LEAVES FROM THE NOTE-BOOK OF A NATURALIST. 



89 



functionary went on helping till he had cleared 

 the soup of all but the green fat and richer parts, 

 the whole of which he piled up in a capacious 

 plate for himself. Then up spoke our sculptor 

 and said, " If you will allow me to change my 

 mind, I'll take a little turtle;" and the waiter 

 who held the plate, placed it, to the horror of the 

 dispensing expectant, before Chantrey, who im- 

 mediately commenced spoon-exercise, as Jonathan 

 delicately describes such evolutions ; " and this I 

 did," said Chantrey, " to punish him for his 

 greed." 



What was the unhappy functionary to do ? 

 His own tureen was exhausted, and, in a half-frantic 

 tone, he called to one of the waiters to bring him 

 some turtle. But at city feasts the guests are 

 very industrious, especially when turtle is the 

 order of the day ; and the waiter, after trying 

 about, brought back to our greedy citizen the 

 identical plate of fatless flesh which had so 

 astounded the chaplain, who had contrived to 

 exchange his unwelcome portion for one more 

 worthy of a sleek son of the Church : " and 

 then," Chantrey would add, " my attentive neigh- 

 bor's visage was awful to look upon!" There 

 was no help for it ; so the disconcerted functionary 

 betook himself to the rejected plate, with the 

 additional discomfiture of seeing Chantrey send 

 away his, still rich with calipee, fat, and fins. 



But this is mild compared with scenes which 

 have arisen on such occasions in less refined times. 

 Something, indeed, may be allowed for the weak- 

 ness of human nature, and the excitement of the 

 moment, when 



The tender morsels on the palate melt, 

 And all the force of cookery is felt. 



But time was when the Graces seem to have been 

 altogether banished from the great civic feasts, 

 and the onslaught of the gastrophilists waxed fast 

 and furious. Hogarth has touched this in the 

 eighth plate of his inimitable " Industry and Idle- 

 ness," when the industrious 'prentice has grown 

 rich, and is Sheriff of London ; " representing to 

 us," as worthy Dr. Trusler observes, " at one 

 view, the various ways of what we call laying it 

 in." Quin declared that it was not safe to sit 

 down to a feast in one of the city halls without a 

 baske't-hilted knife and fork. At a much later 

 period, a well-known " special attorney," who had 

 fought his way well on every other stage, found 

 himself no match for those who surrounded him 

 on lord-mayor's day. Whenever he endeavored 

 to transfer a fat slice from the savory haunch be- 

 fore him to his own plate, it was instantly speared 

 by the forks of the foragers near him, and borne 

 away to theirs, till at last he was compelled to 

 resign the unequal contest, and lay down his din- 

 ner arms in despair, though he had got well into 

 " The Alderman's Walk." And yet civic hospi- 

 tality does its best to enable the catechists who are 

 invited to do their duty towards their neighbors, 

 as far as plenty is concerned. At a turtle-feast, 

 the usual allowance was, perhaps is for there 

 has been no falling off of late in festal liberality 



six pounds, live weight, per head. Thus, in 

 August, 1808, at the Spanish dinner at the City 

 of London Tavern, 400 guests consumed 2500 Ibs. 

 of turtle, if the newspapers of that day are wor- 

 thy of credence. When we remember that the 

 turtle is but the prologue to the play, we may 

 form some notion of the performances of these 

 valiant trenchermen, who must have gone near to 

 rival the feats of some of the ancient heroes of 

 the table. They, indeed, have left on record 

 gastric achievements to be envied by aldermen of 

 the most giant appetite. Did not Maximin con- 

 sume forty pounds of flesh in a day nay, occa- 

 sionally sixty pounds moistening his repast with 

 a vessel of wine of the Capitol measure, contain- 

 ing about eight of our gallons ? Great as he was 

 in more senses than one, the brutal emperor, how- 

 ever, must yield the palm to Phagon, who, at one 

 dinner, consumed a whole boar, a hundred loaves, 

 a wether, and a little hog, washing all down with 

 more than an orca of wine. Claudius Albinus 

 seems to have had a sweet tooth, and a more re- 

 fined taste ; for one of his meals consisted of five 

 hundred dried figs, the callistruthiae of the Greeks, 

 one hundred Campanian peaches, ten melons of 

 Ossia, and twenty pounds of grapes from the 

 luscious vineyards of the blessed island of Leuce, 

 that paradise of the Euxine Sea. These delica- 

 cies paved the way for the volatile, consisting of 

 one hundred gnat-snappers ; and then the orifice 

 was satisfactorily closed upon forty oysters. Clau- 

 dius, in this sweeping supper, seems to have re- 

 versed the modern order of dishes, ending where 

 an epicure of the nineteenth century begins. 

 What his drinking capabilities were does not 

 appear. But the stern Romans were in the habit 

 of becoming somewhat hazy occasionally. Peo- 

 ple do not like to have their various weaknesses 

 paraded before the senate ; and Mark Antony bit- 

 terly paid off Cicero's philippics. The son of 

 the orator, by way of commentary, and bent on 

 eclipsing the fame of his father's murderer as the 

 greatest bibber of the empire, took off two gal- 

 lons at a draught. Nivellius Torquatus threw the 

 prowess of Marcus Cicero into the shade ; for, in 

 the presence of Tiberius, he drank off three gal- 

 lons without drawing breath ; and Firmus disposed 

 of two buckets full of wine without flinching ; to 

 say nothing of Offellius Buraetius, who spent the 

 whole of his life in making himself a thorough- 

 fare for wine. The accomplishment was worth 

 something in those days. Three bacchanalian 

 nights with Piso so endeared him to Tiberius 

 whom the wags irreverently called Biberius that 

 he made him praetor ; and for the same convivial 

 qualities, the emperor gave Pomponius Flaccus 

 the province of Syria. The road to preferment 

 generally, under his reign, seems to have been the 

 same rosy way, for " he also did prefer a man 

 that was unknown, and sought for the quaestor's 

 office, before the most noble men, for pledging at a 

 banquet an amphora of wine, that he drank to him. 

 And at that time, when the Lex Fannia was pub- 

 lished, the matter was come so far, that many of 



