Chapter IX: Front Matter (9)

The Celtic King of the Sotians maintained a body of men who were called the “Eucholimes,” or the “Death Volunteers.” They amounted to six hundred men; they were lodged, clothed, and tended like the King, with whom they daily sat at meat; but they were also bound to die with their master; and it is alleged that the chance was eagerly incurred, and that no man ever failed, when called upon by the King’s decease, to accompany His Majesty on a visit to his royal cousin, Orcus.

But your regular parasite preferred to live and flatter living Monarchs. “See,” said Niceas, when he saw Alexander troubled by a fly that stung him, “there is one that will be King over all flies; for he has imbibed the blood of him who is King over all men.” The flattery was not more delicate which Chirisophus once paid at dinner to Dionysius the Tyrant. Chirisophus, seeing the King smile at the other end of the table, burst into a roar of laughter. The King asked, “Wherefore?” seeing that the parasite could not have heard the joke. “True,” said Chirisophus; “but I saw that Your Majesty had heard something worth laughing at, and I laughed in sympathy.” This species of parasite is not uncommon in English houses; but perhaps they do their office more refinedly than Chirisophus.

The flatterers of the younger Dionysius were far more disgusting in their adulation. They were simply absurd, when they pretended to be short-sighted, like him, and to be unable to see a dish, unless they thrust their noses into it. But they were filthy followers when they offered their faces for the King to “void his rheum” upon, and even went to extremes of nastiness at which human nature shudders, but at which Dionysius smiled. And yet Dionysius was hailed by some of them as a god. It was the custom, we are told, in Sicily, for every individual to make sacrifices, in his own house, before the figures of the nymphs, to get devoutly drunk before the altar, and to dance round it as long as the pious devotee could keep upon his legs. It was accounted as an exquisite piece of flattery in Damocles, the parasite, that he refused to perform such service before inanimate deities, while he went through the whole duty before Dionysius as his god. The Athenians, it will be remembered, were horror-stricken at such impious laudation as this. They fined Demades ten talents for having proposed to award divine honours to Alexander; and Timagoras, whom they had sent as Ambassador to the King of Persia, they put to death for compromising the Athenian dignity by prostrating himself before that King. And, indeed, let us do justice to Alexander himself. He had more than misgiving touching his own alleged divinity. He had once--“his custom in the afternoon”--eaten and drunk so enormously, that in the evening he was forced to a necessity which compels very mortal people,--take physic. He made as many contortions, on swallowing it, as a refractory child; and Philarches, his parasite, remarked, with a rascally hypocritical smile, “Ah! what must be the sufferings of mortal man under such medicine, if you, who are a divinity, feel it so much!” The idea of a deity drawing health out of an apothecary’s phial, was too much even for Alexander, who declined to accept the apotheosis, and called Philarches an ass.

But Philarches was only giving the King a taste of the parasite’s professional craft. The noble Nicostratus of Argos quite as impiously flattered the Sovereign of Persia, when, for the sake of currying favour with that majestic barbarian, he every night, in his own house, prepared a solemn supper, richly provided, and offered to the genius of the King, (τῶ δαίμονι τοῦ Βασιλέως,) for no better reason than that he had learned that such was the custom in Persia. Whether he profited or not by this delicate attention, Theopompus does not inform us.

The Anactes or Princes of the royal family of Salamis maintained two distinct families, in whom, if I understand Athenæus rightly, the office of flatterer (and of spy, I may add) was hereditary. These were the Gerginoi and the Promalangai. The former did the dirty work of circulating among the people, worming themselves into their confidence, getting invited to their tables, and then reporting to the Promalangai all they had heard. The last-named took such portions of the report as were worth communicating to the Anactes, with whom they sat at table, where such a dish of scandal was daily served as would puzzle the social spies of Paris to set before their lord.

But the profession was not accounted vile; and the professors themselves gloried in their vocation. They extolled the easiness of their life, compared, for instance, with that of the painter, or the labourer, or, in fact, with that of any other individual but those of their own guild. “Truly,” says one, in a fragment of Antiphanes, “since the most important business in life is to play, laugh, trifle, and drink, I should like to know where you would find a condition more agreeable than ours.”

