Part 9 (1/2)

If we should suppose the case of a nation taking three equidistant meals all of the same material and the same quant.i.ty, all milk, for instance, it would be impossible for Thomas Aquinas himself to say which was or was not dinner. The case would be that of the Roman _ancile_ which dropped from the skies; to prevent its ever being stolen, the priests made eleven _facsimiles_ of it, that the thief, seeing the hopelessness of distinguis.h.i.+ng the true one, might let all alone. And the result was, that, in the next generation, n.o.body could point to the true one. But our dinner, the Roman _coena_, is distinguished from the rest by far more than the hour; it is distinguished by great functions, and by still greater capacities. It _is_ most beneficial; it may become more so.

In saying this, we point to the lighter graces of music, and conversation _more varied_, by which the Roman _coena_ was chiefly distinguished from our dinner. We are far from agreeing with Mr. Croly, that the Roman meal was more ”intellectual” than ours. On the contrary, ours is the more intellectual by much; we have far greater knowledge, far greater means for making it such. In fact, the fault of our meal is--that it is _too_ intellectual; of too severe a character; too political; too much tending, in many hands, to disquisition. Reciprocation of question and answer, variety of topics, s.h.i.+fting of topics, are points not sufficiently cultivated. In all else we a.s.sent to the following pa.s.sage from Mr. Croly's eloquent Salathiel:--

”If an ancient Roman could start from his slumber into the midst of European life, he must look with scorn on its absence of grace, elegance, and fancy. But it is in its festivity, and most of all in its banquets, that he would feel the incurable barbarism of the Gothic blood. Contrasted with the fine displays that made the table of the Roman n.o.ble a picture, and threw over the indulgence of appet.i.te the colors of the imagination, with what eyes must he contemplate the tasteless and commonplace dress, the coa.r.s.e attendants, the meagre ornament, the want of mirth, music, and intellectual interest--the whole heavy machinery that converts the feast into the mere drudgery of devouring!”

Thus far the reader knows already that we dissent violently; and by looking back he will see a picture of our ancestors at dinner, in which they rehea.r.s.e the very part in relation to ourselves that Mr. Croly supposes all moderns to rehea.r.s.e in relation to the Romans; but in the rest of the beautiful description, the positive, though not the comparative part, we must all concur:--

”The guests before me were fifty or sixty splendidly dressed men,”

(they were in fact t.i.tus and his staff, then occupied with the siege of Jerusalem,) ”attended by a crowd of domestics, attired with scarcely less splendor; for no man thought of coming to the banquet in the robes of ordinary life. The embroidered couches, themselves striking objects, allowed the ease of position at once delightful in the relaxing climates of the South, and capable of combining with every grace of the human figure.

At a slight distance, the table loaded with plate glittering under a profusion of lamps, and surrounded by couches thus covered by rich draperies, was like a central source of light radiating in broad shafts of every brilliant hue. The wealth of the patricians, and their intercourse with the Greeks, made them masters of the first performances of the arts.

Copies of the most famous statues, and groups of sculpture in the precious metals; trophies of victories; models of temples; were mingled with vases of flowers and lighted perfumes. Finally, covering and closing all, was a vast scarlet canopy, which combined the groups beneath to the eye, and threw the whole into the form that a painter would love.”

Mr. Croly then goes on to insist on the intellectual embellishments of the Roman dinner; their variety, their grace, their adaptation to a festive purpose. The truth is, our English imagination, more profound than the Roman, is also more gloomy, less gay, less _riante_. That accounts for our want of the gorgeous _trictinium_, with its scarlet draperies, and for many other differences both to the eye and to the understanding. But both we and the Romans agree in the main point; we both discovered the true purpose which dinner might serve,--1, to throw the grace of intellectual enjoyment over an animal necessity; 2, to relieve and antagonize the toil of brain incident to high forms of social life.

Our object has been to point the eye to this fact; to show uses imperfectly suspected in a recurring accident of life; to show a steady tendency to that consummation, by holding up, as in a mirror, (together with occasional glimpses of hidden corners in history,) the corresponding revolution silently going on in a great people of antiquity.

NOTES.

[NOTE 1.

”_In procinct_.”--Milton's translation (somewhere in The Paradise Regained) of the technical phrase ”in procinctu.”]

[NOTE 2.

”_Geologists know not_.”--Observe, reader, we are not at all questioning the Scriptural Chronology of the earth as a _habitation for man_, for on the pre-human earth Scripture is silent: not upon the six thousand years does our doubt revolve, but upon a very different thing, viz. to what age in man these six thousand years correspond by a.n.a.logy in a planet. In man the sixtieth part is a very venerable age. But as to a planet, as to our little earth, instead of arguing dotage, six thousand years may have scarcely carried her beyond babyhood. Some people think she is cutting her first teeth; some think her in her teens. But, seriously, it is a very interesting problem. Do the sixty centuries of our earth imply youth, maturity, or dotage?]

[NOTE 3.

”_Everywhere the ancients went to bed, like good boys, from seven to nine o'clock_.”--As we are perfectly serious, we must beg the reader, who fancies any joke in all this, to consider what an immense difference it must have made to the earth, considered as a steward of her own resources-whether great nations, in a period when their resources were so feebly developed, did, or did not, for many centuries, require candles; and, we may add, fire. The five heads of human expenditure are,--1, Food; 2, Shelter; 3, Clothing; 4, Fuel; 5, Light. All were pitched on a lower scale in the Pagan era; and the two last were almost banished from ancient housekeeping. What a great relief this must have been to our good mother the earth! who, at _first_, was obliged to request of her children that they would settle round the Mediterranean. She could not even afford them water, unless they would come and fetch it themselves out of a common tank or cistern.]

[NOTE 4.