VENTEKOLOGY. 



man has ; but I am a great eater of beef, and I believe that does harm 

 to my wit. Sir Toby. No question. Sir Andrew. An' I thought so 

 I'd forswear it. 



Sir Toby Belch says of his friend, " He plays o' the viol-de-gambo, 

 and speaks three or four languages, word for word, without book, 

 and hath all the good gifts of nature;" and yet, in spite of all these 

 acquirements and gifts of nature, he lacked that common parlance 

 which is used in making love. And how did this happen ? We have 

 his own words for it : he was a " great eater of beef." 



Mossop, the actor, is said to have been particularly attached to 

 various food, according to the line of character he was to represent: 

 broth for one ; roast pork for tyrants ; steaks for " Measure for Mea- 

 sure;" boiled mutton for lovers; pudding for "Tancred," &c. As 

 there is a great dearth of dramatic talent at the present time, it would, 

 perhaps, be well for those who have the care of the rising generation 

 of tragedians and comedians, to see that proper directions, among 

 their other rules, be given with reference to diet. They, who are 

 much subject to dreaming, will not fail to have remarked that the 

 character of their dreams is very much influenced by the food which 

 they have taken during the day, but more especially by that which 

 forms their evening's repast ; the purposes to which such dreams may 

 be applied by those who understand the means by which they are 

 created, have occasionally been brought before the eyes of the public 

 in the works of the poet, the novelist, and the painter. The con- 

 clusion would be far from unreasonable, that as an article of diet has 

 an influence on the mind when the judgment is not exercised, as is 

 presumed to be the case in dreaming, so, a fortiori, when the mind is 

 more under the influence of a particular diet, used for a longer space 

 of time, the character of the individual will be the more strongly 

 developed. 



" Let those," says Galen, " who deny that the difference of aliments 

 can render some temperate, others dissolute, some chaste, others in- 

 continent, some courageous, others cowardly, some meek, others 

 quarrelsome, come to me : let them follow my counsels, as to eat- 

 ing and drinking, and I promise them that they will get great help 

 therefrom towards moral philosophy." Chrysippus advises that in- 

 fants should be brought up by clever nurses only; and a remarkable 

 instance of the conviction that the nutriment of children constituted 

 a part of their education, is recorded of Blanche de Castille, the 

 mother of Saint Louis, a lady of great acquirements. One day when 

 the queen was labouring under a violent attack of fever, a lady of 

 quality, who, to please her majesty, or to imitate her, also nourished her 

 son, hearing the little Louis cry with thirst, quickly devised the means 

 of appeasing him. The queen, on her recovery from the attack, would 

 have performed the like office, but the little Saint was already satis- 

 fied. The cause of this was soon discovered ; and the queen, instead 

 of thanking the lady for her kind offices, regarded her with an angry 

 look, and putting her finger in the mouth of the infant, caused him to 

 return all hehad taken. This excited muchastonishment; but the queen 

 said she could not endure that another woman should have the right 

 of disputing with her the offices of a mother ; so firm, says the nar- 



