset of fine milk and small beer, and 
 gpt ready some warm water to wash his feet, not only ex- 
 tremely dirty, but much galled with travel," The king, in 
 return, called the lady "■ my dame Joan," and the conde- 
 scension quickened her hospitality; for shortly after, she 
 "provided some chickens for his majesty's supper, a dainty 
 he had not lately been acquainted with. But the king 
 and his followers not only longed for more substantial fare, 
 but were not very scrupulous as to the means of obtaining 
 it. Colonel Carlis, for instance, went into the sheepcot of 
 a farmer residing near Boscobel, and like an impudent as 
 well as a hungry thief " he chose one of the best sheep, 
 sticks him. with his dagger, then sends William for the 
 mutton, who brings him home on his back." The next 
 morning was a Sunday morning, and Charles, having niut- 
 
ENGLISH KINGS AT THEIR TABLES. 457 
 
 tered his prayers, went eagerly to the pal-lonr to look after 
 the stolen mutton. It was hardly cold, but Will Penderell 
 " brought a leg of it into the parlour; his majesty called for 
 a knife and a trencher, and cut some of it into collops, 
 and pricked them with the knife-point, then called for a 
 frying-pan and butter, and fried the collops himself, of 
 which he ate heartily. Colonel Carlis, the while, being but 
 under-cook (and that, honour enough too), made the fire, 
 and turned the collops in the pan. When the colonel," 
 adds the faithful Blount, who records this table trait, '' af- 
 terwards attended his majesty in France, his majesty, call- 
 ing to remembrance this passage among others, was pleased 
 merely to propose it, as a problematical question, whether 
 himself or the colonel were the master cook at Boscobel, 
 and the supremacy was of right adjudged to his majesty." 
 Circumstances which made of the royal adventurer a king 
 were the spoiling of an excellent cook. When he was 
 secretly sojourning at Trent, his meat was, for the most 
 part, to prevent the danger of discovery, dressed in his 
 own chamber ; '' the cookery whereof served him for some 
 divertisement of the time." The king better imderstood 
 cookery as a science than the machinery of it. When he 
 stood in the kitchen of Mr. Tombs's house at Longmarston, 
 disguised as " Will Jackson," the busy cook-maid bade him 
 wind up the jack. '^ Will Jackson" was obedient and 
 attempted it, but hit not the right way, which made the 
 maid in some passion ask, " What countryman are you, 
 that you know not how to wind up a jack V Will Jackson 
 answered very satisfactorily, '^ I am a poor tenant's son of 
 Colonel Lane, in Staffordshire. We seldom have roast meat, 
 but when we have, we don't make use of a jack;" which 
 in some measure assuaged the maid's indignation. Never 
 had the sacredness of majesty been in such peril since the 
 period when Alfred marred instead of made the cakes of 
 the neatherd's angry wife. But Charles escaped to his 
 
458 TABLE TRAITS. 
 
 rather hungry exile in France ; — and see, how sweet are 
 the uses of adversity I When this charming prince was 
 restored to the throne, he brought with him two gifts of 
 which the nation had heard little for some years; — one 
 was the Church Liturgy, and the other, '^ God d — n ye," — 
 a fashionable phrase which has tumbled from the court 
 to the alley. 
 
 It can hardly be said that Charles, when king, fulfilled 
 the requirement which Lord Chesterfield subsequently laid 
 down, when he insisted that a man should be gentleman- 
 like even in his vices. When William of Orange came to 
 England as the suitor of the king's niece, the Princess 
 Mary, Charles took an unclean delight in making the 
 Dutchman drunk. Evelyn says : — "One night, at a sup- 
 per given by the Duke of Buckingham, the king made 
 him (William) drink very hard ; the heavy Dutchman was 
 naturally averse to it, but being once entered, was the 
 most frolicsome of the company ; and now the mind took 
 him to break the windows of the chambers of the maids of 
 honour ; and he had got into their apartments had they 
 not been timely rescued. His mistress, I suppose," adds 
 Evelyn, and it is a strange comment for so sensible a man, 
 '^ did not like him the worse for such a notable indication 
 of his vigour." The monarch who made his paulo-post 
 successor drunk had little difiiculty to bring the lord 
 mayor of London into the same condition ; and the city - 
 potentate and his "cousin the king" had that terrible 
 "other bottle" together, in which men's reason ordinarily 
 makes shipwreck, with their dignity. But his majesty, of 
 blessed memory, was a trifle devout after his drink, and 
 on the " next morning" he heard anthems in his chapel, 
 and, by way of devotion, would lean over his own pew and 
 play with the curls of Lady Castlemaine, who occupied the 
 next seat to that of '^ our most religious and gracious king." 
 When he was pouring the public money into the lap of 
 
ENGLISH KINGS AT THEIR TABLES. 459 
 
 that precious lady, he was leaving his own servants un- 
 paid; and, on one occasion, when these could not obtain 
 their salaries, they carried off their royal master's linen, 
 and left him without a clean shirt or a table-cloth ! 
 
 The priests with whom Louis XIV. and Louis XY. used 
 to transact their religion were wont to excuse all the con- 
 jugal infidelities of those anointed reprobates by remarking 
 that they ever treated their consorts with the very greatest 
 politeness. The poets of Charles's days went further, and 
 extolled his marital affection. Waller, for instance, con- 
 gratulates the poor queen, that if she were ill, Charles was 
 by to tend and weep over her : — 
 
 " But, that which may relieve our care 
 Is, that you have a help so near 
 For all the evil you can prove ; 
 The kindness of your Royal Love. 
 He that was never known to mourn 
 So many kingdoms from him torn, 
 His tears reserved for you ; more dear, 
 More prized, than all those kingdoms were ! 
 For when no healing art prevail'd, 
 When cordials and elixirs fail'd, 
 On your pale cheek he dropt the shower, 
 Revived you like a dying flower.'* 
 
 The illness referred to was a spotted fever; and here is 
 Pepys' plain prose on the subject : — *• 20th October, 1683. 
 This evening, at my lord's lodgings, Mrs. Sarah, talking 
 with my wife and I, how the queen do, and how the king 
 tends her, being so ill. She tells us that the queen's sick- 
 ness is the spotted fever; that she was as full of the spots 
 as a leopard, which is very strange that it should be no 
 more known ; but perhaps it is not so ; and that the king 
 do seem to take it much to heart, for that he hath wept 
 before her; but for all that he hath not missed one night 
 since she was sick^ of supping with my lady Castlemaine ; 
 which I believe is true; for she says that her husband 
 
460 TABLE TRAITS. 
 
 hath dressed the suppers every night ; and I confess I saw 
 him myself coming through the street, dressing up a great 
 supper to-night, which Sarah also says is for the king and 
 her, which is a very strange thing." Oh, depth of royal 
 grief, that required light suppers and light ladies for its 
 solace ! 
 
 The Spectator has preserved for us a pleasant story 
 illustrative both of royal and citizen good-fellowship, in the 
 reign of Charles II., and in the person of the king and that 
 of his jolly lord mayor, Sir Robert Viner. The merry 
 monarch had been dining with the chief magistrate and 
 the municipality, at Guildhall, where he had not drunk so 
 deeply himself but he was aware that the jollity of his 
 entertainers was beginning to render them rather oblivious 
 of the respect due to their royal guest. He accordingly, 
 with a curt farewell, slipped away down to his coach, 
 which was awaiting him in Guildhall-yard. But the lord 
 mayor forthwith pursued the runaway, and overtaking him 
 in the yard, seized him by the skirts of his coat, and swore 
 roundly that he should not go till they " had drank t'other 
 bottle!" "The airy monarch," says the narrator in the 
 Spectator, " looked kindly at him over his shoulder, and 
 with a smile and graceful air (for I saw him at the time, 
 and do now), repeated this line of the old song : — 
 
 " ' And the man that is drunk is as great as a king !' 
 
 and immediately turned back, and complied with his land- 
 lord." This anecdote, however, though it be given on 
 the authority of an alleged eye-witness, is probably over- 
 coloured with regard to the conduct of his worship the 
 mayor. Mr. Peter Cunningham quotes (in his story of 
 Nell Gwyn) from Henry Sidney's Diary, a letter addressed 
 to Sidney by his sister the Countess Dowager of Suther- 
 land, and which refers to the incident of the visit of 
 Charles to Guildhall. The letter in question was written 
 
ENGLISH KINGS AT THEIR TABLES. 461 
 
 five 3^ears after the mayoralty of Sir Robert Viner. " The 
 king had supped with the lord mayor, and the aldermen 
 on the occasion had drunk the king's health, over and 
 over, upon their knees, wishing every one hanged and 
 damned that would not serve him with their lives and 
 fortunes. But this was not all. As his guards were 
 drunk, or said to be so, they would not trust his majesty 
 with so insecure an escort, but attended him themselves 
 to Whitehall, and, as the lady-writer observes, ' all went 
 merry out of the king's cellar.' So much was this acces- 
 sibility of manner in the king acceptable to his people, 
 that the mayor and his brethren waited next day at White- 
 hall, to return thanks to the king and duke for the ho- 
 nour they had done them, and the mayor, confirmed by 
 this reception, was changed from an ill to a well- affected 
 subject." 
 
 But as this merry mourner lived, so may he almost be 
 said to have died. It will be remembered with what dis- 
 gust Evelyn records the scene at Whitehall, a week before 
 the king's decease : — " I can never forget," he says, " the 
 inexpressible luxury and profaneness, gaming and all dis- 
 soluteness, and as it were total neglectfulness of God, it 
 being Sunday evening, which this day sennight I was wit- 
 ness of, the king sitting and toying with his concubines^ 
 Portsmouth, Cleveland, Mazarine, &c. ; a French boy 
 singing love-songs in that glorious gallery ; whilst sho\R 
 twenty of the great courtiers and other dissolute persons 
 were at basset, round a large table, a bank of at least two 
 thousand pounds in gold before them, upon which two 
 gentlemen who were with me made reflections in astonish- 
 ment. Six days after, all was in the dust." 
 
 There was more meanness, but not more decency, under 
 James II., but his queen more deeply resented, and that in 
 public, at dinner, the insults levelled at her. When Mrs. 
 Sedly, in 1686, was created Countess of Dorchester, the day 
 
462 TABLE TRAITS. 
 
 on which the nomination passed the Great Seal, and 
 indeed on a subsequent occasion, the queen showed how 
 she was touched by the honours paid to a brazen concubine. 
 " The queen/' says Evelyn, " took it very grievously, so 
 as for two dinners, standing near her, I observed she 
 hardly ate one morsel, nor spake one word to the king, or 
 to any about her ; though at other times she used to be 
 extremely pleasant, full of discourse and good-humour." 
 Such is one of the table traits of the time of James II. 
 
 There is little to be said of William III., save that he 
 kept a well-regulated table, and was excessively angry if 
 he detected any faults in the service. He is described as 
 being kind, cordial, open, even convivial and jocose. He 
 would sit at table many hours, and would bear kis full 
 share in festive conversation. Burnet, I think, some- 
 where intimates, but I cannot recollect the precise words, 
 that he was something more than moderately given to 
 Hollands. As much, indeed, has been said of Queen 
 Anne. But Anne was inclined to indulge in good living, 
 and her doctor, Lister, had as many gastronomic pro- 
 pensities as herself Lister entered into the minutiee of 
 the kitchen with the exactness of an apothecary weighing 
 poison. On the subject of larks, he says, for the benefit 
 of the queen, and all who love such dainty food, that if 
 twelve larks do not weigh twelve ounces, they are scarcely 
 eatable; they are just tolerable if they reach that weight; 
 but that if they weigh thirteen ounces, they are fat and 
 excellent ! On such table matters did royal physicians 
 write, when Anne was queen. 
 
 The table of George, Prince Regent, was splendidly 
 served. The court language was French, as though the 
 days of the Normans were come again. But the son of 
 George III., whether as prince or as king, and despite his 
 character of being the first gentleman in Europe, was not 
 naturally refined. He loved to have around him men like 
 
ENGLISH KINGS AT THEIR TABLES. 463 
 
 Humboldt, who, when his guest, amused him with stories 
 as* broad as they were long. He himself would tell similar 
 stories, even in the presence of his mother and sisters, and 
 in spite of a sharp "Fie, George!" and an indignant 
 working of her fan on the part of Queen Charlotte. When 
 king, the female society which he assembled at the 
 Pavilion was very decollete indeed, both as regarded 
 person and principles, and the appearance of these brilliant 
 looking and light dressed individuals in the day-time gave 
 to Brighton an aspect that put Rowland Hill into fits. 
 There were joyous evenings then at Virginia Water, on 
 " tea and marrow bones," and there was everything there 
 but refinement. Refinement, indeed, was not the character- 
 istic of any one prince of the house. The Duke of Cumber- 
 land revelled in coarse jests, and was delighted when they 
 embarrassed the modesty that could not even comprehend 
 them. The Duke of Cambridge was perhaps the least 
 offensive of the family. He was the professional diner 
 out of the house ; and in his day very few public dinners 
 took place without having the advantage of his presence 
 as president. He was, on such occasions^ punctuality 
 itself, and could not tolerate being kept waiting. In such 
 cases, he sometimes wiled away the time by trying over 
 music with the musical gentlemen whose harmony was to 
 relieve the toasts and tedium of the evening, but his 
 impatience sometimes got the better of his politeness and 
 of his reverence for serious things, and we shall not soon 
 forget the effect he produced at a " religious public dinner," 
 by exclaiming aloud, "Where is the chaplain? d — n him! 
 Why doesn't he say grace?" Before passing to the next 
 reign, we may take notice of a fact that is not generally 
 known, but which nevertheless cannot be disputed. The 
 coronation banquet of George IV. was one of the most 
 splendid upon record. But there was a world of "leather 
 and prunella " about it, in spite of its reputed splendour. 
 
464 TABLE TRAITS, 
 
 Thus, for instance, the king's table was one gorgeous 
 display of gold plate, but the plates and dishes at all the 
 other tables, one only, I believe, excepted, were composed 
 of nothing more costly than good, honest pewter. The metal 
 was indeed so splendidly burnished that to the eye no 
 silver highly polished could have been more dazzling ; 
 but the truth remains that the peerage that day dined off 
 pewter. But the occasion gave value to the material, and 
 the dishes, in their character of relics of the glory of the 
 last coronation banquet in Westminster Hall, are as highly 
 prized, and as reverently preserved, as though they were 
 composed of materials less strange to Potosi than tin, 
 antimony, and a trifle of copper. 
 
 Court life, in the reign of William IV., was but of a 
 very sombre aspect. The good old king used to indulge 
 in giving toasts after dinner, and he made long and some- 
 what prosy speeches. Of the latter he was particularly 
 fond, and he made the then young Prince George of 
 Cambridge his pupil, by giving the health of his father, 
 the Duke, and inducing the son to rise and return thanks 
 for the honour conferred. It was no bad discipline for 
 one who intended to become a public man. The young 
 prince became a very fair speaker under the old king's 
 instructions. William detested politics, and he invariably 
 fell asleep during the dessert. It would have violated 
 etiquette to have awoke him: and the queen and her 
 ladies never thought of rising until the royal eyelids began 
 again to give symptoms of returning wakefulness. He 
 was fond of talking, over the wine, of military details, and 
 was proud of two achievements connected therewith ; first, 
 that he had made Colonel Needham shave off his cherished 
 whiskers, according to the new regulations ; and that he 
 had succeeded in having all the Waterloo medals worn 
 with the king's head outwards. He frequently fell asleep 
 during the^e conversations ; and then the guests quietly 
 
ENGLISH KINGS AT THEIR TABLES. 465 
 
 passed the wine from one to the other, and, as they drank 
 off their glasses, bowed to or smiled at the sleeping 
 sovereign the while. In the evening, there generally was 
 music, during which the Queen Adelaide was as generally 
 engaged in worsted work. The king usually honoured 
 some one with an invitation to sit by his side on the sofa. 
 He then fell asleep again, and the unlucky, honoured in- 
 dividual, did not dare leave his "coign of 'vantage" until 
 the king awoke and gave the signal. William was a very 
 moderate joker, and he loved a joke from others. It is 
 reported that, when heir presumptive, he once said to a 
 Secretary of the Admiralty who was at the same dinner 
 
 table, " C , when I am king, you shall not be 
 
 Admiralty Secretary ! Eh, what do you say to that ? " 
 *^ All that I have to say to that, in such' a case, is," said 
 
 C , "^'God save the king!" I have heard it further 
 
 said, .that William never laughed so loudly as when he was 
 told of a certain parvenu lady, who, dining at Sir John 
 Copley's, ventured to express her surprise that there was 
 *^ no pilfered water on the table." 
 
 The dining-tables of deceased monarchs belong to 
 history; and, consequently, the limit of this imperfect 
 record is to be found here. One further illustration, how- 
 ever, of "household" matters may here be not inaptly 
 introduced. A few months ago a gentleman, who had 
 been in his early years the personal friend of the Duke of 
 Kent, was desirous of sending from Sicily a testimonial 
 of his respect to the late Duke's daughter, our sovereign 
 lady the Queen. His grateful remembrance took the 
 shape of some very rare and choice Sicilian wine, the 
 proper transmission of which was entrusted to the good 
 offices of a friend of the donor. This honorary agent pro- 
 ceeded to the proper office for instructions, and there he 
 was somewhat surprised at being informed that, as soon as 
 the duty had been paid upon the wine, the latter would 
 
 H H 
 
466 TABLE TRAITS. 
 
 be forwarded to the ^^ household." At this strange intima- 
 tion, the friendly agent wrote to his principal for fresh 
 instructions, and the principal, who had not the slightest 
 intention of showing his respect for the memory of a sire 
 by presenting wine to the " household" of that sire's royal 
 daughter, at once directed the luscious tribute to be 
 divided among friends who had households of their own, 
 and who could appreciate the present. The rule, with 
 regard to offerings like these, was not in former times so 
 ungraciously severe. When Mrs. Coutts used to send her 
 pleasant tributary haunches of venison to the Pavilion, 
 she was not informed that the "household" would conde- 
 scend to dine upon the venison : on the contrary, a grace- 
 ful autograph note from the royal recipient not only made 
 cheerful acknowledgment of the gift, but also gave hearty 
 promise that it would be thoroughly enjoyed. There is 
 more independence, perhaps, in the present system, which 
 discourages all tributes, whatever may be their nature ; 
 but there is something very ungracious in the method of 
 its application. 
 
 Enough, however, of this matter, or we shall have little 
 time to discuss, even briefly, two other subjects, touching 
 which I would say something, before we are finally called 
 to " supper." The first of these comes under the head of 
 '^ Strange Banquets." 
 
STRANGE BANQUETS. 
 
 Under this title I was half inclined to include the 
 records of the achievements of those gastronomic heroes, 
 whose spirit was something like that of the boy's who ate 
 with two spoons, and cried because he could not swallow 
 faster. But, frOm Milo and his entire bull for dinner, 
 down to Dando and his peck of oysters for supper, there 
 is a sameness of very gross detail, and perhaps not very 
 great truth, in all. The rustic who was victor at an eating 
 match, '' by a pig and an apple pie," was on a level with 
 the ancient kings, who were wont to boast that they could 
 carry more beneath their belts with impunity than any 
 other men. So the ardour of the two villages contemplat- 
 ing their respective champions — gluttons employed for the 
 honour of their several birth-places — and the exultation 
 of one party at finding its favourite a-head ^'by two turkeys 
 and a pound of sausages," gave proof of as much dignity 
 of humanity as was given in their case by those nations 
 of old who weighed their kings annually, and had a 
 general illumination when they found their monarchs 
 growing fatter. 
 
 These illustrations of table manners, if indeed they 
 deserve to be so called, we leave to the perusal of those 
 whose devotion is of that cast that they would have 
 reckoned Baal as a god, for no other reason than the suffi- 
 cient one given of old, namely, that he ate much meat. 
 In more modern times, we have had defunct kings who 
 
 H II 2 
 
4:68 TABLE TRAITS. 
 
 have been supposed capable of consuming as much as Baal 
 himself, or any of his lively followers ; for an illustration 
 of which fact we must pass over, for a short time, to the 
 once kingdom of France. 
 
 The last banquet prepared by the culinary officers of 
 Francis I. for that royal personage, was one at which'my 
 readers would not have cared to sit in fellowship with the 
 king, nor was it one which that monarch himself could be 
 said to have perfectly enjoyed. He made, indeed, no 
 remark or complaint, but that was for the natural reason 
 that he was dead when he presided at it 1 How this came 
 to pass I will proceed to relate. 
 