Once, and once only, a faction of parasites contrived to get possession of a kingdom; and the dinners they gave, and the government they maintained, are matters to which description can hardly do justice. The faction in question was headed by, and almost solely consisted of, three men in Erythra, who stood, in regard to Cnopus, the King, as “adorers and flatterers” (πρόσκυνες καὶ κόλακες). They murdered their Sovereign, and, by a _coup-d’état_, possessed themselves of his authority. Their names were Ortyges, Irus, and Echarus; and they ruled with a triple rod of iron, held in very effeminate fingers. They silenced all opponents by slaying them; and, when no one dared utter a breath against them, they vaunted their universal popularity. They administered a ferociously absurd sort of justice at the gates of Erythra, where they sat decked out in purple and gold. They were sandaled like women, wore ornaments only suitable to females, and sat down to dinner in diadems that dazzled the company.

The guests were once free citizens, who were now compelled to bear the litters of their _parvenu_ masters, to cleanse the streets, and then, by way of contrast, to attend the banquet of the Triumvirs, with their wives and daughters. If they objected to drag these latter to the scene of splendid infamy, the objection was only made at the price of death. The unhappy women were nothing the safer from insult by the decease of their natural protectors; and the scenes at the palace were such as only the uncleanest of demons could rejoice in. If the authorities had reason to be grave, the whole city was compelled to affect sorrow; and duly-appointed officers went round, with hard-thonged whips, to scourge a sense of “decent horror” into the countenances of the bewildered inhabitants. Things at last reached such a pitch of extravagant atrocity, that the people took heart of grace, screwed up their courage by Chian wine, and swept their oppressors into Hades;--and, for years afterwards, commemorative banquets celebrated the restoration of the people from the oppression of the parasites.

I would recommend those who would see the parasite in action, to study the comedies of Plautus, wherein he figures as necessarily as the impertinent valet in a Spanish comedy. Plautus calls the parasites _poetæ_, as being given to lying; and it is singular that the Gauls called their poets “parasites,” as being fond of good living, and not being always in a condition to procure it. They had their “dull season:” it was when the wealthy were at their villas; at which time the parasites dined upon nothing, in town, with good “Duke Humphrey.” When the city was again resorted to by the rich, then the parasite might sometimes be seen purchasing, by order of his patron, the provisions for the evening feast. We find one of these gentry, in Plautus, boasting that he knows a story that will be worth thirty dinners to him. Before the era of printing, the parasite, with his jests and histories, was a sort of living Circulating Library. Saturion (another of Plautus’s pictures of the parasite) is at peace with himself, because, as he says, he can provide for his daughter by bequeathing to her his rich collection of jokes and dinner-stories. “They are all sparkling Attic,” he says; “and there is not a dull Sicilian anecdote among them.”

If the race were, in some sense of the word, “literary,” they were not at all in love with science, or the improvements wrought by its application. Witness the bitterness with which Plautus makes one denounce the sun-dial, then of recent introduction. Before that tell-tale appeared, dinners used to be served when people were hungry; but _now_ even hungry people wait for the appointed hour. In short, throughout life, they worked but for the sake of the banquet and wine-pot; and, even after death, they longed for libations, as appears in the epitaph on the parasite, Sergius of Pola, who is made to say, from the grave,--

“_Si urbani perhiberi vultis
Arenti meo cineri,
Cantharo piaculum vinarium festinate._”

“If you’ve any regard for this corpse here of mine,
Be so good as to damp it with hogsheads of wine.”

Finally, these diners-out by profession were essentially selfish; and the fire of their attachment blazed up, or died away, according to that in the kitchen of the Amphitryon by whom they were maintained.

A good specimen of the parasite of the last century may be found in the Captain Cormorant of Anstey’s “Bath Guide;” but the race is by no means extinct, though the individual be more rarely met with; and, be it said as their due, they execute their office with something more of decency than did their ancient predecessors. Modern flattery, like modern oils, is “double refined.” Let us see if we can trace the course of this refinement through the Table Traits of Utopia and the Golden Age.

