334 CUL1NA11Y REFLECTIONS. 



Bill/' might then be worthily employed (schedule A and all), in 

 cooking a salutary, and simple food ; and be devoted to that pot to 

 which it had designed us in the mass. How much would not the world 

 have lost, had not the full enjoyment of his enormous repast bestowed 

 on the sage and moralist (Dr. Johnson), that happier flow of temper., 

 which enabled Boswell to delight, instruct, and improve society, by 

 the wisdom and eloquence of the great Lexicographer's hours of relaxa- 

 tion ; and, if he stand unrivalled in this degenerate age, let it be also 

 be remembered, that his chief rnangiatory pleasures were confined to 

 a veal pie and raisins and an unsalted leg of pork boiled to rags, 

 without the pernicious condiments of our days. How mild, serene, 

 and beautiful, was the harsh-tempered Parr, in his after-dinner col- 

 loquy, when nature was satisfied, and his passions all appeased. Even 

 old Thurlow's thunder was quelled to the music of a rippling stream, 

 as, with the withdrawal of the cloth, he sent the great seal where we 

 should scarcely like to be ; and, if we required living examples of 

 honour, truth, and virtue;, of well-acquired fame and dignity; of 

 length of years ; and (however men may differ with them upon prin- 

 ciple) of the purest patriotism, we have but to regard Lords Eldon 

 and Stowell Ciceronian Commentaries " De Senectute," who, 

 in preserving a homely and genuine taste for the unsophisticated plea- 

 sures of the table, stand octogenarian reprovers of the depravity of 

 modern taste, and our dereliction from better principle, by the un- 

 fortunate perversity of our appetites. States and empires, with 

 kitchens, have their periods of declension : and when, so early as the 

 clays of Homer (whose heroes had the undoubted merit of being all 

 cooks) we find the utmost disregard of culinary science, and behold 

 Patroclus joining Achilles in the quartering of oxen and spitting loins, 

 without mention of the lighter graces of sauce or gravy, it is easy to 

 predict the uncertain tenure of Grecian power. Even all the wisdom 

 of Pythagoras went no farther than the rejection of beans as food : a 

 degree of refinement which, in better days, would but have extracted 

 a sickly smile of contempt from the immortal Brummell. If Roman 

 history refer, with pride, to the crude turnips of Cincinnatus, we can 

 better appreciate the astonishment evinced by the Samnite ambassa- 

 dors, especially if they had ever heard of cholera morbus. Horace's 

 recommendation of oblong eggs, is but a sorry proof of Epicurean 

 talent. The satire of Juvenal on the frying of a fish, is really worse 

 than juvenile. The six thousand weight of lampreys provided by 

 Cesar for his imperial supper, would excite the disdain of an alder- 

 man, and the jeer of a waiter at the cider-cellar ; while Heliogabalus 

 himself was more distinguished for his attention to quantity than 

 quality : and, although " in the palmy state of Rome," Paulus Emilius 

 strove' to save his country by establishing the important axiom, " That 

 no less skill is required to set forth a feast than to lead an army ; 

 since, if the one was to annoy an enemy, the other was to please a 

 friend ;" Rome necessarily fell in unwisely preferring her generals 

 and senators to her Rundells and her Tides. A shoulder of mutton 

 put Mahomet's divinity to the test, and cost him his life : and as to 

 his descendants, while the Arabian tales associate the merits of well- 

 peppered cream tarts with the glories of the caliphate, by a declension 



