90 THE OCTOPUS. 



multifarious reading. His "common-place book" must have 

 been a marvel of industrious annotation and careful record, for 

 he has saved from oblivion, by his extracts from their writings, 

 many authors whose works have been long ago lost, and of whose 

 existence future generations would have been unaware, if he, by 

 his faithful and painstaking acknowledgment of his indebtedness 

 to them, had not handed them down to posterity. He devotes 

 many chapters to the history of festive entertainments, and the 

 dishes served at banquets of the old Romans and Greeks ; and 

 by his collection from numerous authors of passages, some of 

 which contain but a few words, and were probably regarded by 

 their contemporaries as of fugitive interest, has given us an insight 

 of the elaborate preparations made for dinner-parties, and the 

 appreciation of artistic cookery by gourmets in those days. Some 

 of our household cooks in this nineteenth century would " give 

 warning " instantly if asked to get ready for table for their master's 

 friends such a profuse variety of dishes. Course followed course 

 in skilfully arranged sequence, all intended to tempt the palate, or 

 supposed to possess some medicinal or stomachic virtue, and 

 presenting, in their combination, a feast compared with which our 

 lord mayor's dinners are unrefined in their mere plenty. In all 

 important entertainments, public or private, the cuttle-fishes of 

 the Mediterranean were highly esteemed as delicacies, and were 

 as well known and regularly looked for in the menu as are salmon 

 and turbot at similar gatherings now. In the following extracts 

 from the notebook of Athenoeus, by the " polypus " is meant the 

 Octopus., by the "cuttle-fish" the Sepia^ and by the "squid" or 

 " squill," the genus represented by our Loligo. 



Plato, the comic poet, mentioning in his " Phaon " the banquet 

 of Philoxenus the Leucadian, says : — 



" Good-sized /6i/j'///i- in season, 



Should be boiled — to roast them's treason, 



But if early, and not big, 



Roast them ; boiled ar'n't worth a fig." 