THE TABLES OF UTOPIA AND THE GOLDEN AGE.

The good Archbishop Fénelon, in his “_Voyage dans l’Ile des Plaisirs_,” cites some charming examples of the pleasant way in which people lived in the Utopian Land of Cocagne, which he describes from imagination, and where the laws were characterized by more good sense than distinguishes the legislation of the Utopian authorities of More.

The “_Voyage_” of Fénelon was probably founded on a fragment of Teleclides, who has narrated, in rattling Greek metres, how the citizens of the world lived and banqueted in the golden age of its lusty youth. The poet puts the description into the mouth of Saturn, who says, “I will tell you what sort of life I vouchsafed to men in the early ages of creation. In the first place, peace reigned universally, and was as common as the water you wash your hands with. Fear and disease were entirely unknown; and the earth provided spontaneously for every human want. The rivers then poured cataracts of wine into the valleys; and cakes disputed with loaves to get into the mouth of man, as he walked abroad, supplicating to be eaten, and giving assurances of excellent flavour and quality. The tables were covered with fish which floated into the kitchens, and courteously put themselves to roast. By the sides of the couches rolled streams of sauces, bearing with them joints of ready-roasted meat; while rivulets full of _ragoûts_ were near the guests, who dipped in, and took therefrom, according to their fancy. Every one could eat of what he pleased; and all that he ate was sweet and succulent. There were countless pomegranate seeds for seasoning; little _pâtés_ and _grives_, done to a turn, insinuated themselves into the mouths of the banqueters; and tarts got smashed in trying to force their way into the throat. The children played with sow-paps and other delicacies as they would with toys; and the men were gigantic in height, and obese in figure.”

The above is a specimen of the classical idea of that delicious--

----“Land of Cocagne,
That Elysium of all that is friand and nice,
Where for hail they have bon-bons, and claret for rain,
And the skaters, in winter, show off on cream-ice.”

It is a theme with which modern poets have been as fond of dealing as Teleclides and others of the tuneful children of song, in the early period when young Time counted his birthdays by the sun. It has been well treated by Béranger, who thus describes, through my imperfect translation, his own impressions of

A JOURNEY TO THE LAND OF COCAGNE.

Ho, friends, every one!
Let us up, and be gone;--
To where care is not known,
Let us hasten away!
Yes; fired with champagne,
I reel o’er the plain,
And see dear Cocagne
In its sunny array.

O! land full of glee,--
Here long may I be,
And laugh merrilie
At Fate’s changeable way.
For here--what a treat!--
I may love, drink, and eat,
And--this makes it more sweet--
There is nothing to pay!

My appetite’s great,
And I see the huge gate
Of a tower of state
At my elbow, handy:
The tower is a pie;--
And tall guards, standing by,
Carry spears ten feet high,
All in sugar-candy.

Ah! banquet of fun,
It will please ev’ry one:
Look, there is not a gun
But of sugar is made!
See the paintings, how grand!
And the statues, they stand,
All wrought by the hand
Out of sweet marmalade.

Here the people repair
In gay crowds to the square,
Where the jests of a fair
With loud merriment shine;
Where the fountains so gay
Not with water do play,
But are sparkling away
With rich, rosy, old wine!

Here, the baking’s begun;
There, the baking is done;--
See the folks how they run,
With beef, mutton, and veal.
And the eaters think fit,
That the man who lacks wit,
Shall be made a “turnspit,”
And be bound to the wheel.

To the palace I haste,
With two Falstaffs I feast,
(Twenty stone weighs the least,)
And with them hob and nob.
And here, too, I’ve found,
Where such good things abound,
Shy Venus quite round,
And young Cupid a squab.

No sadness of brow,
No pedantic vain show,
No pompous state-bow,
Can be ever allow’d:--
But with feasting and song
We carry night on,
Drink deep and drink long,
And toast beauty aloud.

Now, good-natured lasses,
To the music of glasses,
As the sweet dessert passes,
Let’s laugh the time by.
Let fools sigh and snuffle,
And merriment muffle,
But you, dears, shall ruffle
Our pro--priety.