 On the 1st day of March, 1546, Francis I. died in the 
 Chateau de Rambouillet. The whole of the following day 
 his body was in the hands of the surgeon-embalmers, 
 who vainly exercised their office to render that sweet when 
 dead which had by no means been so when hving. During 
 six weeks the corpse was deposited at the neighbouring 
 Abbey of Haute-Bruyere. It was then transported to the 
 house of the Archbishop of Paris at St. Cloud, where there 
 was a duplicate " lying in state." The dead king, extended 
 on a couch of richly embroidered crimson satin, was sur- 
 rounded by a thickly-wedged mass of priests, who, night 
 and day, offered up prayers for the repose of his soul. In 
 the adjacent chamber was the " counterfeit presentment," 
 or effigy of the monarch, made " after nature," reclining 
 on a bed of the most gorgeous description, on and about 
 which was displayed all that could lend additional solemn 
 glory to the scene. The waxen effigy, with hands joined, 
 was decked in a crimson silk shirt, covered by a light blue 
 tunic powdered with fleiirs de lis. The royal mantle, of a 
 deep violet, lay across the feet ; and near it were the orders, 
 chains, and other "bravery" worn by Francis in his. life- 
 time. On the head was a violet velvet scull-cap, and 
 above that the crown. The legs were thrust into boots of 
 
STKANGE BANQUETS. 469 
 
 cloth of gold, with crimson satin soles, — but then they were 
 not made for walking in. In the room, and particularly 
 near the bed, there was a blaze of gold and jewellery, such 
 as dazzled the sight only to look at it. The upper portion 
 of the bed was fashioned like a tent. Sentinels guarded 
 it from without, and pi'iests kept watch with much prayer 
 within. They w^ere of all grades, from cardinals and 
 princes of the Church down to bare-footed friars, w^ho 
 would have been more thankful for a scarlet hat than for 
 a pair of the newest sandals. These were the guests at a 
 banquet where the king was the highly honoured host. 
 
 We are told by old Pierre de Chastel, Bishop of Macon, 
 that the ordinary etiquette of service was rigorousl}'- main- 
 tained every day, during eleven days, as if the king had 
 been living and laughing in the midst of them. The royal 
 dinner-table was laid out at the side of the bed ; a cardinal 
 blessed the viands; and a gentleman of various quarterings 
 presented to the unconscious image a full ewer, wherewith 
 to wash the hands which, folded as they were, seemed like 
 those of the father of Miss Kilmansegg, to be already 
 washing themselves with invisible soap in imperceptible 
 water ! 
 
 A second gentleman offered to the representative of the 
 defunct king a vase mantling with wine; and a third 
 wiped his lips and fingers, as if either could haA^e been 
 soiled by iiot coming in contact with the cates and the 
 goblet ! These functions, and others that may very well 
 be passed over, were performed amid a most death-like 
 silence, and by the fitful light of funereal torches, — the only 
 dinner lamps in use w^hile the dead king was engaged in 
 not dining. And such were the clever funeral banquets 
 presided over by the waxen similitude of a defunct king. 
 And here it should be my office to pass to other subjects 
 more immediately connected with Table Traits, but I may 
 perhaps, be pardoned if I add, that the royal corpse, after 
 
470 TABLE TRAITS. 
 
 the copious feeding which its effigy was mocked with, was 
 raised with incredible pomp, and borne into Paris with an 
 attendant mixture of the sublime and the ridiculous. It 
 was preceded by beggars, nobles, cavaliers, and cooks, 
 (" officiers de bouche,") pages, surgeons, and valets de 
 chambre, gi^ooms, heralds, and archbishops. The followers 
 behind the car were of more uniform and exalted rank ; 
 and when the procession reached Vaugerard, it was met by 
 the twenty-four town-criers of Paris, who took immediate 
 precedence of the five hundred beggars. The funeral 
 service in the cathedral was conducted with similar mag- 
 nificence ; but what is most singular is the fact, that the 
 solemn ceremony was no sooner concluded, than it was 
 recommenced with all gravity, for the benefit of the waxen 
 e&Lgj that had been served for eleven days with an 
 " omelette fantastique ! " and more than this, two of the 
 sons of the deceased king, having been previously interred, 
 but with maimed rites, a newly organized procession and 
 service took place on this occasion, not only for themselves, 
 but for their effigies also ! There was an ocean of holy 
 water scattered on these exaggerated dolls ; the aspersion, 
 however, was borne with a calmness worthy of their dig- 
 nity ! And at these ceremonies the English ambassador, 
 with other Christian representatives, appeared on horse- 
 back, each with a prelate mounted also at his side. The 
 union represented that which ought to exist between church 
 and state everywhere, but which does not even in the 
 Duchy of Baden. When the lengthened solemnities had 
 come to a conclusion, the merry pages, as hungry as they 
 were joyous, scrambled for sweetmeats, and that was the 
 last of the feasting or fasting of Francis I. 
 
 All this seems barbarous and antique : it is the former 
 rather than the latter. The custom, with some attendant 
 exaggerations, is still prevalent in China, where only two 
 years ago the defunct aunt of the sun and moon, mother 
 
STRANGE BANQUETS. 471 
 
 to the reigning monarch, was feasted with a solemn parade 
 of magnificent nonsense, the details of which make those 
 of the banquet of the deceased Francis look extremely poor 
 indeed. I believe that the Chinese idea with regard to 
 their poor dead princess was, that she, or the immortal 
 part in her, could not possibly take flight upon the celes- 
 tial dragon waiting to convey her to the pagoda — paradise 
 of Cathay — until this farewell banquet had been given to 
 her by those who had loved her upon earth. 
 
 It is the easiest thing in the world, and perhaps it is the 
 most natural, to smile superciliously at these customs, and 
 dismiss them with the definite remark, that they were 
 heathenish and superstitious. But our grandmothers, or 
 their mothers rather, saw something very like it in 
 England. In the latter case, it was not the consequence 
 of a law that ruled in such matters, but a spontaneous act 
 of a sublimely ridiculous, or a ridiculously sublime, affec- 
 tion. Henrietta, Duchess of Marlborough, we are told, 
 demonstrated her affection for Congreve in a manner 
 indicative of absolute insanity. '^ Common fame reports," 
 says Kippis, in the "Biographia Britannica," "that she 
 had his figure made in wax, talked to it as if it had been 
 alive, placed it at table with her, took great care to help 
 it with different sorts of food, had an imaginary sore in its 
 leg regularly dressed, and, to complete all, consulted phy- 
 sicians with regard to its health." 
 
 An invitation from the duchess to dinner, to meet her 
 simulative friend, who could hardly be said to have waxed 
 wittier after his metempsychosis, would not have been a 
 lively thing/- I am not sure that I would not rather have 
 been in the place of the Hetman of the Zaparogue Cos- 
 sacks, who was strangely treated and dieted when he was 
 elected to the chief command over his own wild hordes. 
 His followers besmeared (and the fashion is not yet obso- 
 lete) his face with mud, placed a symbolic baton in his 
 
472 TABLE TRAITS. 
 
 hand, and a saucy-looking crane's feather in his bonnet. 
 They then gave him a cupful of tar (a process that would 
 have delighted Bishop Berkeley), and after pitching great- 
 ness into him in this manner, he was allowed a draught of 
 mead by way of purifying his palate. When Shakspere 
 said, " Take physic, pomp," he was little aware of the 
 custom to that effect among the Zaparogues. It was 
 sweetened, indeed, by the conclusive draught of mead, 
 as Berkeley's dissertation on tar-water was wound up by a 
 sermon on the Trinity; but I think I would have pre- 
 ferred swallowing the tar, with nothing to qualify it but 
 the title, rather than have sat down to the most sump- 
 tuous of banquets, between the mad duchess and her wax 
 lover with an issue in his leg ! 
 
 William Howitt tells of an old countrywoman whom 
 he sought to initiate into the simple elements of religion, 
 and to whom he presented a Testament. When the latter 
 had been read through, the worthy teacher asked her what 
 she thought of the solemn record : " Ah, well 1" was the grace- 
 less comment, ^^ it all happened so long ago, and so far off, 
 that I don't believe a word of it 1" Some such witticism may, 
 perhaps, apply to my stories just told, some of which have 
 distant scenes for their locality, and others distant periods 
 for their times of actions. But, in the way of barbarous 
 banquets, examples may be cited less open to this objection; 
 and if the far-off Zaparogue chiefs have a cruelly nasty 
 inauguration into greatness, I do not know if the children 
 in the Scottish Highlands, to whom the wise women there 
 administer a mixture of whisk v and earth as their first 
 food, have not a nastier inauguration into life. Having 
 mentioned Scotland, I may, while on the subject of strange 
 banquets, show how they cooked and fed in the days of 
 Edward III. " Nor yet had they," says old Joshua 
 Barnes, " any cauldrons or pans to dress their meat in ; 
 for what beasts they found (as they always had good store 
 
STRANGE BANQUETS. 473 
 
 in those northern parts), they would seethe them in their 
 own (the beasts' !) skins, stretched out bellying on stakes, 
 in the manner of cauldrons ; and having thus sodden their 
 meat, they would take out a little plate of metal, which 
 they used to truss somewhere in or under their saddles, 
 and laying it on the fire, take forth some oatmeal (which 
 they carried in little bags behind them for that purpose), 
 and having kneaded and tempered it with water, spread 
 that thereon. This being thus baked they used for bread, 
 to comfort and strengthen their stomachs a little when 
 they eat flesh." 
 
 Stomachs that needed no other comforting than this 
 must have belonged to men of irresistible arms. They 
 devoured the bullocks, and afterwards dressed themselves 
 in the cauldrons. They remind us of those nomade people 
 of whom the poet asks, — 
 
 " Was ever Tartar fierce or cruel 
 Upon the strength of water-gruel ? 
 But who shall stand his rage and force, 
 If first ho rides, then eats his horse V 
 
 And this metrical allusion to ancient banquets, and 
 characteristic prowess connected with them, recals to my 
 memory the singular story touching the strangest of facts, 
 which has been told in choice verse by Ludwig Uhland. 
 The German poet, in narrating it, has condemned himself 
 to execute a sort of double hornpipe in fetters, having set 
 himself the task to introduce one word, the subject of his 
 poem, into every stanza of his rhymed romance. "Done 
 into English," the legend runs thus : — 
 
 THE CASTELLAN OF COUCY, OR THE HEART. 
 
 " How deeply young De Coucy sigh'd. 
 How sad the feeling that came o'er him. 
 And smote his heart, when first he saw 
 The Lady of Fayal before him ! 
 
474 TABLE TRAITS. 
 
 " How suddenly his song assumed 
 The strain of love's impassion'd fire ! 
 How every measure clearly told 
 His heart vibrated with his lyre ! 
 
 " But vain the sweetness of his song, 
 In am'rous cadence softly dying ! 
 Fo hope had he to move the heart 
 Of her who heeded not his sighing ! 
 
 " For even, when beyond his wont 
 He fell on some inspired strain, 
 The wedded lady's heart scarce moved, — 
 It warm'd but to be cold again. 
 
 ** Then was the Castellan resolved, 
 The cross upon his cuirass' d breast, .. 
 'Mid toils in Palestine to seek 
 The tumults of his heart to rest. 
 
 " And there, in many a hot affray, 
 Where perils threat, and dangers thicken. 
 He stands till, — 'spite his coat of mail, 
 His noble heart with death is stricken. 
 
 " ' Oh ! hear'st thou me, my page ? ' he cried, 
 ' When this fond heart has ceased its beating, 
 To the fair Lady of Fayal 
 Bear it, with De Coucy's greeting.* 
 
 " In cold and consecrated earth 
 The hero's corpse at length reposes ; 
 But o'er his heart, his broken heart, 
 Not so the tomb its portal closes. 
 
 " The heart within a golden urn . 
 Was laid ; the page received the treasure, 
 And quickly sped him o'er the main. 
 To do his noble master's pleasure. 
 
 " Now whirlwinds tear, and waters dash, 
 Now lightnings rend, and masts are falling ; 
 All hearts on board are struck with awe. 
 One heart al one's beyond appalling ! 
 
 ** Now beams the golden sun again ; 
 Now France upon the bow 's appearing ; 
 All hearts on board with joy are cheer'd ; 
 One heart alone 's beyond all cheering ! 
 
STRANGE BANQUETS. 475 
 
 " And soon, through Fayai's frowning wood. 
 The page and heart their way are making. 
 When winding sounds the lusty horn, 
 With hunters' cries the stillness breaking. 
 
 " Then from the thicket bounds a stag. 
 Through his heart an arrow flying, 
 Checks his course, and strikes him dead, — 
 At the page's feet he's lying. 
 
 " And now the Eitter of Fayal, 
 Who first the gallant stag had wounded. 
 Gallops up with hunting train, 
 Who soon the gentle page surrounded. 
 
 " The golden urn had quickly fall'n 
 
 To the Ritter's knaves a welcome booty. 
 
 Had not the boy stepp'd back a pace, 
 
 And told them of his mournful duty. 
 " ' Heart of a knightly Troubadour, 
 
 Here is a warrior's heart, I say, — 
 
 The Castellan of Coucy's heart ; 
 
 Let pass this heart its peaceful way ! 
 
 '^ ' Dying, my gallant master cried, 
 When this heart has ceased its beating. 
 To the fair Lady of Fayal 
 Bear it, with De Coucy's greeting.' 
 
 " ' That dame I know full passing well ! * 
 
 Shouted the knight in deadly passion. 
 
 As from the trembling page he tore 
 
 The urn, in fierce uncourteous passion. 
 " And with it, grasp'd beneath his cloak. 
 
 Homeward sped the savage Eitter ; 
 
 The heart close press'd upon his breast, 
 
 Fill'd it with thoughts of vengeance bitter. 
 *' Scarce at his castle-gate arrived, 
 
 His madden'd thoughts intent on treason, 
 
 Than straight his frighted cooks are charged 
 
 The heart with condiments to season. 
 " 'Tis done ! and richly strewn with flow'rs. 
 
 And lain on golden dish withal, 
 
 'Tis placed before the Knight and Dame, 
 
 When seated in their banquet-hall. 
 
476 TABLE TRAITS. 
 
 " The Knight upon th^ Ladj tended. 
 Speaking in terms of feign'd delight— 
 ' Of all the produce of my chase, 
 This heart is yours, fair dame, by right ! ' 
 
 " But scarcely had the Lady tasted 
 Of the dainty placed before her, 
 When impulse, strong and strange, to weep, 
 Irresistibly came o'er her. 
 
 *' On marking which the Kitter cried, 
 With wild and savage laugh unholy, 
 * Do pigeons' hearts, my faithful Dame, 
 Give tendency to melancholy % 
 
 " ' Then how much more, Lady mine. 
 Must fare like this such passion raise — 
 The Castellan of Coucy's heart, 
 Whose lyre was wont to sound thy praise ? ' 
 
 *' And when the Knight, with stern reproof, 
 Had ceased thus sneering to upbraid, he 
 Stood ; while hand on heart too, thus 
 With solemn action spoke the Lady : — 
 
 " ' Thou'st done me foulest wrong to-day ! 
 Ne'er false was I, not e'en in thought, 
 Till this poor heart I touch'd but now. 
 Within my own mutation wrought. 
 
 " * The youthful Poet's passion, told 
 With sadden'd heart and anxious brow, 
 I scorn'd while yet the Poet lived, 
 But dead ! I yield me to it now. 
 
 " ' To death devoted, this weak frame, 
 To which De Coucy's heart hath lent 
 A brief support, shall never more 
 Partake of earthly nourishment. 
 
 *' * May Heav'n its mercy show to all ; 
 
 Yes, e'en to thee may Heav'n show it ! * 
 
 ***** 
 
 Such is the story of a heart 
 
 That once inspired a youthful Poet. " 
 
STRANGE BANQUETS. 477 
 
 The above story of the Castellan de Coucy is considered 
 to be one of Uhland's most remarkable poems, as much 
 from its general sweetness, unhappily lost in translation, as 
 from the wit with which he continually keeps before the 
 reader the one word which forms the principal feature in 
 the little romance. The tale is, however, by no means 
 new. There are few nations whose story-tellers do not 
 celebrate a lady who was forced by a jealous husband to 
 eat the heart of her lover. It is common to England, 
 Ireland, and Scotland. In France, the story exists nearly 
 as Uhland has told it. In Germany, it is to be met with 
 in various forms. In one of these, the lady is shown to 
 have been more kind and less faithful than the Hitter s 
 wife of Fayal. But above all it is, as the mad prince says, 
 " extant, and written in very choice Italian," by the at once 
 seductive and repulsive Boccaccio. It is one of the least 
 filthy of a set of stories, told with a beauty of style, a 
 choice of language, a lightness and a grace, which make 
 you forget the matter and risk your morals, for the sake 
 of improving your Italian. In Boccaccio's narrative, the 
 lady is of course very guilty; and the husband also, of 
 course, murders the lover in as brutal and unknightly a 
 fashion as can well be imagined. Nothing else could be 
 expected from that unequalled story-teller, (unequalled as 
 much for the charm of his manner, as for the general 
 uncleanness of his details,) who but seldom has a good 
 word to say for woman, or an honest testimony to give of 
 man. Human nature presented nothing beautiful or 
 estimable to him ; and yet it is undeniable that he had an 
 acute perception of beauty and honour. The characters 
 he describes are scurvy, vicious, heartless, debauched 
 wretches ; but he dresses them up in such dashing 
 bravery of attire, and endows them with such divinity of 
 beauty, and he writes of their whereabout with such 
 witchery of pen, that his poor, weak, ensnared readers have 
 
478 TABLE TRAITS. 
 
 nothing for it but to go on in alternate extremes of 
 admiring and condemning. To revert to the German 
 prose story of the Heart, I may say that it is merely a bad 
 translation from the ^^ Decameron/' telling in a very matter- 
 of-fact way the history of a Lady von Koussillon, " welches 
 ihres geliebte Herz zu essen erhalt, und sich den Tod 
 gibt."^ 
 
 This strange banquet is not to be set down as positively 
 apocryphal, merely because it has fallen into the possession 
 of the rhymers and romancers. The old German barons 
 were rather inclined to a barbarous species of kitchen — 
 something crude and cannibal of character — if we may so 
 far credit the extravagances of legend as to believe that 
 they are founded on fact. But we need not go to Germany 
 and fairy periods for illustrations of extraordinary banquets, 
 or individual dieting. 
 
 Among eccentric gastronomists, I do not recollect one 
 more remarkable than Mrs. Jeffreys, the sister of Wilkes. 
 At Bath, she slept throughout the year beneath an open 
 window, and the snow sometimes lent her bed an addi- 
 tional counterpane. She never allowed a fire to be kindled 
 in this room, the chief adornment of which was a dozen 
 clocks, no two of which struck the hour at the same 
 moment. She breakfasted frugally enough on chocolate 
 and dry toast, but proceeded daily in a sedan chair, with a 
 bottle of Madeira at her side, to a boarding-house to dine. 
 She invariably sat between two gentlemen, '' men having 
 more sinew in mind and body than women," and with these 
 she shared her " London Particular." Warner, in his 
 '^ Literary Recollections," says that some mighty joint that 
 was especially well-covered with fat, was always prepared for 
 her. She was served with slices of this fat, which she 
 swallowed alternately with pieces of chalk, procured for 
 her especial enjoyment. Neutralizing the subacid of the 
 fat with the alkaline principle of the chalk, she ^^ amalga- 
 
STRANGE BANQUETS. 479 
 
 mated, diluted^ and assimilated the delicious compound 
 with half-a-dozen glasses of her delicious wine." The diet 
 agreed well with the old lady, and she maintained that 
 such a test authorized use. 
 
 We may contrast with the lady who loved lumps of 
 chalk, the people of a less civilized time and place, who 
 had a weakness for a species of animal food, which is not 
 to be found written down in the menus of modern dinners. 
 Keating, in his ^^ Narrative of an Expedition to the Source of 
 St Peter's Eiver," gives some curious details, which may be 
 not inappropriately touched upon here, referring as they 
 do to a nation of dog-eaters. The custom at first sight 
 strikes us as rather revolting j but the animal in question, 
 to say nothing of our stealthy friend the cat, is eaten every 
 day in " ragouts," that smoke on the boards of the cheap 
 garrottes of Paris and the hanlieux. After all, custom 
 and prejudice have much to do with the subject. " What 
 do you do w^ith your dead V once asked a member of a 
 distant Asiatic tribe of a Eoman. "We bury them," 
 answered the latter. "Gracious heaven!" exclaimed the 
 "untutored Indian," with disgust, "what filthy and fiendish 
 impiety 1" " Why so V inquired the other. " What do you 
 and your people with your dead ? " " We treat them," 
 replied the Indian proudly, " with the decent forms that 
 best become the dead ; we eat them ! " To this day the 
 nobles of Thibet are honoured after death with a very 
 valuable and enviable privilege. They are reverentially 
 offered to a body of hounds, maintained for the especial 
 purpose of devouring the defunct aristocracy. What 
 remains at the end of the process is cared for, like the 
 ashes which were taken of old from beneath the pile on 
 which a loved corpse had lain. This exclusive honour is 
 never vouchsafed to the commonalty ; it is the particular 
 vested right of greatness ; and had Hamlet known of it 
 when he traced great Csesar's clay stopping a bung-hole. 
 
