APPETITE AND HUNGER 97 



will not eat it. Appetite is hunger writ small. Hunger un- 

 doubtedly induces people to eat food which a well satisfied 

 man would not care to tackle. On the other hand, elaborate 

 sauces and good cooking will often tempt a jaded appetite 

 to put forth new efforts. The savour of cooked food is always 

 provocative of appetite. It induces the saliva to flood the 

 mouth and the gastric juices to flow into the stomach. As 

 a great Russian physiologist has said, "Appetite is juice." 



" One man's food is another man's poison, " and although the 

 lower animals keep to a fairly steady and monotonous diet, 

 man will ransack the world for delicacies. The part that the 

 spice trade played in international politics during the Stuart 

 and later times is an example of the power that appetite has 

 over the affairs of man. 



Sydney Smith used to say that a widely spread view of 

 Heaven was "eating pdU de foie gras to the sound of trum- 

 pets." This no doubt inspired Lord Beaconsfield, whose 

 epigrams usually had an ancestry, to utter the wish "O, may 

 I die eating Ortolans to the sound of soft music!" Charles 

 Lamb favoured a simpler diet. He held "that a man cannot 

 have a pure mind who refuses apple dumplings," and although 

 he was not particularly fond of vegetables, he observes that 

 "asparagus seems to inspire gentle thoughts." But where 

 he really let himself go was over roast sucking-pig : 



See him in the dish, his second cradle, how meek he heth ! — wouldst 

 thou have had this innocent grow up to the grossness and indocihty 

 which too often accompany maturer swinehood? Ten to one he would 

 have proved a glutton, a sloven, an obstinate, disagreeable animal — 

 wallowing in all manner of filthy conversation — from these sins he is 

 happily snatched away — 



Ere sin could blight or sorrow fade, 

 Death came with timely care — 

 his memory is odoriferous — he hath a fair sepulchre in the grateful stomach 

 of the judicious epicure — and for such a tomb might be content to die. 



Dr Johnson was devoted to the pleasures of the table. 

 Boswell records that he said: 



Some people have a foolish way of not minding or pretending not to 

 mind, what they eat. For my part I mind my belly very studiously, 

 and very carefully; for I look upon it, that he who docs not mind his 

 belly will hardly mind anything else. 



s L y 