* * * * *

So, in this joyous way,
With fresh loves ev’ry day,
And with no debts to pay,
We scamper time o’er;
While between drinking deep,
And light visions in sleep,
Our young years will creep
To a hundred or more.

Yes, dear old Cocagne,
It’s with thee,--free from pain,--
But who checks my strain,
In an accent so shrill?
For, while singing, I thought,--
But, my friends, we are caught,--
’Tis the waiter who’s brought
His confounded long bill.

The fairy-land of Cocagne is said to derive its name from the Latin, _coquere_, “to cook.” Duchat says, that its flocks and herds present themselves perfectly cooked, and that the larks descend from the skies ready roasted. For it is there alone--

“Where so ready all nature its cookery yields,
_Maccaroni au parmesan_ grows in the fields;
Little birds fly about with the true pheasant taint,
And the geese are all born with a liver complaint.”

The Utopian banquets, which are described by More, present an imaginary view of society in another extreme. The learned Chancellor, amid much invented nonsense, pictures the manners of the citizens of Amaurat after the fashion of those of Crete and Lacedæmonia, especially with regard to their common halls for their repasts,--a fashion, by the way, which was partially followed in the club-rooms of Attica. Others of the author’s ideas have been realized since he wrote; and, in this respect, his Utopia may be said to have done good service; but there is a woful residue of nonsense, nevertheless, which is neither amusing nor useful.

Sir Thomas describes the citizens of Amaurat as possessing provision markets abundantly supplied with herbs, fruits, bread, fowl, and cattle. The latter were previously slain in extra-mural slaughter-houses, well-furnished with running water, for washing away the filth after killing. The butchers were slaves, (for serfdom “was a peculiar institution” of this happy republic,) the free citizens not being permitted to kill animals, lest such pursuit should harden their singularly tender characters. “In every street,” we are told by the author, “there are great halls that lie at an equal distance from one another, and are marked by peculiar names. The Syphogrants dwell in those, that are set over thirty families, fifteen lying on one side of it, and as many on the other. In these they do all meet and eat. The stewards of every one of them come to the market-place at an appointed hour, and, according to the number of those that belong to their hall, they carry home provisions. But they take more care of their sick than of any others.... After the steward of the hospitals has taken for them whatever the physician does prescribe for them, at the market-place, then the best things that remain are distributed equally among the halls, in proportion to their numbers; only, in the first place, they serve the Prince, the Chief Priest, the Tranibors, and Ambassadors, and strangers, if there are any, which, indeed, falls out but seldom, and for whom there are houses well-furnished, particularly appointed, when they come among them. At the hours of dinner and supper, the Syphogranty, being called together by sound of trumpet, meets and eats together, except only such as are in the hospitals, or lie sick at home. Yet, after the halls are served, no man is hindered to carry provisions home from the market-place, for they know none does that but for some good reason; for, though any that will may eat at home, yet none does it willingly, since it is both an indecent and foolish thing for any to give themselves the trouble to make ready an ill dinner at home, when there is a much more plentiful one made ready for him so near at hand. All the uneasy and sordid services about these halls are done by their slaves; but the dressing and cooking of their meat, and ordering of their tables, belong only to the women, which goes round all the women of every family by turns. They sit at three or more tables, according to their numbers; the men sit towards the wall, and the women sit on the other side, that if any of them fall suddenly ill, which is ordinary to those expecting to be mothers, she may, without disturbing the rest, rise and go to the nurses’ room, who are there with the suckling children, where there is always fire and clean water at hand, and some cradles in which they may lay the young children,” &c. But, to return from this public nursery to the public dining hall, “all the children under five years of age dined with the nurses: the rest of the younger sort of both sexes, till they are fit for marriage, do either serve those that sit at table; or, if they are not strong enough for that, they stand by them in great silence, and eat that which is given them by those that sit at table, nor have they any other formality of dining.” The whole formality was bad enough, and that last-mentioned was a Doric custom prevailing in Crete. As to the personal arrangements at these Utopian tables, the infelicitous guests stood much upon their order of precedence: the syphogrant and his wife, the _gnädige Frau Syphograntinn_, presided at the centre of the cross-table, at the upper end of the hall. After the Magistrates and their mates, came the Priests and their ladies,--for More placed the Church below the State, and hinted that celibacy in the Clergy was not to be commended. Below these, groups of the young and gay were placed, between flanking companies of the aged and grave, to spoil their mirth, and improve their manners; and this Spartan custom was occasionally imitated at Athenian feasts, albeit the Athenians looked with something like contempt upon the institutions of old Laconia. The best dishes were placed before the oldest men, and the latter gave of the dainty bits to the young, if these merited such favour by their behaviour; if not, they took their chance of what the older gourmands might leave, or were obliged to be content with the plainer fare allotted to them.