480 TABLE TEAITS. 
 
 it would have afforded him another ilhistration of the base 
 uses to which mortality may return. Let us return to the 
 dog-eaters. Mr. Keating shall tell what he saw among 
 them, in his own words : Sua narret Ulysses, 
 
 **1^s soon as we had taken our seats, the chief (Wanotau) 
 passed his pipe round; and while we were engaged in 
 smoking, two of the Indians arose, and uncovered the 
 large kettles which were standing over the fire. They 
 emptied their contents into a dozen of wooden dishes 
 which were placed all round the lodge. These consisted 
 of buffalo meat boiled with tepsin; also the same vegetable 
 boiled without the meat, in buffalo grease; and, finally, 
 the much-esteemed dog-meat — all which were dressed 
 without salt. In compliance with the established usage 
 of travellers to taste of everything, we all partook of the 
 latter, with a mixed feeling of curiosity and reluctance. 
 Could we have divested ourselves entirely of the pre- 
 judices of education, we should, doubtless, unhesitatingly 
 have acknowledged this to be one of the best dishes that 
 we had ever tasted. It was remarkably fat, —was sweet 
 and palatable. It had none of that dry, stringy cha- 
 racter which we had expected to find in it; and it was 
 entirely destitute of the strong taste which we had 
 apprehended it must possess. It was not an unusual 
 appetite, or the want of meat to compare with it, which 
 led us to form this favourable opinion of the dog; for 
 we had on our dish the best meat which our prairies 
 afford. But so strongly rooted are the prejudices of 
 education, that though we all unaffectedly admitted the 
 excellence of this food, yet few of us could be induced to 
 eat much of it. We were warned by our trading friends, 
 that the bones of this animal are treated with great 
 respect by the doctors. We therefore took great care to 
 replace them in the dishes; and we are informed that 
 after such a feast is concluded, the bones are carefully 
 
STRANGE BANQUETS. 481 
 
 collected, the flesh scraped off them, and that after being 
 washed, they are burned on the ground ; partly, as it is 
 said, to testify to the dog-species that in feasting on one 
 of their number, no disrespect was meant to the species 
 itself; and partly also from a belief that the bones of 
 the animal will arise and reproduce another. The meat 
 of this animal, as we saw it, was thought to resemble that 
 of the finest Welsh mutton, except that it was of a much 
 darker colour. Having so far overcome our repugnance 
 as to taste it, we no longer wonder that the dog should be 
 considered a dainty dish by those in whom education has 
 not created a prejudice against this flesh. In China it 
 is said that fatted pups are frequently sold in the market- 
 place ; and it appears that an invitation to a feast of dog 
 meat is the greatest distinction that can be oflered to a 
 stranger by any of the Indian nations east of the Rocky 
 Mountains. That this is not the case among some of 
 the nations on the east of those mountains, appears from 
 the fact that Lewis and Clarke were called in derision by 
 the Indians of Columbia, ^ dog -eaters.'" 
 
 It may be readily believed that the food above spoken 
 of must be more acceptable to the human appetite than 
 the snails which are fattened for the public markets in 
 the meadows about Ulm. Two Edinburgh doctors did 
 indeed pronounce the prejudice against snails to be absurd, 
 and they showed the strength of their own convictions by 
 sitting down to a charmingly prepared little dish. The 
 courage of each failed him at the first taste, but neither 
 liked to confess as much to the other. They went on 
 playing with their repast, until one ventured to say in 
 a remarkably faint voice, '^ Don't you think, doctor, they 
 are a leetle green?" "D — d green. Sir! d — d green!" 
 was the hearty confirmatory rejoinder; "they are d — d 
 green ! take them away !" 
 
 But the Australians do not always exhibit this extreme 
 
 I I 
 
482 TABLE TRAITS. 
 
 nicety. If they cannot, or once could not, eat biscuits, 
 they have no such delicate scruples about eating babies, 
 even when those babies are their own. The cannibalism 
 of the Australians appears to be not so obsolete as those 
 who wish well to humanity would fain desire. This is 
 settled by the testimony of Mr. Westgarth, a member of 
 the local parliament, and the latest writer who has touched 
 upon the subject. In his " Victoria, late Australia Felix," 
 he says :— *^ In their natural state, the aborigines stand 
 out wdth a species of rude dignity. The precision and 
 acuteness of their observant faculties are not to be sur- 
 passed; and they exhibit a surprising tact in their various 
 modes of discovering and securing food. The narrow 
 compass of their minds is concentrated in a few lines of 
 vocation, in W'hich, as in the exhibitions of a Blind 
 Asylum, there are displayed an extraordinary accuracy 
 and skill. But to these barbaric excellences, must be 
 added the most degrading, superstitious, and revolting 
 (jiistoms. Civilized nations are still unwilling to believe 
 that infanticide and cannibalism are associated with the 
 customs of any race of human beings, or voluntarily 
 practised, except in those rare cases of necessity which 
 have broken dowai the barriers of nature alike to the 
 white and the black; but nothing is better affirmed than 
 that cannibalism is a constant habit with this degraded 
 race, who alternately revel in the kidney fat of their 
 slain or captured enemies, and in the entire bodies of 
 their own friends and relatives. Nor can the infant 
 claim any security from the mother who bore it, against 
 some ruthless law, or practice, or superstition, that on 
 frequent occasions consigns the female proportion, and 
 sometimes both sexes, to destruction. On authentic 
 testimony, bodies have been greedily devoured even in a 
 state of obvious and loathsome disease ; and a mother has 
 been observed deliberately destroying her youngest child. 
 
STRANGE BANQUETS. 483 
 
 serving it up as food, and gathering around her the 
 remainder of the family to enjoy the unnatural banquet." 
 It is certainly pleasant to turn from such a spectacle as 
 this to contemplate the wives of the King of Delhi, who 
 pass their time in spoiling, but not killing, their children, 
 and whose chief amusement, after matters of dress, con- 
 sists in sitting and cracking nutmegs in presence of the 
 Great Mogul! 
 
 But there are worse things than these whicli necessity 
 can render acceptable to the palate. In Australia espe- 
 cially does nature appear to indulge in strange freaks. 
 Many of our salt-water fish there live in fresh-water 
 rivers ; ahd, indeed, more than one inland river is brackish 
 if not salt. Yet of salt itself the natives had never tasted, 
 until the arrival among them of Europeans ; they do not 
 take kindly to the condiment even to this day. They 
 prefer their own unadorned cookery ; and they would espe- 
 cially have admired the late Dr. Howard, who published 
 quarterly his denunciations against the use of salt. In 
 Australia, the pears are made of wood, and thc' stones of 
 the cherries grow on the outside, and not within. The 
 aborigines are satisfied with very unsavoury diet. They 
 have one fashion, however, in common with the self- 
 appointed leaders of civilization, the French ; they eat 
 frogs. In France it is the pastime of the bourgeois, on a 
 summer evening, to resort to some pool with a rod and 
 line, and a piece of red rag or bit of soap for bait, and 
 there catch the little people who could not agree about 
 their king by the dozen. In Australia the native ladies, 
 in their usual scantiness of costume, proceed to the 
 swamps j and there, plunging their long arms up to the 
 shoulders into the mud, they draw up the astonished frogs 
 by handfuls. When caught they are cooked over a slow 
 fire of A\ood-ashes ; the hinder parts only are eaten, as in 
 France j and there are worse dishes than the fricdsee of 
 
 I T 9. 
 
484 TABLE TRAITS. 
 
 the edible frog. Indeed, if the Australians devoured 
 nothing more objectionable, their system of diet would 
 almost defy reproof But, alas ! I find upon their bills of 
 fare — grubs, raw and roasted, snakes, lizards, rats, mice, 
 and weazels. The mussel is deeply declined by some of 
 the tribes, in consequence of an opinion prevailing that 
 the fish in question is the especial property of sorcerers, 
 whose amiable propensity it is to destroy mankind by 
 means of mussels. If all the world held the same opinion, 
 I have no doubt of great profit therefrom resulting. 
 
 One of our earlier captains who visited Australia 
 observing a native devouring some indescribable sort of 
 food, offered him, in exchange for a portion of it, a sound 
 sea-biscuit. The exchange was effected, and then it be- 
 came a point of courtesy and honour that each should eat 
 what he had acquired by the barter. The trial was a 
 severe one for both parties. The Englishman swallowed 
 slowly, and with a sickening sense of disgust that cannot 
 be told, the odious food of the aboriginal ; while the 
 native, nibbling at the biscuit, appeared to grow more 
 horror-stricken at each bit which he tried to swallow. 
 1^he tears came into his eyes, he grew sick, faint, enraged ; 
 and at length, dashing the biscuit on the ground, he as 
 violently seated himself upon it wdth a bounce that ought 
 to have driven it to the very centre of the earth. The 
 Englishman, in the meantime, had flung away the remnant 
 of his " piece de resistance,'' and they remained gazing at 
 each other, w^ith the inward conviction that, as regarded 
 food, each had tasted that day that which deserved to be 
 designated as surprisingly beastly. 
 
 Keating's Indians are not the only men of North 
 America who have a delicate fancy for the dog : the 
 Dacotas are also that way given. Their celebrated " dog- 
 dance*' is indeed a festival but of rare occurrence, but it 
 is held to show that that highly respectable people would 
 
STRANGE BANQUETS. 485 
 
 eat tlie hearts of their enemies with as little reluctance 
 as the heart of a dog. And this is the manner of the 
 feast of '' braves ; " they cook the heart and liver of a dog, 
 cool them in water, and then hang the dainties on a high 
 pole, around which they assemble as grave and silent as 
 quakers. The spirit is literally supposed to move them, 
 and when one is thus influenced, he begins to bark, and 
 jumps towards the pole. Another follows his example. 
 The jumping backwards and forwards, and the chorus of 
 barking become gradually univei^al, and the solemn con- 
 cert is then at its height. Every one does his best, ac- 
 cording as nature has gifted him. The children snap like 
 French poodles; the girls yelp like pugs; some snarl, 
 others growl ; the women "give tongue" as musically as 
 the Bramham Park hounds ; and the fathers of the tribe 
 run through a scale of sounds that would highly astonish 
 Lablache. 
 
 And thus, in the midst of it all, one becomes bolder 
 than the rest, looks about him grinningly defiant, and 
 making a run and a leap at the canine dainties suspended 
 from the pole, he generally touches ground again with a 
 piece thereof in his teeth ! This good example is also fol- 
 lowed universally, until the tempting prize is all consumed, 
 and then there is ^' a general dance of characters," and the 
 drama is done. The Dacotas have an esteem for diminu- 
 tive dogs; and, lest my readers should deem the tribe to be 
 wholly unacquainted with civilization and its secrets, I 
 will just mention that these Indians not only drink 
 whisky with a^ much profusion as it is drunken in godly 
 Glasgow, but they occasionally administer a little of it to 
 their dogs, in order to stunt their growth. Such prayers 
 too as they have, are also marked by a modern and civi- 
 lized character ; for example, they say, " Great Spirit ! 
 Father 1 help us to kill our enemies, and give us plenty of 
 corn 1 " This is the very spirit of much of the prayer put 
 
486 TABLE TRAITS. 
 
 up by the dwellers in the regions of enlightenment. And 
 the spirit, with its proper motives, is not one to be blamed. 
 These barbarous Indians do not, at all events, insult their 
 Great Spirit, by asking him to give peace in their time, 
 because none other fighteth for them but him. This would 
 sound to their ear as though they needed peace, for the 
 reason that their defence in war was not to be relied upon; 
 and, if it had slipped into their formulary, they would at 
 least amend it without delay. 
 
 But this is getting critical, and so to become reminds us 
 of authors. Now to treat of them, in reference to the 
 table, is generally speaking to fall upon the discussion of 
 their " calamities," and the Encyclopaedia of famished 
 writers would be a very heavy work indeed. We have yet 
 time, however, before the chapter of " Supper " opens, to 
 take a cursory glance at a few of the brotherhood of the 
 brain and quill. It can be but of a few, and of that few 
 but briefly. " Tanto meglio /" says the reader, and I will 
 not dispute the propriety of the exclamation. 
 
AUTHORS AND THEIR DIETETICS. 
 
 It is all very well for Mr. Leigh Hunt to write a poem 
 on the " Feast of the Poets," and to show us how Apollo 
 stood " pitching his darts/' by way of invitation to the 
 ethereal banquet. This is all very well in graceful poetry, 
 but the account is no more to be received, than the new 
 gospel according to ditto is likely to be by the Lord 
 Primate and orthodox Christians. It is far more difficult 
 to tell the matter in plain prose ; for, where there are few 
 dinners, many authors cannot well dine. It is easier to 
 tell how they fasted than how they fed ; how they died, 
 choked at last by the newly-baked roll that came too late 
 to be swallowed, than how they lived daily, — for the daily 
 life of some would be as impossible of discovery, as the 
 door of the " Cathedral of Immensities," wherein Mr. 
 Carlyle transacts worship. The soul of the poet, says an 
 Eastern proverb, passes into the grasshopper, which sings 
 till it dies of starvation. An apt illustration, but our 
 English grasshoppers must not be used for the illustrative 
 purpose, seeing that they are far too wise to do anything 
 of the sort. A British grasshopper no more sings till he 
 dies, than a British swan dies singing : these foolish 
 habits are left to foreigners and poetry. Let us turn to 
 the more reliable register of our ever-juvenile friend, Mr. 
 Sylvanus Urban. 
 
 More than a century ago, Mr. Urban, who is the only 
 original ^^ oldest inhabitant," gave a '^ Literary Bill of 
 
488 TABLE TRAITS. 
 
 Mortality for 1752/' showing the casualties among books 
 
 as well as among authors. Touching the respective fates 
 
 of the former, we find the productions of the year set 
 
 down as, '' Abortive, 7000 ; still-born, 3000 ; old age, 0." 
 
 Sudden deaths fell upon 320. Three or four thousand 
 
 perished by trunk-makers, sky-rockets, pastry-cooks, or 
 
 worms; while more than half that number were privily 
 
 disposed of If such were the fortunes of the works, 
 
 how desperate must have been the diet of the authors ! 
 
 So also was their destiny. As a class, they are fixed, 
 
 in round numbers, at 3000 ; and a third of these are 
 
 registered as dying of lunacy. Some 1200 are entered 
 
 as " starved " Seventeen were disposed of by " the 
 
 hangman," and fifteen by hardly more respectable persons, 
 
 namely themselves/. Mad dogs, vipers, and mortification, 
 
 swept off a goodly number. Five pastoral poets, who 
 
 could not live by the oaten pipe, appropriately died of 
 
 '^ fistula." And, as a contrast to the multitude " starved," 
 
 we find a zero indicating the ascertained quantity of 
 
 authors who had perished by the aldermanic malady of 
 
 " surfeit." 
 
 There is, perhaps, more approximation to truth than 
 appears at first sight in this Jeu d' esprit. It was only in 
 Pagan days that authors could boast of obesity. They 
 dined with the tyranni, as Persian poets get their mouths 
 stuffed with sugar-candy by the Shah Inshah. And yet 
 Pliny speaks of poets feeding sparingly, ut solent poetce. 
 Perhaps this was only an exception, like that of Moore, 
 who smilingly sat down to a broil at home when not dining 
 with " right honourables ;" or contentedly thanked Heaven 
 for " salt fish and biscuits" with his mother and sister in 
 Abbey Street, the day after he had supped with the 
 ducal viceroy of Ireland, and half the peerage of the 
 three kingdoms. 
 
 Still, in the old times, authors took more liberty with 
 
AUTHORS AND THEIR DIETETICS. 489 
 
 their hosts. In Rome they kept more to the proprieties ; 
 for a nod of the head of the imperial entertainer was 
 sufficient to make their own fly from their shoulders. In 
 presence of the Roman emperor of old, an author could only 
 have declared that the famous invasion of Britain, which 
 was productive of ship-loads of spoil, in the shape of sea- 
 shells, was a god-like feat. So, at the table of the czar, 
 all the lyres of Muscovy sing the ode of eternal sameness, 
 to the effect that the dastardly butchery at Sinope was an 
 act that made the angels of God jubilant ! The Russian 
 lyres dare not sing to any other tune. It was not so of 
 yore. Witness what is told us of Philoxenus, the ode 
 writer, whose odes, however, are less known than his acts. 
 He was the author of the wish that he had a crane's neck, 
 in order to have prolonged enjoyment jn swallowing. 
 This is a poor wish compared with that of Quin, elsewhere 
 recorded, that he might have a swallow as long as from 
 here to Botany Bay in palate all the way ! He was a 
 greedy fellow, this same Philoxenus. He accustomed 
 himself to hold his hands in the hottest water, and to 
 gargle his throat with it scalding ; and, by this noble 
 training, he achieved the noble end of being able to 
 swallow the hottest things at table, before the other guests 
 could venture on them. He would have conquered the 
 most accomplished of our country bumpkins in consuming 
 hasty-pudding at a fair. His mouth was as though it was 
 paved, and his fellow-guests used to say of him, that he 
 was an oven and not a man. He once travelled many 
 miles to buy fish at Ephesus ; but, when he reached the 
 market-place, he found it all bespoke for a wedding 
 banquet. He was by no means embarrassed ; he went 
 uninvited to the feast, kissed the bride, sang an epithala- 
 mium that made the guests roar with ecstasy, and afforded 
 such delight by his humour, that the bridegroom invited 
 him to breakfast with him on the morrow. His wit 
 
490 TABLE TRAITS. 
 
 had made amends for his devouring all the best dishes. 
 It is a long way from Philoxenns to Dr. Chalmers 
 forgetting his repast in the outpouring of his wisdom, 
 and entering in his journal the expression of his fear that 
 he had been intolerant in argument. Wii'at a contrast, 
 too, between Philoxenus and Byron, who, when dining 
 with a half-score of wits at Rogers' s, only opened his 
 movith to ask for biscuits and soda-water, and not finding 
 any such articles in the bill of fare, silently dining on 
 vegetables and vinegar ! The noble poet's fare in Athens 
 was often of the same modest character ; but we know 
 what excesses he could commit when his wayward appe- 
 tite that way prompted, or when he wished to lash his 
 Pegasus into fury, as, after reading the famous attack on 
 his poetry in the Edinburgh Review, when he swallowed 
 three bottles of claret, and then addressed himself to the 
 tomahawking of his reviewers and rivals. 
 
 Philoxenus, however, had his counterpart in those 
 abbes and poets who used, in the hearing of Louis XY., to 
 jDraise Madame de Pompadour. He was writing a poem 
 called ^^ Galatea/' in honour of the mistress of Dionysius 
 of Sicily, when he was once dining with that tyrant. 
 There were a couple of barbels on the royal board, a 
 small one near the poet, and a larger near the prince. 
 As the latter saw Philoxenus put his diminutive barbel 
 to his ear, he asked him wherefore, and the poet replied that 
 he was asking news of Nereus, but that he thought the fish 
 he held had been caught too young to give him any. '^ I 
 think," said Philoxenus, ^' that the old fish near your 
 sacredness would better suit my purpose." This joke has 
 descended to Joe Miller, in whose collection it is to be 
 found in a modified form. But the story is altogether 
 less neat than the one told of Dominic, the famous 
 Italian harlequin and flirce writer. He was standing in 
 presence of Louis XIY. at dinner, when the Grand 
 
AUTHORS AND THEIR DIETETICS. 491 
 
 Monarque observed that his eyes were fixed on a dish of 
 partridges. " Take that dish to Dominic," said the king. 
 ^^ What 1 " exclaimed the farceur, '' partridges and all 1 ' 
 '^ Well/' said the monarch, smihng with gravity, ^' yes, 
 partridges and all ! " This reminds me of another anec- 
 dote, the hero of which is the Abbe Morallet, whom Miss 
 Edgeworth in her '^ Ormond " praises so highly, and 
 ]3raises so justly. But Morallet, if he loved good deeds, 
 loved not less good dinners, and he shone in both. His 
 talents as a writer, and his virtues as a man, to say 
 nothing of his appetite, made him especially welcome at 
 the hospitable table of Monsieur Ansu. The abbe had 
 learned to carve expressly that he might appropriate to him- 
 self his favourite portions, — a singular instance of selfishness 
 in a man who was selfish in nothing else. , It was on one of 
 these occasions that a magnificent pheasant excited the 
 admiration of the guests, and of the abbe in particular, 
 who nevertheless sighed to think that it had not been 
 placed close to him. Some dexterity was required so to 
 carve it, that each of the guests might partake of the 
 oriental bird; and the mistress of the house, remembering 
 the abbe's skill as a carver, directed an attendant to pass 
 the pheasant to M. I'Abbe de Morallet. '' What ! " 
 exclaimed the latter, " the whole of it '? how very kind ! " 
 " The whole of it ?" repeated the lady ; " I have no objec- 
 tion, if these ladies and gentlemen are willing to surrender 
 their rights to you." The entire company gave consent, 
 by reiterating the words, " the whole of it !" and the man, 
 w^ho might have gained the Montholon prize for virtue, 
 really achieved a prize of gluttony which hardly confers 
 honour on a hungry clown at a fair. 
 
