OPSOPHAaTi 493 



Ajid then the oplitic troop to goad. 

 Who bend beneath their chargers' load, 

 And, empty dishes ta'en away. 

 Place solid flank for new assay ; 

 While heavy tables creak and groan 

 Under the ' xopof XoiraSmi/.'* 

 All this demands such skiU, as wields 

 The veteran chief of hard- won fields ! 

 Who rules tiie roast might rule the seas, 

 Or haste his foes with equal ease ; 

 And cooks who are equal to a rowt, 

 Might take a town, or storm redoubt.' 



' The culinary art certainly rises in importance as you 

 point out its many ramifications and connections; is 

 anything more required of its true professors ?' ' Bo- 

 tany, sir, that charming study, especially the interesting 

 branch of which it treats of pot-herbs both foreign 

 and domestic/ ' That is clear ; anything else T ' Yes, 

 that which is required for eminence in everything — 

 originality, t We leave to younger hands the routine 

 of boiled and roast, and invent novelties. Apropos of 

 these, have you seen the models of my late astronomi- 

 cal pie?t — accounts of which have gone the round of 



* Aoffis, ahos, a fish-plate, patina, catinus, scutula, paropsis, 

 are some of the names for service-dishes of divers forms and sizes, 

 with or without covers. 



t Inventive cooks and poets both agree 

 To show their powers iu nice variety : 

 Hence mackerel charms the palate and the eyes. 

 Though dressed with inconsistent gooseberries ; 

 Crabs, salmons, lobsters, are with fennel spread, 

 Who never touch'd that herb tiU they were dead ; 

 Yet no man lards salt-pork with orange-peel. 

 Or garnishes his lamb with spitchcock'd eel. 



King, Art of Cookery. 



J We read of such a pie in Athenaeus, on the crust of which 

 were represented the signs of the Zodiac, besides an immense 

 number of the more singular productions of nature in the various 



