318 Cookery . 
house-wife, and the ever-green broad-brims and yew-tree tobacco 
pipes that adorn the garden of myn heer, her husband. 
I have been led into this digression because not having been 
able to furnish you with a drawing of a kitchen fitted up to my 
mind, I sat down with a positive determination to shew the great 
importance of eating generally, and of good eating particularly, 
from the precepts and practices of divers great authors, who have 
incidentally or expressly treated this important subject. I meant 
to have rendered my position luce clarius, although by reflected 
light ; and to have fortified and protected it by a seven fold shield 
of impenetrable authorities. But I have been induced to confine 
myself to narrower bounds, for reasons that I shall presently mention. 
There are many passages, moreover, in classical and other 
books of importance, that can only be elucidated by a commentator 
who understands something of the history of eating. Thus, when 
we find how greatly people in general abhorred the practice of 
eating with unwashen hands, this can only be explained by shew- 
ing, that the Jews at that time, like other nations, had no knives, 
forks, or spoons, but eat with their fingers, as the ^.rabians to this 
day feed upon their cuscusoo. When our Lord desires the ser- 
vants at the marriage of Cana in Galilee to bear unto the master 
of the feast, I apprehend this is a wrong translation, for the wine 
was under the controul not of the entertainer, but of the elected 
toast-master, the arbiter bibendi : quern Venus sorte dixerat . So 
when we read of the favourite Apostle who reclined in our Sa- 
viour’s bosom, this can only be understood by a reference to the 
Triclinia , or couches, and the mode of reclining upon them : 
chairs being used at that time by females only ; who afterward 
adopted the couches of men, when they began to throw aside the 
modesty of women. 
Many questions of great importance in political economy also 
depend upon scientific and historical knowledge in eating. Thus, 
the introduction in England of napkins and silver forks to each 
plate, and of separate tumblers to each person at dinner, is a cus- 
tom introduced even in families of rank in England within 50 
years ; and is by no means general even among the opulent of the 
middling classes to this day ; while in France, the poorest person 
has his silver four-pronged fork, his napkin, and his separate glass 
tumbler. This arises from the mode of cookery peculiar to each 
nation. In France, they feed chiefly on soups, and on meats stew- 
ed or boiled till they are quite tender : hence, a knife is not so ne- 
cessary an article in France as in England, but spoons and four- 