 La Fontaine at table was seen in a better light than 
 the Abbe Morallet. A fermier-general once invited him 
 to a dinner of ceremony, in the persuasion that an author 
 who excited such general admiration would create endless 
 
492 TABLE TRAITS. 
 
 delight for the select company, to entertain whom he had 
 been invited. La Fontaine knew it well, during the whole 
 repast ate in silence, and immediately rose, to the conster- 
 nation of the convives, to take his departure. He was 
 going, he said, to the Academy. The master of the house 
 represented to him that it was by far too early, and that 
 he would find none of the members assembled. " I know 
 that," said the fabulist, with his quiet smile and courteous 
 bow; " I know that, but I will go a long way round." If 
 this seemed a trifle uncourteous — and it was so more in 
 seeming than reality — it was not so much so as in the case 
 of Byron, who used to invite a company to dinner, and 
 then leave them to themselves to enjoy their repast. 
 Noble hosts of the past century used to do something like 
 this when they gave masquerades. Fashion compelled 
 them to adopt a species of amusement which they detested; 
 but they vindicated personal liberty nevertheless, for when 
 their rooms were at their fullest, the noble host, quietly 
 leaving his guest to the care of his wife, would slip away 
 to some neighbouring coffee-house, and over a cool pint of 
 claret enjoy the calm which was not to be had at home. 
 The late Duke of Norfolk used habitually to dine at one 
 of the houses in Covent Garden, out of pure liking to it. 
 He was accustomed to order dinner for five, and to duly 
 eat what he had deliberately ordered; but, as he one day 
 detected a waiter watching him in his gastronomic process, 
 he angrily ordered his bill, and never entered the house 
 again. 
 
 It was a common practice with Haydn, like his Grace of 
 Norfolk, to order a dinner for five or six, and then eat the 
 whole himself He once ordered such a dinner to be ready 
 by a stated hour, at which time he alone appeared, and 
 ordered the repast to be served. " But where is the com- 
 pany?" respectfully inquired the head waiter. "Oh!" 
 exclaimed Haydn, " / am de gompany 1 " But if he ate 
 
AUTHORS AND THEIR DIETETICS. 493 
 
 all, he also paid for all. Moore and Bowles, in their visits 
 together to Bath, used sometimes to dine at the White Hart, 
 where, as Moore records, he paid his share of the dinner 
 and pint of Madeira, and then Bowles magnificently ^^ stood" 
 a bottle of claret, at dessert. And a pleasant dinner the 
 two opposite, yet able, poets, made of it ; — far more plea- 
 sant than Coleridge's dinner with a party at Reynolds's, 
 when he bowled down the glasses like nine-pins, because 
 they were too small to drink from copiously ! 
 
 The name of Coleridge reminds me of Dufresny, an 
 author of the time of Louis XIV., who was full of sentiment 
 and majestic sounds, but who was content to live at the 
 cost of other people, and who never achieved anything like 
 an independence for himself. After the death of his royal 
 patron, he was one day dining with the ,Ptegent Duke of 
 Orleans, who expressed a wish to provide for him. Caprice 
 inspired the author to say, " Your royal highness had 
 better leave me poor, as I am, as a monument of the con- 
 dition of France before the regency." He was not dis- 
 pleased at having his petition refused. A guest at his side 
 did indeed remark, by way of encouragement, that "poverty 
 was no vice." ^^No," answered Dufresny, sharply, ^' but 
 it is something very much worse." In act and spirit he 
 was not unlike a prince of wits and punsters among our- 
 selves, who used to set up bottles of champagne on his 
 little lawn and bowl them down for nine pins; and who, 
 of course, left his wife and children pensioners on the 
 charity of the state and the people. 
 
 I have spoken of La Fontaine ; he was as absent at table 
 as poor Lord Dudley and Ward, whose first aberrations so 
 alarmed Queen Adelaide. La Fontaine was also like Dean 
 Ogle, who, at a friend's table, always thought himself at 
 his own, and if the dinner were indifferent, he would make 
 an apology to the guests, and promise them better treatment 
 next time. So La Fontaine was one day at the table of 
 
494 TABLE TRAITS. 
 
 Despreaux; the conversation turned upon St. Augustin, 
 and after much serious discourse upon that Christian 
 teacher, La Fontaine, who had till then been perfectly 
 silent, turned to his neighbour, the Abbe Boileau, one of 
 the most pious men of his day, and asked him " if he 
 thought that St. Augustin had as much wit as Eabelais?" 
 The priest blushed scarlet, and then contented himself with 
 remarking, ^^ M. de la Fontaine, you have got on one of 
 your stockings the wrong side out;" — which was the fact. 
 
 The poet's query to the priest was no doubt as startling 
 as that put by the son of a renowned reverend joker to 
 the then Lord Primate. The anxious parent had informed 
 his somewhat "fast" offspring, that as the archbishop was 
 to dine with him that day, it would be desirable that the 
 young gentleman should eschew sporting subjects, and if 
 he spoke at all, speak only on serious subjects. Accordingly^, 
 at dessert, during a moment of silence, the obedient child, 
 looking gravely at his grace, asked him '^ if he could tell 
 him what sort of condition Nebuchadnezzar was in, when 
 he was taken up from grass 1" The Lord Primate readily 
 replied that he should be able to answer the question by 
 the time he who had made it had found out the name of 
 the man whom Samson ordered to tie the torches to the 
 foxes' tails, before they were sent in to destroy the corn of 
 the Philistines ! 
 
 Moore loved to dine with the great; but there have 
 been many authors who could not appreciate the supposed 
 advantages of such distinction. Lainez was one of these, 
 and there were but few of his countrymen who resembled 
 him. One day the Duke of Orleans met him in the park 
 at Fontainebleau, and did him the honour of inviting him 
 to dinner. "It is really quite impossible," said Lainez; 
 ^^I am engaged to dine at a tavern with half-a-dozen jolly 
 companions ; and what opinion would your royal highness 
 have of me if I were to break my wordT' Lainez was not 
 
AUTHORS AND THEIR DIETETICS. 495 
 
 like Madame de Sevigne, who, after having been asked to 
 dance by Louis XIY., declared in her delight that he was 
 the greatest monarch in the world. Bussi, who laughed 
 at her absurd enthusiasm, affirms that the fair authoress 
 of the famous ^^ Letters " was so excited at the supper after 
 the dance, that it was with difficulty she could refrain from 
 shrieking out ^' Vive le Koi ! " 
 
 Had the famous " petit pere Andre " kept down his 
 impulses as successfully as Madame de Sevigne did at the 
 supper, where, after all, she did not exclaim, " Vive le Roi," 
 it would have been more to his credit, and less to our 
 amusement. The good father, like a better man, H. Vin- 
 cent de Paul, was excessively fond of cards, but he did not 
 cheat, like the saint, for the sake of winning for the poor. 
 He had been playing at piquet, and in one game had won 
 a considerable sum by the lucky intervention of a fourth 
 king. He was in such ecstasy at his luck, that he declared 
 at supper he would introduce his lucky fourth king into 
 his next day's sermon. Bets were laid in consequence of 
 this declaration, and the whole company were present when 
 the discourse was preached. The promise made at the 
 supper was kept in the sermon, though something pro- 
 fanely : " My bretkren," said the abbe, " there aiTived one 
 king, two kings, three kings; but what were they? — ^and 
 where should I have been without the fourth king, who 
 saved me, and has benefited you? That fourth king was 
 He who lay in the manger, and whom the three royal magi 
 came but to worship !" At the dinner which followed the 
 author of the sermon was more eulogised than if he had 
 been as grand as Bourdaloue, as touching as Massillon, 
 or as winning as Fenelon. 
 
 There was more wit in a cure of Basse Bretagne, who 
 was the author of his diocesan's pastorals, and who hap- 
 pened to hold invitations to dinners for the consecutive 
 days of the week. He could not take advantage of them 
 
496 TxVBLE TRAITS. 
 
 and perform his duty too, but he hit on a method of 
 accomplishing his desire. He gave out at church, an inti- 
 mation to this effect : — " In order to avoid confusion, my 
 brethren, I have to announce that to-morrow, Monday, I 
 will receive at confession, the liars only; on Tuesday, the 
 misers; on Wednesday, the slanderers; on Thursday, the 
 thieves; Friday, the libertines; and Saturday, the women 
 of evil life." It need not be said that the priest was left 
 during that week to enjoy himself without let or hindrance. 
 And it was at such joyous dinners as he was in the habit 
 of attending that most of the sermons, with startling pas- 
 sages in them, like those of Father Andre, were devised. 
 Thus, the Cordelier Maillard, the author of various pious 
 works, at a dinner of counsellors, announced his intention 
 of preaching against the counsellors' ladies, — that is, 
 against their wives, or such of them that wore embroidery. 
 And well he kept his word, as the following choice flowers 
 from the bouquet of his pulpit oratory will show. '' You 
 say," he exclaimed to the ladies in question, " that you are 
 clad according to your conditions; all the devils in hell 
 fly away with your conditions, and you too, my ladies! 
 You will say to me, perhaps. Our husbands do not give us 
 this gorgeous apparel, we earn it by the labours of our 
 bodies. Thirty thousand devils fly away with the labours 
 of your bodies, and you too, my ladies ! " And, after 
 diatribes like these against the ladies in question, the 
 Cordelier would dine with their lords, and dine sump- 
 tuously too. The dinners of the counsellors of those days 
 were not like the Spanish dinner to which an author was 
 invited, and which consisted of capon and wine, two excel- 
 lent ingredients, but unfortunately, as at the banquet cele- 
 brated by Swift, where there was nothing warm but the 
 ice, and nothing sweet but the vinegar, so here the capon 
 was cold and the wine was hot. Whereupon, the literary 
 guest dips the leg of the capon into the flask of wine, and 
 
AUTHORS AND THEIR DIETETICS. 497 
 
 being asked by his host wherefore he did so, replied, ^^I am 
 warming the capon in the wine, and cooling the wine with 
 the capon." 
 
 The host was not such a judge of wine, apparently, as 
 the archbishops of Salzbourg, who used not indeed to WTite 
 books, nor indeed read them, but who used to entertain 
 those who did, and then preach against literary vanity 
 from those double-balcony pulpits which some of my 
 readers may recollect in the cathedral of the town where 
 Paracelsus was wont to discourse like Solan, and to drink 
 like Silenus; and before whose tomb I have seen votaries, 
 imploring his aid against maladies, or thanking him for 
 having averted them ! It is said of one of these prince 
 primates that when, on the occasion of his death, the 
 municipal officers went to place the seals on his property, 
 they found the library sealed up exactly as it had been 
 done many years before at the time of the decease of his 
 predecessor. Such, however, was not the case with the 
 wine-cellars. What the archiepiscopal wine is at Salzbourg, 
 I do not know, but if it be half as good as that drank by 
 the monks of Molk, on the Danube, why the archbishops 
 may stand excused. Besides, they only drank it during 
 their leisure hours, — of which, as Hayne remarks, arch- 
 bishops have generally four and twenty daily. 
 
 But to return nearer home, and to our own authors : — 
 Dr. Arne may be reckoned among these, and it is of him, 
 I think, that a pleasant story is told, showing how he 
 wittily procured a dinner in an emergency, which certainly 
 did not promise to achieve such a consummation. The 
 doctor was with a party of composers and musicians in a 
 provincial town, where a musical festival w^as being cele- 
 brated, and at which they were prominent performers. 
 They proceeded to an inn to dine ; they were accommo- 
 dated with a room, but were told that every eatable thing 
 in the house was already engaged. All despaired in their 
 
 K K 
 
498 TABLE TRAITS. 
 
 hunger, save the " Mus. Doc." who, cutting off two or 
 three ends of catgut, went out upon the stairs, and observ- 
 ing a waiter carrying a joint to a company in an adjacent 
 room, contrived to drop the bits of catgut on the meat, 
 while he addressed two or three questions to the waiter. 
 He then returned to his companions, to whom he intimated 
 that dinner would soon be ready. They smiled grimly at 
 what they thought was a sorry joke, and soon after, some 
 confusion being heard in the room to which the joint 
 which he had ornamented had been conveyed, he reiterated 
 the assurance that dinner was coming, and thereupon he 
 left the room. On the stairs he encountered the waiter 
 bearing away the joint, with a look of disgust in his face. 
 '^ Whither so fast, friend, with that haunch of mutton ? " 
 was his query. " I am taking it back to the kitchen. Sir; 
 the gentlemen cannot touch it. Only look. Sir," said 
 William, with his nose in the direction of the bits of cat- 
 gut ; '^ it's enough to turn one's stomach ! " '' William,'* 
 said Arne gravely, ^' fiddlers have very strong stomachs ; 
 bring the mutton to our room." The thing was done, 
 the haunch was eaten, the hungry guests were delighted, 
 but William had ever afterwards a contempt for musical 
 people; he classed them with those barbarians whom he 
 had heard the company speak of where he waited, who not 
 only ate grubs, but declared that they liked them. 
 
 Martial was often as hardly put to it to secure a dinner 
 as any of the authors I have hitherto named. He was 
 fond of a good dinner, ut solent poetce; and he knew 
 nothing better than a hare, followed by a dish of thrushes. 
 The thrush appears to have been a favourite bird in the 
 estimation of the poets. The latter. may have loved to 
 hear them sing, but they loved them better in a pie. 
 Homer wrote a poem on the thrush ; and Horace has said, 
 in a line, as much in its favour as the Chian could have 
 said in his long and lost poem, — "nil melius turdo." 
 
AUTHORS AND THEIR DIETETICS. 499 
 
 Martial was, at all events, a better fed and better weighted 
 man than the poet Philetas of Cos, who was so thin that he 
 walked abroad with leaden balls to his feet, in order that he 
 might not be carried away by the wind. The poet Arche- 
 stratus, when he was captured by the enemy, was put in a 
 pair of scales, and was found of the weight of an obolus. 
 Perhaps this was the value of his poetry ! It was the value 
 of nearly all that was written by a gastronomic authoress 
 in France; I allude to Madame de Genlis, who boasts in 
 her Memoirs, that having been courteously received by a 
 certain German, she returned the courtesy by teaching 
 him how to cook seven diiferent dishes after the French 
 fashion. 
 
 The authors of France have exhibited much caprice in 
 their gastronomic practice; often professing in one direc- 
 tion, and acting in its opposite. Thus Lamartine was a 
 vegetarian until he entered his teens. He remains so in 
 opinion, but he does violence to his taste, and eats good 
 dinners for the sake of conforming to the rules of society ! 
 This course in an author, who is for the moment rigidly 
 Republican when all the world around him is Monarchical, 
 is singular enough. Lamartine's vegetarian taste was 
 fostered by his mother, who took him when a child to 
 the shambles, and disgusted him with the sight of butchers 
 in activity on slaughtering days. He for a long time led 
 about a pet lamb by a ribbon, and went into strong fits 
 at a hint from his mother's cook, that it was time to turn 
 the said pet into useful purposes, and make tendrons 
 d'agneaii of him. Lamartine would no more have thought 
 of eating his lamb, than Emily Norton would have dreamed 
 of breakfasting on collops cut from her dear white doe of 
 Eylston. The poet still maintains, that it is cruel and 
 sinful to kill one animal in order that another may dine ; 
 but, with a sigh for the victim, he can eat heartily of what 
 is killed, and even put his fork into the breast of lamb 
 
500 TABLE TRAITS. 
 
 without compunction^ — but all for conformity ! He knows 
 that if he were to confino himself to turnips, he should 
 enjoy better health and have a longer tenure of life; but 
 then he thinks of the usages of society, sacrifices himself 
 to custom, and gets an indigestion upon truffled turkey. 
 
 Moore, in his early days in London, used to dine some- 
 where in Marylebone with French refugee priests, for 
 something less than a shilling. Dr. Johnson dined still 
 cheaj^ier, at the ^Tine Apple," in New -street, Covent Gar- 
 den — namely, for eightpence. They who drank wine 
 paid fourpence more for the luxury, but the lexicographer 
 seldom took wine at his own expense ; and sixpenny- worth 
 of meat, one of bread, and a penny for the waiter, sufficed 
 to purchase viands and comfort for the author of the 
 " Vanity of Human Wishes." Boyce the versifier was of 
 quite another kidney; when he lay in bed, not only 
 starving, but stark naked, a compassionate friend gave 
 him half-a-guinea, which he spent in truffles and mush- 
 rooms, eating the same in bed under the blankets. There 
 was something atrociously sublime about Boyce. Famine 
 had pretty well done for him, when some one sent him a 
 slice of roast-beef, but Boyce refused to eat it, because 
 there was no catchup to render it palatable. 
 
 It must have been a sight of gastronomic pleasure to 
 have seen Wilkes and Johnson together over a fillet of 
 veal, with abundance of butter, gravy, stuffing, and a 
 squeeze of lemon. The philosopher and the patriot were, 
 then on a level with other hungry and appreciating men. 
 Shallow with his short-legged hen, and Sir Roger de 
 Coverley over hasty-pudding, are myths ; not so Pope with 
 stewed regicide lampreys, Charles Lamb before roast pig, 
 or Lord Eldon next to liver and bacon, or Tiieodore Hook 
 bending to vulgar pea-soup. These were rich realities, 
 and the principal performers in them had not the slightest 
 idea of affecting refinement upon such subjects. Goldsmith, 
 
AUTHORS AND THEIR DIETETICS. 501 
 
 when he could get it, had a weakness for haunch of 
 venison ; and Dr. Young was so struck with a broiled 
 bladebone on which Pope regaled him, that he concluded 
 it was a foreign dish, and anxiously inquired how it was 
 prepared. Ben Jonson takes his place among the lovers 
 of mutton, while Herrick wandering dinnerless about 
 Westminster, Nahum Tate enduring sanctuary and star- 
 vation in the Mint, Savage wantonly incurring hunger, 
 and Otway strangled by it, introduce us to authors w^ith 
 whom " dining with Duke Humphrey," was so frequent a 
 process, that each shadowy meal was but as a station 
 towards death. 
 
