OYSTER-ENTHUSIASTS. 239 



they relished as a provocative before the feast, but, during 

 the feast, whenever the appetite began to flag. The Bor- 

 deaux oyster would seem to have been in favour with the 

 emperors ; but the Rutupine bivalve, as caught on the 

 coast of Kent, was also held in great esteem. It is to a 

 Roman, Sergius Grata, that we owe the great invention 

 of an oyster breeding-pond. The wealthy Lucullus had 

 the sea-water brought to his celebrated villa from the 

 Campanian coast, and kept his oysters alive in capacious 

 reservoirs until they were required for the table. It is 

 said of Yitellius that he devoured these delicious molluscs 

 all day long. Cicero, the orator and philosopher and 

 statesman, swallowed them by dozens; Seneca was not 

 less partial to them ; nor was Calisthenes. If any of our 

 readers are oyster-eaters, they are in the best of company. 

 Oyster-enthusiasts have not been wanting in later times. 

 Louis XI. annually entertained the learned doctors of the 

 Sorbonne at an oyster-banquet. Shakespeare, who alludes, 

 with fine poetic sympathy, to "an oyster crossed in love," 

 and Cervantes, the creator of " Don Quixote," loved 

 oysters : so did Helvetius, Raynal, Voltaire, Rousseau, 

 Danton, Diderot, Robespierre, Dugald Stewart, Hume, 

 Lord Jeffrey, Pope, Swift, Thomson, Professor Wilson. 

 Bentley, most erudite of scholars, could never pass an 

 oyster-shop ; the temptation always enticed him into it. 

 Napoleon, before a great battle, cleared his perceptions 

 and strengthened his judgment by partaking of the justly- 

 celebrated bivalve ; and now-a-days our wits, however 

 inferior in some respects to their predecessors, are fully 

 their equals in the matter of oyster-suppers. They have, 

 however, a great difficulty to contend with : oyster- 

 suppers now-a-days are costly banquets ! 



(502) 1 Q 



