Part 8 (1/2)
”And when the hard work has your squeamishness routed, When you're parched up with thirst, and your hunger's undoubted, Then spurn simple food if you can, or plain wine, Which no honied gums from Hymettus refine.”
His homily then proceeds in terms which would not be out of place if addressed to a _gourmet_ of modern London or Paris:--
”When your butler's away, and the weather's so bad That there is not a morsel of fish to be had, A crust with some salt will soothe not amiss The ravening stomach. You ask, how is this?
Because for delight, at the best, you must look To yourself, and not to your wealth or your cook [1]
Work till you perspire. Of all sauces 'tis best.
The man that's with over-indulgence oppressed, White-livered and pursy, can relish no dish, Be it ortolans, oysters, or finest of fish.
Still I scarcely can hope, if before you there were A peac.o.c.k and capon, you would not prefer With the peac.o.c.k to tickle your palate, you're so Completely the dupes of mere semblance and show.
For to buy the rare bird only gold will avail, And he makes a grand show with his fine painted tail.
As if this had to do with the matter the least!
Can you make of the feathers you prize so a feast?
And, when the bird's cooked, what becomes of its splendour?
Is his flesh than the capon's more juicy or tender?
Mere appearance, not substance, then, clearly it is, Which bamboozles your judgment. So much, then, for this.”
[1] ”Pour l'amour de Dieu, un sou pour acheter un pet.i.t pain. J'ai si faim!” ”Comment!” responded the cloyed sensualist, in search of an appet.i.te, who was thus accosted; ”tu as faim, pet.i.t drole! Tu es bien heureux!” The readers of Pope will also remember his lines on the man who ”Called 'happy dog' the beggar at his door, And envied thirst and hunger to the poor.”
Don't talk to me of taste, Ofellus continues--
”Will it give you a notion If this pike in the Tiber was caught, or the ocean?
If it used 'twixt the bridges to glide and to quiver, Or was tossed to and fro at the mouth of the river?”
Just as our epicures profess to distinguish, by flavour a salmon fresh, run from the sea from one that has been degenerating for four-and-twenty hours in the fresh water of the river--with this difference, however, that, unlike the salmon with us, the above-bridge pike was considered at Rome to be more delicate than his sea-bred and leaner brother.
Ofellus next proceeds to ridicule the taste which prizes what is set before it for mere size or rarity or cost. It is this, he contends, and not any excellence in the things themselves, which makes people load their tables with the sturgeon or the stork. Fas.h.i.+on, not flavour, prescribes the rule; indeed, the more perverted her ways, the more sure they are to be followed.
”So were any one now to a.s.sure us a treat In cormorants roasted, as tender and sweet, The young men of Rome are so p.r.o.ne to what's wrong, They'd eat cormorants all to a man, before long.”
But, continues Ofellus, though I would have you frugal, I would not have you mean--
”One vicious extreme it is idle to shun, If into its opposite straightway you run;”
ill.u.s.trating his proposition by one of those graphic sketches which give a distinctive life to Horace's Satires.
”There is Avidienus, to whom, like a burr, Sticks the name he was righteously dubbed by, of 'Cur,'
Eats beechmast and olives five years old, at least, And even when he's robed all in white for a feast On his marriage or birth day, or some other very High festival day, when one likes to be merry, What wine from the chill of his cellar emerges-- 'Tis a drop at the best--has the flavour of verjuice; While from a huge cruet his own sparing hand On his coleworts drops oil which no mortal can stand, So utterly loathsome and rancid in smell, it Defies his stale vinegar even to quell it.”
Let what you have he simple, the best of its kind, whatever that may be, and served in the best style. And now learn, continues the rustic sage,
”In what way and how greatly you'll gain By using a diet both sparing and plain.
First, your health will be good; for you readily can Believe how much mischief is done to a man By a great ma.s.s of dishes,--remembering that Plain fare of old times, and how lightly it sat.
But the moment you mingle up boiled with roast meat, And sh.e.l.lfish with thrushes, what tasted so sweet Will be turned into bile, and ferment, not digest, in Your stomach exciting a tumult intestine.
Mark, from a bewildering dinner how pale Every man rises up! Nor is this all they ail, For the body, weighed down by its last night's excesses, To its own wretched level the mind, too, depresses, And to earth chains that spark of the essence divine; While he, that's content on plain viands to dine, Sleeps off his fatigues without effort, then gay As a lark rises up to the tasks of the day.
Yet he on occasion will find himself able To enjoy without hurt a more liberal table, Say, on festival days, that come round with the year, Or when his strength's low, and cries out for good cheer, Or when, as years gather, his age must be nursed With more delicate care than he wanted at first.
But for you, when ill health or old age shall befall, Where's the luxury left, the relief within call, Which has not been forestalled in the days of your prime, When you scoffed, in your strength, at the inroads of time?
”'Keep your boar till it's rank!' said our sires; which arose, I am confident, not from their having no nose, But more from the notion that some of their best Should be kept in reserve for the chance of a guest: And though, ere he came, it grew stale on the shelf, This was better than eating all up by one's self.