 When Goldsmith " tramped " it in Italy, his flute ceased 
 to be his bread-winner as it had been in France ; the 
 fellow-countrymen of Palestrina were deaf to "Barbara 
 Allen," pierced from memory through the vents of an Irish 
 reed. Goldsmith, therefore, dropped his flute, and took up 
 philosophy; not as a dignity; he played it as he had done 
 his flute, for bread and a pillow. He knocked at the gate 
 of a college instead of at the door of a cottage, made his 
 bow, gave out a thesis, supported it in a Latin which must 
 have set on edge the teeth of his hearers, and, having car- 
 ried his exhibition to a successful end, was awarded the 
 trifling and customary honorarium, with which he pur- 
 chased bread and strength for the morrow. No saint in 
 the howling wilderness lived a harder life than Goldsmith 
 during his struggling years in London ; the table traits, 
 even of his days of triumph, were sometimes coloured un- 
 pleasingly. I am not sure if Goldsmith was present at 
 the supper at Sir Joshua's, when Miss Beynolds, after the 
 repast, was called upon as usual to give a toast, and not 
 readily remembering one, was asked to give the ugliest 
 man of her acquaintance, and thereon she gave '' Dr. Gold- 
 smith ;" the name was no sooner uttered than Mrs. Chol- 
 mondeley rushed across the room, and shook hands with 
 
502 TABLE TRAITS. 
 
 Reynolds's sister, by way of approval. What a sample of 
 the manners of the day, and how characteristic the remark 
 of Johnson, who was present, and whose wit, at his friend's 
 expense, was rewarded by a roar, that ^^ thus the ancients, 
 on the commencement of their friendships, used to sacri- 
 fice a beast between them I" Cuzzoni, when found famish- 
 ing, spent the guinea given her in charity, in a bottle of 
 tokay and a penny roll. So Goldsmith, according to ]\Irs. 
 Thrale, was " drinking himself drunk with Madeira," with 
 the guinea sent to rescue him from hunger by Johnson. 
 But let us be just to poor Oliver. If he squandered the 
 eleemosynary guinea of a friend, he refused roast beef and 
 daily pay, offered him by Parson Scott, Lord Sandwich's 
 chaplain, if he would write against his conscience, and in 
 support of government ; and he could be generous in his 
 turn to friends who needed the exercise of generosity. 
 When Goldsmith went into the suburban gardens of Lon- 
 don to enjoy his "shoemakers' holiday," he generally had 
 Peter Barlow with him. Now Peter's utmost limit of 
 profligacy was the sum of fifteen-pence for his dinner ; his 
 share would sometimes amount to five shilling's, but Gold- 
 smith always magnificently paid the difference. Perhaps 
 there are few of the sons of song who dined so beggarly, 
 and achieved such richness of fame, as Butler, Otway, 
 Goldsmith, Chatterton, and, in a less degree of reputation, 
 but, not of suffering, poor Gerald Griffin, who wrestled 
 with starvation till he began to despair. Chatterton did 
 despair, as he sat without food, hope, and humility; and 
 we know what came of it. Butler, the sturdy son of a 
 AVorcestershire farmer, after he had astonished his con- 
 temporaries by his " Hudibras," lived known but to a few, 
 and upon the charity or at the tables of them. But he 
 did not, like the heartless though sorely-tried Savage, 
 slander the good-natured friends at whose tables he drew 
 the support of liis life. As for Otway, whether he perished 
 
AUTHORS AND THEIR DIETETICS. 503 
 
 of suffocation by the roll which he devoured too greedily 
 after long fasting, or whether he died of the cold draught 
 of water, drank when he w^as overheated, it is certain that 
 he died in extreme penury at the " Bull " on Tower Hill, 
 — the coarse frequenters of the low public-house were in 
 noisy revelry round their tables, while the body of the dead 
 poet lay, awaiting the grave, in the room adjacent. 
 
 The table life of Peter Pindar was a far more joyous one 
 than that of much greater poets. At Truro he was noted 
 for his frugal fare, and he never departed from the ob- 
 servance of frugality of living throughout his career. He 
 would sometimes, w^e are told, when visiting country 
 patients, and when he happened to be detained, go into the 
 kitchen and cook his own beefsteak, in order to show a 
 country cook how a steak was done in London, — the only 
 place, he said, where it was properly cooked. He laughed 
 at the faculty as he did at the king, and set the whole pro- 
 fession mad by sanctioning the plentiful use of water, 
 declaring that physic was an uncertain thing, and main- 
 taining that in most cases all that was required on the 
 doctor's part was " to watch nature, and when she was 
 going right, to give her a shove behind.''* He was accus- 
 tomed to analyse the drugs which he had prescribed for 
 his patients, before he would allow the latter to swallow 
 them, and he gave a decided county bias against pork by 
 remarking of a certain apothecary that he was too fond of 
 bleeding the patients who resorted to him, and too proud 
 of his large breed of pigs. The inference was certainly 
 not in favour of pork. Peter's practical jokes in connexion 
 with the table were no jokes to the chief object of them. 
 Thus, when a pompous Cornish member of parliament 
 issued invitations for as pompous a dinner to personages of 
 corresponding pomposity, " Peter," recollecting that the 
 senator had an aunt who was a laundress, sent her an 
 invitation in her nephew^'s name, and the old lady, happy 
 
504 TABLE TRAITS. 
 
 and proud, excited universal surprise, and very particular 
 horror in the bosom of the parliament-man, by making 
 her appearance in the august and hungry assembly, who 
 welcomed her about as warmly as if she had been a " boule 
 asphyxiatre " of the new French artillery practice. 
 
 It is going a long way back to ascend from " Pindar" to 
 Tasso, but both poets loved roasted chestnuts,— and there 
 is the affinity. Peter never drank any thing but old rum ; 
 a wine glass, (never beyond a wine glass and a half,) 
 served him for a day, after a dinner of the plainest kind. 
 The doctor eschewed wine altogether, at least in his latter 
 days, as generating acidity. Tasso, however, unlike our 
 satirical friend, was a wine-bibber. During the imprison- 
 ment which had been the result of his own arrogance, he 
 wrote to the physician of .the Duke of Ferrara, complain- 
 ing of intestinal pains, of sounds of bells in his ears, of 
 painful mental images and varying apparitions of inani- 
 mate things appearing to him, and of his inability to 
 study. The doctor advised him to apply a cautery to his 
 leg, abstain from wine, and confine himself to a diet of 
 broth and gruels. The poet defended the sacredness of 
 his appetite, and declined to abstain from generous wine ; 
 but he urged the medico to find a remedy for his ills, 
 promising to recompense him for his trouble, by making 
 him immortal in song. At a later period of his life, when 
 he was the guest of his friend Manco, in his gloomy castle 
 of Bisaccio, the illustrious pair were seated together, after 
 dinner, over a dessert of Tasso's favourite chestnuts and 
 some generous wine ; and there he afirighted his friend by 
 maintaining that he was constantly attended by a guardian 
 spirit, who was frequently conversing with him, and in 
 proof of the same, he invited Manco to listen to their 
 dialogue. The host replenished his glass and announced 
 himself ready. Tasso fell into a loud rhapsody of mingled 
 folly and beauty, occasionally pausing to give his spirit 
 
AUTHORS AND THEIR DIETETICS. O 
 
 an opportunity of speaking ; but the remarks of this 
 agathodeemon were inaudible to all but the ears of the 
 poet. The imaginary dialogue went on for an hour ; and 
 at the end of it, when Tasso asked Manco what he thought 
 of it, Maneo, who was the most matter-of-fact man that 
 ever lived, replied that, for his part, he thought Tasso had 
 drunk too much wine and eaten too many chestnuts. And 
 truly I think so too. 
 
 The greatest of authors are given to the strangest of 
 freaks. Thus one of the most popular of the teachers of 
 the people presided at a gay tavern supper the night 
 before the execution of the Mannings. The feast con- 
 cluded, the party (supplied with brandy and biscuits) 
 proceeded to the disgusting spectacle, where they occupied 
 " reserved seats ; " and when all was done, the didactic 
 leader of the revellers an^ sight-seers, thought he com- 
 pensated for his want of taste, by pronouncing as " exe- 
 crable " the taste of those who, like George Selwyn, could 
 find pleasure in an execution. But there are few men so 
 inconsistent as didactic authors. Pope taught, in poetry, 
 the excellence of moderation ; but he writes to Congreve 
 in 1715, that he sits up till two o'clock over burgundy and 
 champagne ; and he adds, " I am become so much of a 
 rake that I shall be ashamed, in a short time, to be 
 thought to do any sort of business." But Pope's table 
 practice, like Swift's, was not always of the same cha- 
 racter. The dean, writing to Pope, in the same year that 
 the latter tells Congreve (a dissolute man at table, by the 
 way) of his sitting over burgundy and champagne till two 
 in the morning, speaks of quite another character of life : 
 " You are to understand that I live in the corner of a vast 
 unfurnished house. My family consists of a steward, a 
 groom, a helper in my stable, a footman, and an old maid, 
 who are all at board wages ; and when I do not dine 
 abroad, or make an entertainment, — which last is very 
 
DiJb TABLE TRAITS. 
 
 rare, — I eat a mutton pie, and drink half a pint of wine." 
 Pope's habit of sleeping after dinner did not incline him 
 to obesity ; and it was a habit that the dean approved. 
 Swift told Gay that his wine was bad, and that the clergy 
 did not often call at his house ; an admission in which 
 Gay detected cause and effect. In the following year to 
 that last named, Sw^ift wrote a letter to Pope, in which 
 I find a paragraph affording a table trait of some interest : 
 " I remember," he says, " when it grieved your soul to see 
 me pay a penny more than my club, at an inn, when you 
 had maintained me three months at bed and board ; for 
 which, if I had dealt with you in the Smithfield way, it 
 would have cost me a hundred pounds, for I live w^orse 
 here (Dublin) upon, more. Did you ever consider that 
 I am, for life, almost twice as rich as you, and pay no 
 rent, and drink French wdne twice as cheap as you do 
 port, and have neither coach, chair, nor mother T' Pope 
 illustrates Bolingbroke's way of living as well as his own 
 some years later. The reveller till two in the morning, of 
 the year 1715, is sobered down to the most temperate of 
 table men, in 1728. "My Lord Bolingbroke's great 
 temperance and economy are so signal, that the first is 
 fit for my constitution, and the latter would enable you to 
 lay up so much money as to buy a bishopric in England. 
 As to the return of his health and vigour, were you here, 
 you might inquire of his haymakers. But, as to his 
 temperance, I can answer that, for one whole day, we have 
 had nothing for dinner but mutton broth, beans and 
 bacon, and a barn-door fowl ;" after all, no bad fare either, 
 for peer or poet ! Swift too, at this period, boasts no 
 longer of his " French wines." His appetite is affected by 
 the appalling fact, that the national debt amounts to the 
 unheard-of sum of seven milKons sterling ! and thereupon 
 he says : " I dine alone on half a dish of meat, mix water 
 with my wine, walk ten miles a-day, and read Baronius." 
 
AUTHORS AND THEIR DIETETICS. 507 
 
 Such was tiie table and daily life of an author who be- 
 gan to despair of his country ! In 1732, however, the 
 dean was again full of hope, — we see it in the condition of 
 his wine matters : '^ My stint in company," he writes to 
 Gay, ^^ is a pint at noon, and half as much at night ; but 
 I often dine at home, like a hermit, and then I drink little 
 or none at all." Was it that he despaired again, when 
 alone ; or that he only drank copiously at others' cost ? 
 Of his own cellar arrangements, though, he thus speaks : 
 •• My one hundred pounds w411 buy me six hogsheads of 
 wine, which w^ill support me a year, provisoe fntgis in 
 annum copia. Horace desired no more ; for I will construe 
 frugis to be wine. How a man who drank little or none 
 at home, and seldom saw company to help him to con- 
 sume the remainder, could contrive to get through six 
 hogsheads in a year, is a problem that will be solved when 
 the philosophers of Laputa have settled their theories." 
 Literature is a pleasant thing when its professors have not 
 to write in order to live. Such w^as the case in the last 
 century, with poor De Limiers, who was permitted to 
 write in periodicals, on the stipulation that he " never 
 told anybody." It is said of him that he would have been 
 an exceedingly clever person, if he had not always been 
 hungry, bat that famine spoiled his powers. This was the 
 bookseller's fault, not his. The same might nearly be said 
 of poor Gerald Griffin ; but he kept his ability w^arm even 
 amid cold hunger, and had the courage to wa^ite his noble 
 tragedy " Gisippus" on scraps of paper picked up by him 
 in wretched coffee-shops, where he used to take a late 
 breakfast, and cajole himself into the idea that it was 
 dinner. 
 
 When Cervantes, with two friends, w^ere travelling from 
 Esquivias, famous for its illustrious wines, towards Toledo, 
 he was overtaken by a " polite student," who added him- 
 self and his mule to the company of '^ the crippled sound 
 
5&§r TABLE TRAITS. 
 
 one" and his friends, and who gave honest Miguel much 
 fair advice touching the malady which was then swiftly 
 killing him. " This malady is the dropsy," said the stu- 
 dent with the neck bands that would not keep in their 
 place, — '' the dropsy, which all the w^ater in the world 
 would not cure, even if it were not salt ; you must drink 
 by rule, sir, and eat more, and this will cure you better 
 than any medicine." " Many have told me so," was the 
 reply of the immortal Miguel, ^^ but I should find it as 
 impossible to leave off drinking, as if I had been born for 
 no other purpose. My life is well-nigh ended, and by the 
 beatings of my pulse, I think next Sunday, at latest, will 
 see the close of my career." The great Spaniard was not 
 very incorrect in his prognostic. T introduce this illus- 
 trative incident for a double reason ; first, it is " germane 
 to the matter" in hand, and secondly, it reminds me of a 
 fact with the notice of which I will conclude this section 
 of my imperfect narrative : I allude to 
 
 THE LIQUOK-LOYIlsrG LAUREATES. 
 
 It is incontrovertible that, with the exception of two or 
 three, all our laureates have loved a more pleasant distil- 
 lation than that from bay-leaves. In the early days, the 
 'Wersificatores regis," were rewarded, as all the minstrels 
 in Teutonic ballads are, with a little money and a full 
 bowl. The nightingales in kings' cages piped all the 
 better for their cake being soaked in wine. From the 
 time of the first patented laureate, Ben Jonson, the rule 
 has borne much the same character, and permanent thirsti- 
 nes§ seems generally to have been seated under the laurel. 
 Thus, Ben himself was given to joviality, jolly company, 
 deep drinking, and late hours. His affection for a parti- 
 cular sort of wine acquired for him the nick-name of the 
 Canary-bird; and indeed succeeding laureates who, down 
 to Pye, enjoyed the tierce of Canary, partly owe it to Ben. 
 
AUTHORS AXD THEIR DIETETICS. o(^ 
 
 Charles T. added the wine to an increase of pay asked 
 for by the bard ; and the spontaneous generosity of one 
 king became a rule for those that followed. The next 
 laureate, Davenant, a vintner's son, was far more dissolute 
 in his drinking, for which he did not compensate by being 
 more excellent in his poetry. The third of the patented 
 laureates, Dry den, if he loved convivial nights, loved to 
 spend them as Jonson did, in "noble society.'* Speaking 
 of the Koman poets of the Augustan age, he says : — 
 '^ They imitated the best way of living, which was, to 
 pursue an innocent and inoffensive pleasure ; that which 
 one of the ancients called ^eruditam voluptatem.' We 
 have, like them, our genial nights, where our discourse is 
 neither too serious nor too light, but always pleasant, and 
 for the most part instructive ; the raillery neither too 
 sharp upon the present, nor too censorious on the absent ; 
 and the cups only such as will raise the conversation of 
 the night, without disturbing the business of the morrow." 
 The genial nights, however, were not always so delightfully 
 Elysian and aesthetic. When Rochester suspected Dryden 
 of being the author of the " Essay on Satire," which was 
 really WTitten by Lord Mulgrave, and which was offensive 
 to Rochester, the latter took a very unpoetical revenge. 
 As Dryden was returning from his erudite voluptes at 
 Wills', and was passing through Rose-street, Covent 
 Garden, to his house in Gerrard-street, he was waylaid 
 and severely beaten, by ruffians who were believed to be 
 in the pay of Rochester. The conversation of that night 
 certainly must have disturbed the business of the mon^ow ! 
 
 And next we come to hasty Shadwell, who may be 
 summarily dismissed with the remark that he was ad- 
 dicted to sensual indulgence, and to any company that 
 promised good wine, and plenty of it. Poor Nahum 
 Tate, too, is described as '^a free and fuddling com- 
 panion ; " but the miserable man had gone through more 
 
510 TABLE TRAITS. 
 
 fieiy trials than genial nights. Of Rowe, the contrary 
 may be said. He was the great diner-out of his day ; 
 always vivacious, dashing, gay, good-humoured, and ha- 
 bitually generous, w^hether drunk or sober. He w^as but 
 a poor poet, but he was succeeded by one w^ho wrote 
 worse and drank more — Eusden, of whom Gray writes to 
 Mason that he " was a person of great hopes in his youth, 
 though at last he turned out a drunken parson." Gibber 
 loved the bottle quite as intensely as EusdeA did, and he 
 w^as a gambler to boot j but there were some good points 
 about Golley, although Pope has so bemauled him. Pos- 
 terity has used Gibber as his eccentric daughter did when 
 he went to her fish-stall to remonstrate with her against 
 bringing disgrace upon his family by her adoption of such 
 a course : the affectionate Gharlotte caught up a stinking 
 sole, and smacked her sire's face with it : but Gollev 
 wiped his cheek, went hom.e, and got drunk to prove that 
 he was a gentleman. With heavy Whitehead we first fall 
 in with indisputable respectability. He sipped his port, a 
 pensioner at Lord Jersey's table, and wrote classical tra- 
 gedies, for which I heartily forgive him, because they are 
 deservedly forgotten. His successor, slovenly Warton, 
 exulted over his college wine with the gobble of a turkey- 
 cock j and then came Pye, with his pleasant conviviality 
 and his warlike strains, which "roared like a sucking 
 dove," and put to sleep the militia, which it was hoped 
 they would have aroused. Pye was of the time of 
 " Pindar, Pye, and Parvus Pybus ; " and it was during his 
 tenure of office that the tierce of Ganary was discontinued, 
 and the 271. substituted. With Southey, a dignity was 
 given to the latireateship, which it had, perhaps, never 
 before enjoyed; and the poetic mantle fell on w^orthy 
 shoulders, when it covered those of the gentle Words- 
 worth. Not that Wordsworth never was drunk. The 
 bard of Rydal Mount was once in his life ^^ full of the 
 
AUTHORS AND THEIR DIETETICS. 511 
 
 god ; " but he was drunk with strong enthusiasm too, and 
 the occasion excused, if it did not sanctify the deed. The 
 story is well told by De Quincey, and it runs thus : — 
 
 " For the first time in his life, Wordsworth became 
 inebriated at Cambridge. It is but fair to add, that the 
 first time was also the last time. But perhaps the strangest 
 part of the story is the occasion of this drunkenness, which 
 was the celebration of the first visit to the very rooms at 
 Christ College once occupied by Milton, — intoxication by 
 way of homage to the most temperate of men, and this 
 homage offered by one who has turned out himself to the 
 full as temperate ! Every man, in the mean time, who is 
 not a churl, must grant ^ privilege and charter of large 
 enthusiasm to such an occasion ; and an older man than 
 Wordsworth, at that era not fully nineteen, and a man 
 even without a poet's blood in his veins, might have leave 
 to forget his sobriety in such circumstances. Beside which, 
 after all, I have heard from Wordsworth's own lips that he 
 w^as not too far gone to attend chapel decorously during 
 the very acme of his elevation ! " 
 
 De Quincey has told how pleasant, and cheerful, and 
 conversational was the tea-time at Wordsworth's table; 
 and there, no doubt, the poet was far more, so to speak, in 
 his element than when in the neighbourhood of wine, 
 whose aid was not needed by him to elevate his conversa- 
 tion. But Wordsworth, gentle as he was, had nothing in 
 him of the squire of dames, whom he generally treated 
 with as much indifference as the present laureate, Tenni- 
 son, w^as once said to feel for those very poetical little 
 mortals, — children. And here I end the record of a few 
 table traits of the patented laureates, adding no more of 
 the fourteenth and last, that is, the present vice- Apollo to 
 the Queen, than that he has said of his own tastes and 
 locality to enjoy them in, in Will Waterproof's Lyrical 
 Monologue, made at the Cock, — 
 
512 TABLE TRAITS. 
 
 " plump head waiter at * The Cock,' 
 To which I most resort, 
 How goes the time ? 'Tis five o'clock. 
 Go fetch a pint of port. 
 
 ^' But let it not be such as that 
 You set before chance-comers, 
 But such whose father-grape grew fat 
 On Lusitanian summers." 
 
 And now all things must have an end; and the end of 
 pleasure is like the end of life, — weariness, satiety, and 
 regret; and the end of a well-spent day is not of that 
 complexion, for its name should be " supper," without 
 which, however, a man had better go to bed, than with it 
 and arise in debt. But, as the moral does not apply to us, 
 you and I, Reader, if you will venture further with so in- 
 different a companion, will go hand in hand, before we 
 finally separate. 
 
SUPPER. 
 
 The supper was the only recognised repast in Rome; if, 
 indeed, we may call that supper which sometimes took 
 place at three in the afternoon. It was then rather a 
 dinner, after which properly educated persons would not, 
 and those who had supped over freely could not, eat again 
 on the same day. The early supper Lour was favoured 
 by those who intended to remain long at table. ^- Irn- 
 perat extructos frangere nona toros," says Martial. The 
 more frugal, but they must also have been the more 
 hungrj^, supped, like the Queen of Carthage, at sunset ; 
 *^labente die conyivia quserit." All other . repasts than 
 this had no allotted hour; each person followed inclination 
 or necessity, and there was no difference in the jentaculura, 
 the 'prandium, or the merenda, — the breakfast, dinner, or 
 collation, — save difference of time. Bread, dried fruits, 
 and perhaps honey, were alone eaten at these simple meals; 
 whereat too, some, like Marius, drank Vjefore supper time, 
 " the genial hour for - drinking." The hosts were, in 
 earlier ages, cooks as well as entertainers. Patroclus was 
 famous for his 011a Podrida, and a Ptoman geneml received 
 the Samnite ambassadors in a room where he was boiling 
 turnips for his supper ! 
 
 Sunset, however, was the ordinary supper-time amongst 
 the Romans. '^ De vespere suo vivere," in Plautus, al- 
 ludes to this. In the time of Horace, ten o'clock was not 
 an unusual hour, and men of business supped even later. 
 
 L L 
 
514 TABLE TRAITS. 
 
 At the period of the decadence of the empire, it was the 
 fashion to go to the baths at eight, and sup at nine. The 
 repasts which commenced earlier than this were called 
 tempestiva, as lasting a longer time. Those which began 
 by daylight — de die — had a dissolute reputation; "ad 
 amicam de die potare," is a phrase employed in the Asi- 
 naria to illustrate the great depravity of him to whom it 
 is applied. 
 
 There is no doubt, I think, in spite of what critics say, 
 that, however it may have been with the Eomans, the 
 Greeks certainly had four repasts every day. There was 
 the breakfast (dK-^/carto-^a), the dinner {u^kttov), the colla- 
 tion (e(T7repL(Tfxa), and the chief of all, despite the term for 
 dinner, the supper (hlTrror). 
 
 Among the Romans the Coena adventitia was the name 
 given to suppers whereat the return of travellers to their 
 homes was celebrated ; the Coena popularis w^as simply a 
 public repast, given to the people by the government; the 
 terrestris coena was, as Hegio describes it in the Captivei, 
 a supper of herbs, multis olerihus. The Greeks called such 
 " a bloodless supper." The parasite, in Atheneeus, says 
 that when he is going to a house to supper, he does not 
 trouble himself to gaze at the architectural beauties of the 
 mansion, nor the magnificence of the furniture, but at the 
 smoke of the chimney. If it ascends in a thick column, 
 lie knows there is certainty of good cheer; but if it is a 
 poor thread of smoke, says he, why then I know that 
 there is no blood in the supper that is preparing: to 
 celTTi^ov akX ovd' aifxa e'xct. 
 
 These repasts were gay enough when there was goodChian 
 wine, unmixed with sea-water, to set the wit going. The 
 banquets of Lais were probably the most brilliant ever- seen 
 in Greece, for there was abundance of sprightly intellect at 
 them. It might be said of them, as Sidney Smith says of 
 what used to be in Paris under the ancient regime, when 
 
SUPPER. 515 
 
 " a few women of brilliant talents violated all the common 
 duties of life, and gave very pleasant little suppers." 
 
 It is a well-ascertained fact that when the Greeks gave 
 great entertainments, and got tipsy thereat, it was for 
 pious reasons. They drank deeply in honour of some god. 
 They not only drank deeply, but progressively so; their 
 last cup at parting was the largest, and it went by the 
 terrible name of the Cup of Necessity. There was a 
 headache of twenty-anguish power at the bottom of it. 
 Their pic-nic and conversation suppers were not bad 
 things. Every guest brought his own rations in a basket ; 
 but as the rich and the selfish used to. shame and tantalise 
 the poorer guests by their savoury displays, Socrates, that 
 dreadfully didactic personage, imperious as Beau Nash 
 in matters of social discipline, insisted _ that what each 
 guest brought should be common to all. The result was 
 less show and more comfort. But I would not have 
 liked to have supped where Socrates was in the chair, 
 for, in spite of his talents, he was a horrid bore, watching 
 what and how each guest ate, and speaking to or at him 
 whenever his acute eye discovered a rent in the coat of 
 his good manners. If he sometimes said good things, he 
 as frequently said sharp ones; and where he was pre- 
 sident, the guests were simply at school. 
 
 It is indeed seldom that the sages are desirable asso- 
 ciates. '' Come and sup with me next Thursday," said a 
 French Amphitryon to a friend. " You shall meet philo- 
 sophers or literary men; take your choice." "My choice 
 is soon made," was the reply; ^'I will sup twice with 
 you." It was so arranged, and the supper with the literati 
 was incomparably the better banquet of the two. 
 
 The supper was the great meal of the Greeks; but 
 neither at this, nor at any other repast, does Homer ever 
 make mention of boiled meat. The Greeks, then, were 
 not like our poor Greenwich pensioners, who, up to the 
 
 L L 2 
 
516 TABLE TRAITS. 
 
 present time, have never been provided with meat cooked 
 in any other way. The result is that the men themselves 
 look as if they were half-boiled. But a new order of 
 things, including ovens and baked joints, has been intro- 
 duced into the kitchen and refectory of the hospital, and 
 the ancient mariners will soon show the effects of variety 
 in diet and cooking, by a healthier and a happier hue on 
 their solemn and storm-beaten cheeks. 
 
 And this matter of boiled meat reminds me of the old 
 Duke of Grafton, who never ate any thing else at dinner 
 or supper, (for it was in the days of double meals,) but 
 boiled mutton. Yet every day the cook was solemnly 
 summoned to his grace's side, to listen to orders which he 
 knew by heart, and instructions which wearied while 
 they vexed his spirits. The duke must have been of the 
 saddened constitution which would have entitled him to 
 sup with that nervous Duke of Marlborough, who always 
 joined with his invitation a request that his guest would 
 say or do nothing to make him laugh, as his grace could 
 not bear excitement. 
 
 At the supper-table the Eomans did not decline the 
 flesh of the ass, nor that of the dog ; and they were as fond 
 of finely fatted snails as the southern Germans are, who 
 have inherited their taste. Macrobius, describing the 
 supper given by the epicurean pontiff Lentulus, in honour 
 of his reception, says that the first course was composed 
 of sea hedgehogs, oysters, and asparagus. "After these 
 provocatives came a second course, consisting of more 
 oysters, and various other shell-fish, fat pullets, becca- 
 ficoes, venison, wild-boar, and sea-nettles, — to digest the 
 marine hedgehogs, I suppose. The third course assumed 
 a more civilized aspect, and the guests were only tempted 
 by fish, fowl, game, and cakes from the Ancona marshes. 
 There is a supper of Lentulus, as described by Becker. 
 The supper was given to Gallus, and the account of it is 
 
SUPPER. 517 
 
 so little exaggerated as to afford a tolerably correct idea 
 of what those banquets were. Nine guests, two of them 
 ^^ gentlemen from Perusia," occupied the triclinium. The 
 pictures around represented satyrs celebrating the joyous 
 vintage; the death of the boar; fruit and provision 
 pieces over the door, and similar designs, calculated to 
 awaken a relish for the banquet, were suspended between 
 the elegant branches occupied by living thrushes. The 
 lowest place in the middle sofa was the seat for the most 
 honoured guest. As soon as all were in a reclining 
 posture, the attendant slaves took off their sandals, and 
 water in silver basins was carried round by good-looking 
 youths, and therewith the visitors performed their brief 
 ablutions. At a nod from the host, two servants depo- 
 sited the tray bearing the dishes of the first course in 
 the centre of the table. The chief ornament of this tray, 
 which was adorned with tortoiseshell, was a bronze ass, 
 whose panniers were filled with olives, and on whose 
 back rode a Silenus, whose pores exuded a sauce which 
 fell upon the roast breast of a sow that had never fulfilled 
 a mother's duty, below. Sausages on silver gridirons, 
 with Syrian plums and pomegranate seeds beneath them 
 to simulate fire; and dishes, also of silver, containing 
 various vegetables, shell-fish, snails, and a reptile or two, 
 formed the other delicacies of this course. While the 
 guests addressed themselves thereto, they were supplied 
 with a beverage composed of wines and honey scien- 
 tifically commingled. The glory of the first course was, 
 however, the carved figure of the brooding hen, which 
 was brought in on a separate small tray. The eggs taken 
 from beneath her w^ere offered to the guests, who found the 
 apparent eggs made of dough, on breaking which with the 
 spoon, a fat figpecker was seen lying in the pepper-seasoned 
 yolk, and strongly tempting the beholder to eat. This 
 delicacy, was, of course, readily eaten, and mulsuvi, the 
 
518 TABLE TEAITS. 
 
 mixture of Hymettian honey and Falernian wines, was 
 copiously drunk to aid digestion. A good deal of wine 
 was imbibed, and numerous witch stories told (a favovirite 
 supper pastime), between and during the courses, at which 
 the dishes ' were more and more elaborate and fantastic. 
 A vast swine succeeded to a wild boar at the supper of 
 Lentulus, who affecting to be enraged at his cook for 
 forgetting to disembowel the animal before preparing it 
 for the table, that official feigns to tremble with the 
 energy of his repentance, and forthwith proceeds to per- 
 form the office of gutting the animal in presence of 
 the guests. He plunges his knife into its flanks, when 
 there immediately issues from the gaping wound string 
 after string of little sausages. The conclusion of the 
 supper is thus told : — ^^ The eyes of the guest were suddenly 
 attracted to the ceiling by a noise overhead; the ceiling 
 opened, and a large silver hoop, on which were ointment 
 bottles of silver and alabaster, silver garlands with beauti- 
 fully chiselled leaves, and circlets and other trifles, 
 descended upon the table ; and after the dessert, prepared 
 by the new baker, whom Lentulus purchased for a 
 hundred thousand sesterces, had been served up, the party 
 rose, to meet again in the brilliant saloon, the intervening 
 moments being spent, by some in sauntering along the 
 colonnades, and by others in taking a bath." 
 
 In the description of the supper given by Siba to cele- 
 brate the return of Nero to Eome, we find that the slaves, 
 when they took off the sandals of the guests, supplied them 
 with others of a lighter description, which were fastened 
 by crossed ribands. Those who did not come in "dress," 
 v/ere furnished with variegated woollen vestments to cover 
 their toga-s. Siba's banquet began to the sound of a 
 hydraulic organ, which, however, was only in place of 
 our dinner-bell. When the lime- wood tables were duly 
 covered and flowered, the guests took their places to the 
 
SUPPER. 519 
 
 sound of flutes and hai-ps, and said a sort of grace, by in- 
 voking Jupiter ; while a modest libation of wine was cast 
 on the floor in honour of the household gods. The first 
 course consisted of some remarkably strange dishes, but 
 the guests reserved their appetite, or provok^ed it with 
 pickled radishes, fried grasshoppers, and similar cattle. 
 A master of drinking was then chosen, whose duty it was 
 to regulate how often the guests should drink ; and the 
 latter invariably selected the most confirmed toper. We 
 leave this office to the master of the house, and in well- 
 regulated families that high official leaves his guests to do 
 according to their good pleasure. The garlands having 
 been duly encircled round the brows of Siba's friends, the 
 trumpets announced the entrance of the second course. 
 The second course w^as duly discussed, its extraordinary 
 dishes thoroughly consumed, and the four cups were 
 drained to Nero ; being the number of letters in his name ; 
 and a good deal of jollity began to abound, which was 
 checked a little by the arrival of a present from the em- 
 peror, sent to Siba, and which consisted of a silver ske- 
 leton. As the guests feared to interpret the meaning of 
 the gift they fell to deeper drinking, and then to singing, 
 and philosophising ; and then resumed their eating ; and 
 when the force of nature could no further go, they called 
 in the jugglers, and tumblers, and buffoons, and puppets, 
 and having drawn as much amusement from these as they 
 possibly could, they whipped up their flagging sensations 
 by looking at the feats of Spanish dancing girls, and these 
 were succeeded by ten couple of gladiators, who slew one 
 another in the apartment for the pastime of the supremely 
 indifferent personages who lay half asleep and half drunk, 
 and lazily applauded the murderous play. The company 
 were in the very midst of this innocent amusement when 
 the fire was lit up in Eome by Nero, and which did not 
 spare the mansion of Siba. The struggle to escape was 
 
520 TABLE TRAITS. 
 
 not more furious and selfish than that whit^h took place at 
 Prince Schwartzenberg's ball in PariS; at which the dc- 
 Youring flames had as little respect for some of the guests 
 as they had at the terrible supper of Cains Siba. 
 
 It may be said that civilization never afforded such 
 examples of deformed appetites as some of those which we 
 find in the records of the olden time. But this is not the 
 case. They are fewer; but they do exist. We read in 
 the modern history of Germany, that a man with an 
 uncontrollable appetite for bacon once presented himself 
 at the tent where Charles Gustavus was supping, before 
 Prague, which he was besieging. The man was a boor, 
 and had sought access to the king, to ask permission to 
 perform before him a feat which he boasted of being able 
 to accomplish, — namely, devour a whole hog. General 
 Koenigsmark, who was present, and was very superstitious, 
 warned the king not to listen to a being who, if not the 
 devil, was probably leagued with him. "I'll tell you 
 what it is, and please your Majesty," said the boor, " if you 
 will but make that old gentleman take off his sword and 
 spurs, I'll eat him before I begin with the hog ! " The 
 general was no coward ; but he took to his heels, as 
 though the man were serious, and left the king to enjoy 
 what pleasure he might from seeing a peasant eat a whole 
 
 pig- 
 In Africa, the rustics eat something smaller than pigs 
 
 for supper. When Cailli was in that quarter of the world, 
 a Bambere w^oman gave him some yams, and what he 
 thought was gambo sauce, to make them palatable. On 
 dipping his yams therein, however, he saw some little 
 paws, and at once knew that it was the famous mouse- 
 sauce ; but he was hungry, and continued his repast. He 
 often subsequently saw the women chopping up mice for 
 their suppers. When the animals were caught, they were 
 singed over a fire, put by for a week, and then cooked. A 
 
• «i SUPPEE. 521 
 
 hungry man might eat thereof without loathing. We have 
 all partaken of far less clean animals. 
 
 It is commonly said that the time of the evening meal 
 is the very hour for wit. I do not know how this may 
 be, but Souwarow's wit appears to have been uncommonly 
 alert at supper-time. When he returned from his Italian 
 campaign to St. Petersburg, in 1799, the Emperor Paul 
 sent Count Kontaissow to compliment him on his arrival. 
 The count had been originally a Circassian slave, and valet 
 to Paul, who had successively raised him to the ranks of 
 equerry, baron, and count. The Circassian parvenu found 
 the old warrior at supper. " Excuse me," said Souwarow, 
 pausing in his meal, " I cannot recall the origin of your 
 illustrious family. Doubtless your valour in battle pro- 
 cured for you your dignity as count." '' Well, no," said 
 the ex-valet, " I have never been in battle." ^' Ah ! 
 perhaps you have been attached to an embassy *?" '' No." 
 " To a ministerial office then V ^'•That neither." "What 
 important post, then, have you occupied T' — ''1 have been 
 valet-de-chambre to the emperor," " Oh, indeed," said 
 the veteran leader, laying down his spoon, and calling 
 aloud for his own valet, Troschka. ^' Here, you villain,'* 
 said he, as the latter appeared, " I tell you daily to leave 
 oif drinking and thieving, and you never listen to me. 
 Now, look at this gentleman here. He was a valet like 
 you ; but being neither sot nor thief, he is now grand 
 equerry to his majesty, knight of all the Russian orders, 
 and count of the empire. Go, sirrah, follow his example, 
 and you will have more titles than your master ; who re- 
 quires nothing just now, but to be left alone to finish his 
 supper !" 
 
 It was at Paris, however, that the evening hour was 
 generally accounted as the peculiar season of wit ; but 
 wit, often too daring at such an hour, sometimes got 
 chastised for its over-boldness. 
 
522 TABLE TRAITS. 
 
 At one of the petits soupers of Paris, in this olSen time, 
 when wit and philosophy had temporarily dethroned re- 
 ligion, a little abb6, who had the air of a full-grown Cupid 
 in a semi-clerical disguise, or who was like Kose Pomaponne 
 in a carnival suit at the Courtille, took upon himself to 
 amuse the assembled company with stories intended to 
 ridicule the old-fashioned faith, (as the philosophers styled 
 Christianity,) and its professors. He was particularly comic 
 on the subject of hell and eternal punishments, upon which 
 questions he dilated with a fulness that would have scarcely 
 edified either Professor Maurice or Dr. Jelf. The whole of 
 the amiable society exploded in inextinguishable laughter 
 at hearing this villanous abb6 speak of hell itself as his 
 '^ feu de joie ! " There was, however, one face there that 
 bore upon it no traces of a smile. It was that of an old 
 marechal-de-camp, who might have said, like the old beadle 
 of St. Mary's, Oxford, " I have held this office, sir, for more 
 than thirty years, and, thank heaven, I am a Christian 
 yet ! " Well, the old marechal frowned as, looking at the 
 infidel abb6, he remarked, '^ I see very plainly, sir, by your 
 uniform, to what regiment you belong, but it seems to me 
 that you must be a deserter." " My dear marechal," an- 
 swered the profligate priest, with a beaming smile, " it may 
 indeed be a little as you say, but then, you see, I do not 
 hold in my troop the rank which you enjoy in yours. I 
 am not a marechal-de-camp !" "Parbleu," rejoined the 
 old soldier, " you never could have reached such a rank, 
 for, to judge by your conduct and sentiment, you would 
 have been hanged long before your chance came for pro- 
 motion." 
 
 At the soupers of Paris, how^ever, there were few men 
 who were of the character of our marechal-de-camp. Bun- 
 gener, in his ^' Voltaire et son Temps," illustrates the con- 
 fusion into which men's ideas had got upon the subject of 
 things spiritual and things temporal, by noticing the affair 
 
SUPPER. 523 
 
 of the Chevalier de la Barre, in 1766. Amid the accusations 
 brought against him was one, according to which it was 
 laid to his charge that he had recited in public a certain 
 filthy ode. He was condemned to be broken on the wheel, 
 on charges of irreligion, of which this was one. But the 
 part of the question that must have made Astraea weep 
 through the bandage with which poets have bound her 
 eyes, was this, namely, that the author of the obscene ode 
 objected to, Piron, was then in the reception of a pension 
 from the court; and this pension had been procured for 
 him by Montesquieu, by way of compensation for his 
 having lost his seat at the Academy, in consequence of his 
 having been the author of this very ode. This confusion 
 of rewards and penalties was enough to make Justice dash 
 her brains out with her own scales. Eiron would have 
 been in no wise troubled by such a catastrophe ; the pension 
 from the court enabled him to keep a joyous table, and 
 that was enough for him. 
 
 Duclos was a contemporary and a co-disciple v/ith 
 Piron, in the temple of philosophy. In 1766, he was at 
 Rome, where he gave such charming little suppers, that 
 the Sacred College gratefully extended to him the privi- 
 leged permission of reading improper books ! The philo- 
 sophers were then in possession of considerable influence. 
 Marmontel, who was one of them, was sent to the Bastille, 
 on a certain Friday, in the year 1760. Soon after his 
 arrival, he was supplied with an excellent dinner maigf^e, 
 the which he ate without thinking of complaining. His 
 servant was just on the point of addressing himself to the 
 scanty remains, when lo ! an admirable but somewhat irre- 
 ligious repast, of meat and other things which come under 
 the denomination ofgras, and are therefore forbidden on fast 
 days, was brought in. The unorthodox banquet was intended 
 for Marmontel ; the more lenten fare was intended for his 
 servant. For in those days, although philosophers were 
 
-524 TABLE TRAITS. 
 
 sent to prison, their appetites were left to their heretical 
 freedom. 
 
 This liberty was allowed by the state, but it was neither 
 sanctioned nor practised by the Church. The authority 
 of the latter was great previous to the Revolution. There 
 was then a clerical police, which looked into the dishes as 
 well as the consciences of the people— of all degrees. 
 I have somewhere read of a body of this police coming in 
 collision, during Lent, with the officers of the household 
 of the Prince of Conti, who were conveying through the 
 streets, from a neighbouring rotisseurs to the ducal palace, 
 a supper, through the covers of which there penetrated an 
 odour which savoured strongly of something succulent and 
 sinful, of gravy and gravity. Thereupon the archbishop's 
 alguazils bade the prince's men stand and deliver. The fol- 
 lowers of the honse of Conti drew their swords in defence 
 of their rights and sauces. Much of the latter on the 
 side of Conti, and a little malapert blood on both sides, 
 was spilt, to the edification of the standers by. Finally, 
 the transgressors of the Church law were dragged to pri- 
 son. The damaged repast remained on the pav6, for the 
 benefit of poor souls who assumed ecclesiastical licence to 
 devour it without fear of damnation ; and the servants of 
 Conti were left in damp cells to meditate at their leisure 
 upon the argument which Dean Swift at another period 
 had thus cast into verse : — 
 
 " Who can declare, with common sense, 
 That bacon fried gives God offence % 
 Or that a herring hath the charm 
 Almighty vengeance to disarm ] 
 Wrapt up in Majesty divine. 
 Doth He regard on what we dinel" 
 
 To pass from cooks and church to courtesy and coach- 
 men, I may here speak of a certain Girard who was known 
 in Paris, during the Terror, for his love of what he called 
 
SUPPER. 525 
 
 liberty and good living. In his early days he was a very 
 independent coachman, and was just on the point of con- 
 cluding an engagement with an aristocratic old countess, 
 when he remarked — ^^ Before I finally close with madame, 
 I should like to be informed for whom madame's horses 
 are to make way in the streets." '' For every one/' said 
 the countess. " On questions of precedence, I am not diffi- 
 cult ; if it is yielded to me, I take it; if not, I wait." 
 "In that case," said the aristocratic John, "I shall not 
 suit, madame, as I myself never draw aside except for the 
 princes of the blood 1" Now this great personage in livery 
 was no other than the Girard who became, in 1793, the 
 "public accuser," and who sent to the scaffold those same 
 nobles who had not been sufficiently noble for him 
 in 1780. 
 
 Upon the matter of what became nobility, however, 
 there was always much confusion in the " aristocratic 
 idea " of the highest continental families. Thus who, in 
 contemplating the famous Princess des Ursins, seated 
 among the most honouTed at the table of the King of 
 Spain, would dream of her writing the following sentence 
 in one of her letters to Madame de Maintenon ? " It is I 
 who have the honour of taking from his majesty his robe 
 de chamhre, when he gets into bed; and I am there to 
 give it to him again, with his slippers, when he rises in 
 the morning." 
 
 The flattery paid to royalty in France was never more 
 prodigally offered than at the period when " wit and 
 philosophy " were beginning to undermine the throne. 
 We have an instance of this in what happened when the 
 queen of Louis XY. arrived, in 1765, at Ferte-sous- 
 Jouarre, where she intended to sup and sleep. She was 
 met beneath an avenue of trees, outside the town, by the 
 authorities, who offered to her, according to custom, bread 
 and wine. The queen took a portion of the bread, broke 
 
526 TABLE TRAITS. 
 
 it in t\YO, and ate thereof, as well as of some grapes, 
 sipping also the wine; to the delight and edification of 
 the admiring multitude. The authorities were so struck 
 bj the act of condescension on the part of the royal 
 personage, that they made record of tiie fact in the 
 register of the town council. And this they did in such 
 terms as to cause a commentator to remark, that they 
 could hardly have said more, had her majesty been a 
 genuine goddess. 
 
 After all, this sort of homage had fallen off, in 1765, 
 from what it had been two centuries before. When Louis 
 XTI. encountered his bride, Mary of England, outside 
 Abbeville, he clapped his feeble hands, and wished the 
 devil might seize him (and he did die soon after) if she 
 were not more beautiful than report had painted her ! At 
 the gates of Abbeville, the ill-assorted pair were met by 
 the Bishop of Amiens and the municipal magistrates, to 
 welcome them to the evening banquet ere they betook 
 themselves to repose. The bishop presented the new 
 Queen of France with a piece of the Real Cross. " The 
 mayeurs offered a gift, the nature of which brings it 
 within my subject. The gift was usual whenever king 
 and queen appeared at the portals of the old monkish 
 city. It consisted of three tuns of wine, three fat oxen, 
 and fifteen quarters of oats, three pecks of which were 
 presented to the astonished lady on bended knee, and in a 
 measure painted light blue, and covered with golden 
 fleurs-de-lys. A complimentary address to the king 
 crowned all. " Sire," said the chief local magistrate, 
 " you may now conclude your marriage in this our good 
 city, without any fear of committing sin thereby; for. in 
 the year 1409 were reformed, as abuses, those synodal 
 statutes by which men in our city were forbidden to live 
 with their wives, during three whole mortal days after 'the 
 wedding !" The monarch entered and sat down with his 
 
SUPPER. 527 
 
 consort to a repast which rendered both ill for more than 
 double the period just mentioned. Louis had well-nigh 
 died, like La Matrie, the infidel philosopher at Berlin, of 
 an indigestion. Had he done so, it might have been said 
 of him, as the infidel Prussian king said of La Matrie : 
 " He was a gourmand, but he died like a philosopher ; let 
 us have no more anxiety about him." 
 
 Frederic himself loved philosophy more than faith, 
 and philosophical though profligate kings, more than he 
 did "Most Christian" or "Most Catholic" monarchs. He 
 was w^ont, therefore, to laugh at the story of the famished 
 beggar who, standing near the statue of Henri IV. on the 
 Pont ISTeuf, solicited charity of a friend of Voltaire who 
 was passing by. " In the name of God," said the mendi- 
 cant. The student of philosophy was deaf. "In the 
 name of the Holy Virgin I" — " In the name of the saints 1" 
 The appeal was unheeded. " In the name of Henri IV ! " 
 exclaimed the petitioner ; and forthwith the Voltairean put 
 his hand in his pocket, giving a crown-piece, in the name 
 of a philosophical profligate, w^hile he refused a sou wlien 
 asked for in the name of God. But, as Frederic used to 
 say, " How divine is philosophy ! " In his mouth the ex- 
 clamation was like the w^ell-known cry of Marcel, the 
 ecstatic dancing-master : " Que de choses dans un minuit ! " 
 
 There is a story told in connexion with this same great 
 Frederic which is a good table trait in its way. Joachim 
 von Ziethen was one of the bravest of the generals who 
 stood by Frederic the Great in victory or defeat. He 
 was the son of a poor gentleman, and had little education 
 save what he could pick up in barracks, camps, find battle 
 fields, in all of which he figured in early youth. If his 
 head was not over-ballasted with learning, his heart w^as 
 well freighted with that love for God, of which some per- 
 tiori, as the dismissed lecturer on Ecclesiastical History in 
 King's College tells us. is in almost every individual with- 
 
528 TABLE TRAITS. 
 
 out exception, and forms the sheet-anchor which shall 
 enable him to ride through the storms which keep him 
 from his desired haven of rest. He became the terror of 
 the foes of Prussia ; but among his comrades, he was 
 known only as '^good father Ziethen." He was remarkable 
 for his swiftness at once of resolve and execution, and in 
 remembrance as well as illustration thereof, a sudden 
 surprise is spoken of by an astonished Prussian as ^^ falling 
 on one like Ziethen from an ambush." 
 
 Now, old Ziethen, after the triumph achieved in the 
 Seveil Years' War, was always a welcome guest at the 
 table of Frederic the Second. His place was ever by the 
 side of the royal master whose cause he had more than 
 once saved from ruin; and he only sat lower at table 
 when there happened to be present some foreign royal 
 mediocrity, illustriously obscure. On one occasion, he re- 
 ceived a command to dine with the king on Good Friday. 
 Ziethen sent a messenger to his sovereign, stating that it 
 was impossible for him to wait on his majesty, inasmuch 
 as that he made a point of never omitting to take the 
 sacrament on that day, and of always spending the sub- 
 sequent portion of the day in private meditation. 
 
 A week elapsed before the scrupulous old soldier was 
 again invited to the royal dinner-table. At length he 
 appeared in his old place, and merry were the guests, the 
 king himself setting an example of uproarious hilarity. 
 The fun was running fast and furious, — it was at its very 
 loudest, when Frederic, turning to Ziethen, smacked him 
 ^'^^iliarly on the back, and exclaimed, *' Well, grave old 
 Ziethen ! • how did the supper of Good Friday agree with 
 your sanctimonious stomach 1 Have you properly digested 
 the veritable body and blood?" At this blasphemy, and 
 amid the thunders of pealing laughter, the saluting artil- 
 lery of the delighted guests, Ziethen leaped to his feet, and 
 after shaking his grey hairs with indignation^ and silencing 
 
SUPPER. 529 
 
 the revellei*s with a cry, as though they had been dogs, he 
 turned to the godless master of the realm, and said — 
 words, if not precisely these, certainly and exactly to this 
 effect : — 
 
 " I shun no danger; — your majesty knows it. My life 
 has been always ready for sacrifice, when my country and 
 the throne .required it. What I was, that I am; and my 
 head I would place on the })lock at this moment, if the 
 striking of it off could purchase happiness for my king. 
 But there is One who is greater than I, or any one here ; 
 and He is a greater sovereign than you who mock Him 
 here from the throne in Berlin. He it is whose precious 
 blood was shed for the salvation of all mankind. On Him, 
 that Holy One, my faith reposes : He is my consoler in 
 life, my hope in presence of death; and I will not suffer 
 His name to be derided and attacked where I am by, and 
 have voice to protest against it. Sir, if your soldiers had 
 not been firm in this faith, they would not have gained 
 victories for you. If you mock this faith, and jeer at those 
 who cling to it, you only lend a hand to bury yourself and 
 the state in ruin." After a pause he added, looking the 
 while on the mute king : — ^'What I have spoken is God's 
 truth; receive it graciously." 
 
 Frederic was the patron of Voltaire, who had dared 
 to say at his own table that what it had taken God and 
 twelve Apostles to build up, one man (Voltaire) would 
 destroy. But Frederic was now, for the moment, more 
 deeply moved by what had been uttered by the unphilo- 
 sophical Ziethen than by anything that had ever fallen from 
 the brilliant but irreligious Voltaire. He rose, flung his 
 left arm over Ziethen's shoulder, offered his right hand to 
 the brave old Christian general, and exclaimed : — " Ziethen, 
 you are a happy man ! Would that I could be like you ! 
 Hold fast i)y your faith; and I will respect even where I can- 
 not believe. What has occurred shall never happen again.'' 
 • MM 
 
530 TxiBLE TRAITS. 
 
 A deep and solemn silence followed, and the dinner was 
 spoiled, according to the guests, to whom the king gave 
 the signal to dispersOv^long before their appetites had been 
 satisfied. Ziethen was preparing to withdraw with the 
 rest, but Frederic, taking him by the hand, whispered : — 
 " You, my friend, come with me to my cabinet." 
 
 This anecdote was told by Bishop von Eylert to 
 Frederic William III. That king, who had never heard 
 of the incident, pronounced on it a three-piled eulogium of 
 " excellent, pleasing, and instructive," adding thereto a 
 natural desire to know what passed between the king and 
 Ziethen in the cabinet. It were doubtless well worth 
 knowing, but I have sought for any notice of it, and all in 
 vain. The good bishop, as he deserved, was invited to 
 remain at Sans Souci, to supper. " I excused myself," 
 says the prelate, in his memoir of the king, " as having 
 only a common upper coat on." The king replied, smil- 
 ingly, ^' I know very well that you have got a dollar and 
 a dress-coat ; you are the same person in either. I want 
 you, not your coat; so, go in." 
 
 The Prussian soldiers, in the days of the great Frederic, 
 used to be allowed unlimited liberty in providing them- 
 selves with food in an enemy's country. The like per- 
 mission, but somewhat enlarged, was given to the Croat 
 soldiers, under the name of foraging for "supper;" but 
 in that permission they included every meal. They are as 
 ready at it as Abyssinians ; they cut a slice out of the 
 first beast they fall in with, salt it, put it between the 
 saddle and the horse's back, gallop till it gets warm, and 
 then eat it with Croat appetite. The sportsmen of Dau- 
 phiny eat beccaficoes after much the same fashion; they 
 pluck the bird, sprinkle it with pepper and salt, carry it 
 on their hat to dry in t}ie air, and eat it wit^ relish for 
 supper, without any further cooking. They declare it is 
 far better so than wlien roasted. 
 
SUPPER. 531 
 
 Celebrated as the " petits soupers " of the French were 
 during the last century, they were equalled in brilliancy, 
 and perhaps surpassed in popularity, by those given in 
 Paris by the Duchess of Kingston. The adventures of 
 that very adventurous lady rendered her a favourite with 
 our lively neighbours. When a rustic Devonshire beauty, 
 — wayward, capricious, ignorant, and seductive, Elizabeth 
 Chudleigh was suddenly transplanted to the court of the 
 Princess of Wales, as maid of honour. She there captivated 
 the youthful Duke of Hamilton, returned his affection, 
 and accepted the offer of his hand. They loved intensely, 
 quarrelled furiously, and were reconciled warmly; the 
 enemies of both toiled incessantly to prevent the marriage, 
 and each was daily told of the alleged infidelities of the 
 other. One of these stories excited the ardent beauty to 
 such rage that she dismissed her ducal lover, and in the 
 whirlwind of her wrath gave her hand to Captain Hervey, 
 brother of the Earl of Bristol. She married in haste, and 
 repented quite as hastily. She hated her husband before 
 they left the church together ; and after six months of the 
 most active domestic warfare, the ill-assorted pair sepa- 
 rated by mutual consent. She went abroad to find solace 
 for her disappointment, and was heartily welcomed at the 
 courts of St. Petersburg, Prussia, and Saxony; she was 
 the favoured guest of Catherine IL, and of the great 
 Frederic, at Berlin; and no electoral banquet took place 
 at Dresden without being enlivened by her presence and 
 her wit. When she accepted the invitation to resume her 
 place at the English court, the reception she met with was 
 enthusiastic: she played whist with the men, and she 
 drove four-in-hand as if she had been the born daughter of 
 a charioteer, brought up to her father's business. Pier 
 accomplishments won the heart of the simplest of dukes 
 and the gentlest of men, his grace of Kingston, and as an 
 ecclesiastical court, in 1769, pronounced her marriage with 
 
 M M 2 
 
532 TABLE TRAITS. 
 
 Captain Hervey (now Earl of Bristol) null and void, she 
 speedily espoused her ducal admirer, while her former 
 husband bestowed an earl's coronet on a second wife. The 
 duke's property was not entailed, and the duchess spent it 
 with such reckless prodigality, that his grace was fairly 
 frightened into consumption and death; and in 1773 she 
 was a beautiftd widow, with the large remnant of the 
 duke's fortune in her possession — as long as she did not 
 marry again. Away she went to Rome, sailed up the Tiber 
 in her own yacht, entertained the pope (Ganganelli) 
 Clement XIV. at breakfast, dinner, and supper, and kept 
 up such a state that the world had never beheld such ex- 
 travagant splendour since the days of the most profuse 
 and profligate of queens : the heirs of the duke, seeing 
 their inheritance fast melting away, instituted against her 
 the famous suit for bigamy, on the ground that the eccle- 
 siastical court which broke her first marriage had no power 
 to do so. To meet her accusers she hurried to England, where 
 she considerably startled the modest among our grand- 
 mothers by her Sunday amusements, and the daily display 
 afforded by the very lowest of dresses. But as she gave 
 most splendid dinners she had no lack of friends, and few 
 men could find it in their hearts to abandon a woman in 
 distress, whose kitchen fires were never eitinguished, who 
 gave her guests green peas at Christmas, and whose com- 
 monest beverage was imperial tokay. The House of Lerds 
 judged her case, heard her defence, and pronounced her 
 second marriage bigamy by overthrowing the decree of the 
 ecclesiastical court with regard to her first union. To avoid 
 the vulgar penalty she immediately fled, crossed the Chan- 
 nel in a storm, and proceeded to Munich, where she was 
 royally entertained, especially as the law could not touch 
 the property bequeathed her by the Duke of Kingston. 
 The courtesy title of duchess was still allowed her, and the 
 Elector of Bavaria added to it that of Countess of Warth. 
 
SUPPEB. 533 
 
 Great nobles gave entertainments in her honour, which 
 lasted for days, and ended with a ball, a banquet, and, 
 instead of common -place fireworks, the storming of a town 
 at midnight. Poor nobles vied with each other for her 
 smiles and the life-interest of her possessions; but as she 
 had once been nearly entrapped by a Greek Prince Warta, 
 who turned out to be the son of an ass-driver in Trebi- 
 zond, and who committed suicide in prison, she made and 
 kept her resolution to be her own mistress for the future, 
 and not that of either count or kaiser, 
 
 In France, where she ultimately resided, she purchased 
 the estate of St. Assize au Port, which had formerly be- 
 longed to the Duke of Orleans, the father of *^Egalit6." 
 She paid down a million and a half of francs for it, and 
 sold seven thousand francs' worth of rabbits from it, 
 during the first week of her residence there. A fricasee 
 of the duchess's rabbits was, for a long time, the chief 
 dish at all the guingueties round Paris. Her own great 
 suppers were famous for their refinement and luxury. She 
 was a lover of good living, a gourmet rather than a gour- 
 mande ; an epicure of taste, but not a glutton; and the 
 gastronomic art never could boast of a more liberal pa- 
 tronage than that she bestowed upon it, especially in her 
 Paris residence*, where her table, her wit, her dinners, and 
 her diamonds, made of her, for a time, the most remark- 
 able personage in the capital. She died suddenly, of the 
 rupture of a blood-vessel, in 1788, and was completely 
 forgotten before that year had also expired. 
 
 I have mentioned that our eccentric country-woman 
 had purchased the property of the Duke of Orleans ; and 
 that reminds me how fatal the table, and particularly the 
 supper-table, has been to the dukes of that house. Thus 
 Philippe, the brother of Louis XIV., quarrelled with the 
 latter touching the marriage which the king wished to 
 conclude between one of his own natural daughters and 
 
534 TABLE TRAITS. 
 
 the duke's son. Orleans, fevered and flushed, went to sup 
 " with the ladies of St. Cloud." He had not long before 
 eaten heavily and drunk deeply at dinner; and at this 
 second meal he was fatally stricken with apoplexy. The 
 king said he was sorry, and having thus far given way to 
 his grief, he sat down with Madame de Maintenon to 
 rehearse the overture of an opera. This duke's son and 
 successor gave suppers, at which his infamous daughter, 
 the Duchess de Berri, presided, and admission to which 
 was purchased by the candidate making simple denial of 
 his belief in a God 1 The fate of both had something retri- 
 butive in it. The Duchess de Berri, who had privately 
 married a profligate and ugly officer of her guards, named 
 De Riou, sought to overcome her father's wrathful refusal 
 to acknowledge the union, by giving him a splendid supper 
 alfresco on the terrace of Meudon, on the 13th May, 1709. 
 The evening proved cold and damp, and the duchess caught 
 there a fever brought on by a chill, over feeding, and 
 deep drinking, of which she died. Fourteen years after- 
 wards, the sire who, at sixteen, had all the experience in 
 vice of a man of sixty, was dining with the Duchess of 
 Phalaria, his last mistress, when he was taken ill. The 
 physician who was summoned enjoined abstinence im- 
 mediate and complete. "Wait till to-morrow," said the 
 duke, "I will enjoy myself to-night." And accordingly, 
 the exemplary pair supped together, and the lady w^as in 
 the act of telling the duke one of her lively stories. As 
 she went on, the glass slid from his hand, and his head 
 sank upon her shoulder. She thought he was asleep, and 
 went on with her story ; but he to whom she was telling it 
 was stone-dead. The son of the regent duke was in every 
 respect unlike his father. He ate his last supper with the 
 Jansenist fathers of the Genevieve, — symbol of his geneial 
 habits and the society he kept. His son was the father of 
 Egalite, and at the time of his death (1785) was popular 
 
SUPPER. 535 
 
 with the lower classes at Paris for the nightly suppers 
 which he distributed to them, and which consisted of bread 
 and wine, with medicine for those who needed it. It was 
 a distribution made not charitably, but politically. Of 
 the last meal of Egalite, before he went to execution, I 
 only know that it was a breakfast, and not a supper, and 
 that he both ate and drank heartily. Misfortune quite as 
 little disturbed the appetite of the Louis Philippe of our 
 own days. During his flight from Paris he never forgot 
 the hour of supper or dinner; and when "William Smith"' 
 landed at Newhaven, the first thing he asked for was — 
 something to eat. I notice these table traits, simply 
 because the Orleanist historians always speak contemp- 
 tuously of Louis XVI. eating, with appetite, in open court 
 during his trial. The stomach of Orleans was ever as 
 ready as that of Bourbon. 
 
 The supper has been called the conversational meal, but 
 to make it so in perfection it requires a thorough professor 
 of the science of conversation — one w^ho knows that its 
 very spirit consists less in being a good talker himself than 
 in flinging about suggestive matter to induce others to 
 converse upon. The host who understands the science will 
 so do this that his guests will be satisfied with themselves. 
 Some French writer has said, in reference to this after- 
 supper gossip, that it should be like a game at cards, at 
 which each player does his best, — but I do not endorse this 
 sentiment to its fullest extent, although I allow that there 
 is something in it. The wise generally, and dyspeptics 
 especially, will do well to avoid political subjects after 
 supper; and perhaps there is no more comprehensive 
 remark to be made on this matter than one advanced by 
 a follower of La Bruyere, a minor moralist, who has said 
 that "la confiance fournit plus a la conversation que 
 Tesprit ou I'erudition." 
 
 I recollect once seeing the dullest of evenings made 
 
536 TABLE TRAITS. 
 
 suddenly bright by an apt query modestly put by one who 
 needed not to inquire, but who quietly asked if anyone 
 present could name the author of the line : — 
 
 '' Fine by degrees, and beautifully less." 
 
 Many a wide guess was fired off prior to the successful 
 naming. The general opinion was in fiivour of Pope, and 
 Pope has indeed written a line very like it : — 
 " Fine by defect, and delicately weak." 
 
 The falling upon such coincidences are the very explosives 
 of after-supper discussions : thus, the very familiar line — 
 
 " Eides in the whirlwind, and directs the storm," 
 
 may be the text for a pretty dispute. It occurs in Addi- 
 son's " Campaign," and also in Pope's " Dunciad." The 
 latter poet too has said — 
 
 " Ye little stars, hide your diminish'd rays ;" 
 but Milton, before him, had written — 
 
 '^ At whose sight all the stars 
 Hide their diminish'd heads." 
 
 Schiller's ^^ Thekla " warbles melodiously her melancholy 
 assurance — 
 
 " Ich habe gelibt und geliebet ;" 
 
 and Byron's '^ Sardanapalus," equally used up, mutters 
 with a faint sigh the same words — 
 
 '* I have lived and loved." 
 
 We all know who tells us that 
 
 " Gospel light first beam'd from Boleyn's eyes ;" 
 
 and Horace Walpole harped on the same tune, when he 
 
 said — 
 
 *' From Catherine's wrongs a nation's bliss was spread. 
 And Luther's light from Henry's lawless bed." 
 
 Gray and Moss, too, afford instances of like coincidences of 
 
SUPPER. 537 
 
 sound or sentiment^ or both. The first, in his '^ Elegy," 
 
 has — 
 
 " And leaves the world to darkness and to me." 
 
 The second, in his " Beggar s Petition," sings to the same 
 
 air — 
 
 " And left the world to wretchedness and me." 
 
 I have noticed, in a former page, how Gray's line of 
 
 " Dear as the light that visits these sad eyes," 
 
 must necessarily remind one of Shakspeare's words, in the 
 mouth of Brutus — 
 
 " Dear as the drops that visit this sad heart." 
 Demosthenes has truly said — 
 
 'Avi^p 6 (pevjMV KOI trdXiv fiaxvcJ'^'J'ai, 
 
 so that Sir John Minnes is not even the original author of 
 the Hudibrastically sounding assertion — 
 
 " He who fights and runs away, 
 May live to fight another day." 
 
 The lines in Hudibras are as the perfecting and comment 
 on the above, remarking as they do — 
 
 " For he that runs ma}' fight again, 
 Which he can never do that's slain." 
 
 These coincidences are, no doubt, unintentional. For my 
 own part, I do not believe that Shakspeare, when he spoke 
 in Hamlet, of 
 
 " The undiscover'd country, from whose bourne 
 No traveller returns," 
 
 necessarily had in his mind the 
 
 " Qui nunc it per iter tenebricosum 
 Illuc unde negant redire quemquam," 
 
 of Catullus; although the latter lines were quoted by 
 Seneca the philosopher, and were as familiar as household 
 words among the verse-loving ancients. Dr. Johnson's 
 remark on the similarity between Caliban's desire to sleep 
 
538 TABLE TRAITS. 
 
 again, and the TrdXiv riQeXoy Kadevhiv of Anacreon, may 
 apply to nearly all the passages in our national poet which 
 appear to have been derived from the ancients. If we 
 judged them by any other rule than that the ideas pre- 
 sented themselves naturally to Shakspeare's mind, without 
 consideration whether any one before him had sung to the 
 s^f-same tune, we might soon turn his, and indeed any 
 poet's works, into a thing of shreds and patches. For 
 instance, again, when the young Dane describes Osric 
 as " spacious in the possession of dirt," we might accuse 
 the author, yet wrongfully, perhaps, of having stolen the 
 idea from the "multa dives tellure" of Horace. We 
 might imagine that the " Id in summa fortuna sequius 
 quod validius," of Tacitus, gave birth to 
 
 " That in the captain's but a choleric word, 
 "Which in the soldier is flat blasphemy," 
 
 of Shakspeare, who would have been very much surprised 
 
 had he been told as much. Again, Corneille, because he 
 
 said, 
 
 " Qui commence bien ne fait rien s'il n'ach^ve," 
 
 is not to be accused of having written a pendant to the 
 assertion of Flaccus — 
 
 " Dimidium facti qui coepit habet.** 
 
 Neither has Beaumerchais rifled Otway, because " Desirez 
 du bien a une femme est ce vouloir du mal a son mari," 
 has a close resemblance to — 
 
 *' I hope a man may wish his friend's wife well. 
 And no harm done." 
 
 If mere close resemblance establish a charge of plagiarism, 
 
 then Chaucer, when in speaking of maidens dark or fair he 
 
 said — 
 
 " Blake or white, I toke no kepe," 
 
 stole the thought from the ancient Irish bard, who said — 
 " Bohumilun a coolen dliuv no baun ;" 
 
SUPPER. 539 
 
 a line which Chaucer could not have read, though his own 
 is a literal translation of it. Examples like these I might 
 go on citing ad infinitum. As Kosalind says, I could quote 
 you so eight years together, dinners, and suppers, and 
 sleeping hours excepted. But I will conclude with ore 
 more case in point between a well-known English author 
 and the French dramatist Moliere. Thus writes the one — 
 
 *' Wiiat woful stuff this madrigal would be, 
 In some starved, hackney'd sonneteer, or me ! 
 But let a lord once own the happy lines, 
 How the wit brightens and the style refines ! " 
 
 And thus sung the other — 
 
 '* Tous les discours sont des sottises, 
 Partout, d'un homme sans 6clat. 
 Ce seraient paroles exquises, 
 Si ce'tait un grand qui parla." 
 
 If this be digressing, it is because after-supper con- 
 versation does take a discursive character. In the last 
 century, in Paris, the majestic nonentities were invited to 
 dinner; the talkers, be they who they might, to supper. 
 " La Eobe dine ; Finance soupe," was another of these 
 distinctions; and it was found that the supper was by 
 far the most agreeable meal of the day. The celebrated 
 Duchess of Kingston was especially celebrated for her 
 Paris suppers. They were infinitely more splendid than 
 her English breakfasts, so pleasantly sneered at by Horace 
 Walpole. The wits assembled round her in gay clusters, 
 and they and the poets cudgelled their brains to prove 
 one another plagiarists; while the peers stood by, and 
 marvelled at the extent and elasticity of the human un- 
 derstanding. Nothing could well surpass the hilarity and 
 magnificence of these entertainments, where the philoso- 
 phers were voted as dull as the nobles, and no aristocracy 
 was acknowledged but the aristocracy of intellect. Another 
 lady, remarkable for the elegance of the little suppers over 
 
5i0 TABLE TRAITS. 
 
 which she presided, was Madame Tronchin : but the Reign 
 of Terror came on, and her friends and relatives were daily- 
 dragged from her to the guillotine ; and Madame Tronchin, 
 who had a most feeling heart, used to" say, that she never 
 could have gone through such horrors had it not been for 
 her little cup of cafe a la creme. The courtiers used to 
 joke in like fashion, at the suppers of Versailles, at national 
 disgrace. When the Count d'Artois returned from the 
 siege of » Gibraltar, to which he had gone with much boast- 
 ing, and began to talk of his batteries, the courtiers used 
 to smile, and to whisper to one another that he meant his 
 " batterie de cuisine." 
 
 With regard to the dietetics of supper, it may be taken 
 for granted that late, heavy meals are dangerous, and to 
 be avoided. Chymification and sleep may go on tolerably 
 well together after it; but when the time comes for chyli- 
 fication and sanguification, feverish wakefulness will ac- 
 company the process. Dyspeptic patients, however, are 
 authorized to take a light supper before going to bed. It 
 is said that the idle man is the devil's man ; and it may 
 also be said of the stomach, that if it has nothing to do it 
 will be doing mischief. It is especially so with persons of 
 weak digestion; for whom an egg, lightly boiled, or dry 
 toast and a little white-wine negus, is a supper selon 
 Vordinance. But a wise man will hardly want a guide in 
 this matter. Breakfast may be the meal of friendship; 
 dinner, of etiquette ; and supper, the feast of wit ; — but, 
 generally speaking, he will show most wit who takes the 
 least supper. Common sense should teach him the exact 
 measure of his capacity. 
 
 A whale swallows at a gulp more shrimps than would 
 be required to make sauce for the universe. That gentle 
 songster, the canary, is like the celebrated contralto song- 
 stress, who eats daily half a peck of saffron salad ; — the 
 bird consumes nearly his own bulk weight of food. 3\\t 
 
SUPPER. 541 
 
 he is delicate compared with the caterpillar, which con- 
 sumes five hundred times its own weight before it lies 
 down, to rise a butterfly. As for the hysena, he is popu- 
 larly said, when hungry, and other food not presenting 
 itself, to eat himself; and probably, like Dr. Kitchener, he 
 carries his own sauce-box about with him ! But the 
 stomach of man is not made to perform such feats as 
 those accomplished by the whale, the canary, or the cater- 
 pillar. He is especially to remember, that though an 
 animal, he is not a beast. 
 
 Man, it must be remembered, began with refinement. 
 He was made perfect, upright, and to him was given 
 " every herb bearing seed, which is on the face of all the 
 earth, and every tree in which is the fruit of a tree, yield- 
 ing seed ; to you it shall be for meat.'' Here food is used 
 as the symbol of celestial blessings; as in the passage, 
 " He should have fed them also with the finest of the 
 wheat, and with honey out of the rock should I have 
 satisfied them." With the fall, civilization and innocence 
 also fell, and barbarism was the offspring of disobedience. 
 There was a time when men had sunk so low that they 
 were like the Troglodytes described by Pomponius Mela — 
 " Troglodytse nullarum opum domini, strident magis quam 
 loquuntur, specus subeunt, alunturque serpentibus" — they 
 had no property, shrieked rather than spoke, lived in 
 caves, and devoured serpents for food. The fine wheat 
 and the honey from the rock was not theirs. The Fenns, 
 painted by Tacitus, were only a shade less barbarous : 
 '^^Mira feritas," says the graphic Caius Cornelius^, " foe da 
 paupertas ; non arma, non equi, non penates ; victui herba, 
 vestui pelles, cubili humus" — wonderful for their wildness, 
 their poverty filthy; they had neither horses, nor gods; 
 the grass was their food, skins their raiment, and the 
 ground their couch. The Helvetii were progressistas in the 
 race for the prize of civilization; and, when planning an 
 
542 TABLE TRAITS. 
 
 emigration project, they took two years to thoroughly 
 perfect the plan, laying up stores of provisions the while. 
 Whoever Ceres may have really been, it is clear that in 
 her is to be recognised the benefactress of mankind : — 
 
 " Prima Ceres unco glebam dimovit aratro, 
 Prima dedit fruges, alimentaque mitia terris, 
 Prima dedit leges ; " 
 
 she who taught them the uses of the plough, of agriculture, 
 and of fixed laws, and who gave them what God had in- 
 tended for civilized and innocent man, "the finest wheat," — 
 she must have been the renovator of the earth, and of 
 beauty upon it. Man, like the rudest saints of the desert — 
 so near may savagery be to undisciplined sanctity — had 
 been " feeding on ashes ;" but now the finest wheat was 
 again there to give him strength and delight, — wheat, 
 where golden grain had, perhaps, first yielded its abun- 
 dance beneath the shade of the primeval tree of know- 
 ledge. 
 
 The era of wheat, of the ploughshare, and of iron, was 
 the era of the second civilization. Man was no longer 
 generally a wild savage, or a cunning hunter. God again 
 vouchsafed to him "the finest of the wheat;" and, as 
 civilization progressed, so also was widened the circle of 
 supply, upon which indeed much of civilization depends. 
 
 The subject of " Man and his Food," with regard to the 
 future, has been ably discussed by Dr. Leonard Withington, 
 of Newbury, Massachusetts. He has moved the question, 
 ^vhether we have reached the terminus of all our stores or 
 not? He holds, that the forest, the field, the river, and 
 the sea may yield contributions to our table, in addition 
 to the known abundance for which our as abundant grati- 
 tude is now due. We have not reached the line of our 
 last inventions ; and, doubtless, new articles are to be dis- 
 covered, which will have an equal influence on virtue and 
 
SUPPEK. 543 
 
 happiness. "Boundless nature," says Dr. Withington, "lies 
 before us, and undeveloped skill is wrapt up in the human 
 breast. The exuberance of our system is not exhausted, — 
 her beasts, her birds, her fishes, her plants, her growing 
 trees and her copious grasses, her pastures, her valleys, 
 her lofty mountains and her rolling streams, are all spread 
 out to the hungry world. Nature is an image of God, 
 and she echoes, though she does not originate the words, 
 *In my Father's house is bread enough, and to spare. 
 ' Thou visitest the earth, and waterest it ; thou greatly 
 enrichest it with the river of God, which is full of water ; 
 thou preparedst them corn when thou hadst so provided 
 for it. Thou waterest the ridges thereof abundantly ; thou 
 settlest the furrows thereof; thou makest it soft with 
 showers ; thou blessest the springing thereof.' " . 
 
 Dr. Gumming holds, not only that death is the most 
 unnatural of conditions, but that when the era of heavenly, 
 everlasting life shall be established, the heaven of man will 
 be here upon earth. So Dr. Withington thinks that the 
 earth will not only be made more heavenly beautiful than 
 it now is, before the period of the new paradise, but more 
 abundant also. " The manna," he says, " which is here- 
 after to be provided, will not be rained down from heaven, 
 but will spring up from the earth." And there is common 
 sense in this last assertion, for in it is implied that abun- 
 dance will come by the proper application of knowledge 
 and labour, without which the earth, ever wise and pru- 
 dent, will yield but little. The increasing populations of 
 that earth have two objects before them which are of no 
 small importance, and which are thus defined by Dr. 
 Withington : — " One is, to impart from the open field of 
 nature all those good and wholesome things which our 
 Father has laid up for us; and secondly, to train our 
 taste and habits for the using of those things which 
 are nutritive and sweet, and which may have the best 
 
544 TABLE TRAITS. 
 
 influence on our moral character and social happiness." 
 The training should begin from early childhood, — and early 
 childhood requires delicate training. 
 
 An American writer on dietetics is half afraid that 
 people will smile if he, in connexion with the subject, 
 introduces dainty children; and yet, as he justly remarks, 
 ^Hhere is a mystery about this subject, on which we may 
 well bestow a passing thought." There are children in all 
 the various classes of life who are " very difficult about 
 their food." '' These little connoisseurs," says Dr. With- 
 ington, " cannot eat with the rest of the family, and the 
 mother and the son are often at issue in an interminable 
 controversy. The mother often says it is all whim and 
 caprice ; and some severe matrons tell their children that 
 they shall not eat a morsel until the given lump is de- 
 voured. But the son would say, if he could quote Shak- 
 speare, ' You cram these things into mine ear against the 
 stomach of my sense. I know I don't love it. I can't eat 
 it; it is not fit to be eaten.'" The doctor proceeds to 
 inquire if this turn of the appetite be a matter of caprice 
 or necessity. He examines whether the mother, or the boy 
 be right. He acknowdedges the antiquity of a controversy 
 which has been carried on for ages, and he has no doubt 
 *^ that Eve had it with Cain and Abel, the first supper she 
 gave them after they were weaned. We offer it," he adds, 
 " as a profound conjecture, that Cain was a dainty boy, 
 and probably doubled up his fist at his mother." With 
 regard to the controversy itself, he appears to think that 
 it has much of the quality of that which marked the dis- 
 pute about the colour of the chameleon, and that "both 
 parties are partly wrong." It is likely, as he remarks, 
 that much depends on the training and volition, and also 
 on original nature and temperament. "There are some 
 things we were never made for, and they were never made 
 for us. There are some kinds of food which, though they 
 
SUPPER. 545 
 
 may suit the race, were never made for the individual. 
 But this bhnded appetite, partly natural, partly artificial, 
 follows through life." And this is leaving the controversy 
 very much where the worthy doctor found it. 
 
 Finally, let them who fancy that man was made merely 
 to enjoy, learn truth from contemplating the portrait of 
 one whose sole philosophy was gastronomic enjoyment. 
 If ever there was a man who had a gay celebrity, and who 
 taught in the porch, that life was only life at the tables in 
 the " salon," it was the editor of the " Almanack des Gour- 
 mands." He taught not that hibere est vivere, but that 
 hibere was only the half of vivere, and that to live was 
 emphatically to eat and drink. He was a practical philo- 
 sopher, it should be observed, and here is the portrait of 
 ihe man, at the end of his philosophical practice : — "" The 
 author of the Almanack is still in the land of the living. 
 He eats, digests, and sleeps, in the charming valley of 
 Longpons. . . . But how is he changed ! At eight o'clock, 
 he rings for his servants, scolds them, cries Extravagantes ! 
 calls for his soitpe aux ficules, and swallows it. Digestion 
 now commences : the labour of the stomach reacts upon 
 the brain, the gloomy ideas of the fasting man disappear, 
 'calmness resumes her sway, he no longer wishes to die. 
 He speaks, converses tranquilly, asks for Paris news, and 
 inquires for the old gourmands still living. When digestion 
 is finished, he becomes silent, and sleeps for some hours. 
 On awaking, complaints recommence ; he weeps, he sighs, 
 he becomes angry, he wishes to die, he calls eagerly for 
 death. The hour for dinner comes ; he sits himself down to 
 table, dinner is served, he eats abundantly of every dish, 
 although he says he has no want of anything, as his last 
 hour is approaching. At dessert, his face becomes ani- 
 mated; his eyes, sunk in their orbits, sparkle brightly. 
 ^ How is Marquis de Coussy, dear doctor ? ' he exclaims : 
 ^ how long will he last ? They say he has a terrible disease. 
 
 N N 
 
546 TABLE TRAITS. 
 
 Doubtliess they have not put him on regimen. You 
 would never have suffered that, for one must eat to live, — 
 ah 1 ' At length, he rises from table. Behold him in an 
 immense arm-chair. He crosses his legs, supports his 
 stumps upon his knees (for he has no hands, but something 
 resembling the flap of a goose), and continues his conver- 
 sation, which always runs on eating. ^ The rains have been 
 abundant,' he cries, ' we shall have plenty of mushrooms 
 this autumn. What a pity, dear doctor, that I cannot 
 accompany you in your walks to St. Genevieve ! How 
 fine our vines are ! what a delicious perfume ! ' And then 
 he falls asleep, and dreams of what he will eat on the fol- 
 lowing day ! " 
 
 Fancy, if the theory of guardian angels be a beautiful 
 truth, what the winged watcher of this animal, staggering 
 over the supper of life, must feel at contemplating the 
 ward committed to his care. For our own profit such 
 examples m^y be employed, as the ancients showed their 
 slaves drunk in presence of their sons, that the latter might 
 be disgusted with inebriety. And this tail-piece should be 
 engraved at the end of every work professing to teach that 
 there is even in this world, a paradise for gourmands. 
 The old heathen Socrates knew better, when he said, 
 " Beware of such food as persuades a man, though he be not 
 hungry, to eat; and those liquors that will prevail with 
 a man to drink them wh^i he is not thirsty." In the 
 same spirit, the pious Dodsley taught, that health sat on 
 the brow of him only who had temperance for a companion — 
 temperance, which Sir William Temple styled as 'Hhat 
 virtue without pride and fortune without envy, which 
 gives health of body and tranquillity of mind, the best 
 guardian of youth, and support of old age." So Jeremy 
 Collier says, "Temperance keeps the senses clear and 
 imembarrassed, and makes them seize the object with 
 more keenness and satisfaction. It appears with life in 
 
SUPPER. 547 
 
 the face, and decorum in the person ; it gives you the 
 command of your head, secures your health, and preserves 
 you in a condition for business." What comment can I 
 add to texts of such philosophy, but to bid wise men wel- 
 come to the feast of reason, where 
 
 *' May good digestion wait on appetite. 
 And health on both? " 
 
 THE END. 
 
 R. CLAY, PHINTER, BKEAD STREET HILL. 
 
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