During this delectable process, the young could not have offended by their gaiety, nor the old have improved them by conversation, seeing that a reader was appointed, to assist digestion by reading aloud an Essay on Morality. The Romans had the same office performed at some of their meals by learned slaves. More expressly says that the Utopian lecture was so short, that it was neither tedious nor uneasy to those that heard it; and that after it, the elders not only wagged their beards by “pleasant enlargements,” but encouraged the young to follow them in the same track. This must have been after the supper, when it was the law of Utopia, not to “run a mile,” but to “rest awhile.” The dinners were dispatched quickly, because work awaited the diners, while the supper-eaters had nothing to do afterwards but sleep. This must have been all terribly dreary, if it had ever been realized. The only pleasant feature in More’s Utopian banquets is, that wherein he says that there was always music at supper, and fruit served up after meat, (which, by the way, was a cruel trial for the digestive powers,) and that as the repast proceeded, “some burn perfumes, and sprinkle about sweet ointments, and sweet waters; and they are wanting in nothing that may cheer up their spirits; for they give themselves a large allowance in that way, and indulge themselves in all such pleasures as are attended with no inconvenience. Thus,” he adds, “do they that are in towns eat together; but in the country, where they live at a greater distance, every one eats at home, and no family wants any necessary sort of provision; for it is from them that provisions are sent in to them that live in the towns.”

I have noticed above the slave-readers at Roman dinners. These were seldom born slaves; indeed, of born slaves, among the Greeks or Romans, the numbers were fewer than might be reasonably imagined. Those who became authors or teachers, were the distinguished and illustrious of their class; and it was they who relieved the tedium of a Roman repast by reading livelier sallies than Essays on Morality, like the Utopians. If their rank in humanity was low, their ability secured for them many privileges which even freedmen did not enjoy. Of this rank of reading slaves was Andronicus, the inventor of dramatic poetry. Plautus, the witty, but coarse, play-writer, miller, and Jack of all trades, was a slave. Terence was also a dramatist, and not only a slave, but a Negro slave. Æsop the fabulist, Phædrus, his imitator, and the moral philosopher Epictetus, were slaves. The latter, who was as low in condition among bondsmen as he was exalted in his character of teacher of mankind, was the slave of one who had been a slave,--a depth of degradation than which there can be none deeper. But his mission was a great one; for he appears to me to have been an instrument employed to prepare men’s minds for a change from the vices of Paganism to the virtues of Christianity. His writings are as stepping-stones across the dark and rapid stream dividing error from truth. They are admirably calculated to enable men to go forward; not only to induce them to make the first step out of infidelity; but, having made it, rather to make a second in advance towards Christ, than go backward again in the direction of the dazzling unintelligibilities of the Capitoline Jove.

From slavery, if we turn our eyes towards mere poverty, the next condition to it, we shall see that the poor men characteristically paid their addresses to poetry;--and they were the “lions” at the dinners and assemblies of Rome. Such was Horace, who, if he were not in want, was of inferior descent, his father having been a slave, and subsequently, on being enfranchised, a tax-gatherer. Virgil was of equally mean descent on the paternal side; but he derived some portion of nobility from his mother. Juvenal, too, was not only poor and a poet,--a condition that could draw upon it only a serf’s contempt,--but he was, moreover, an exceedingly angry poet. In equal proportion as he was poor, angry, and satirical in poetry, was Lucian poor, angry, and satirical in prose.

If the dining-out poets were poor, it was much the same with the philosophers. The proudest walks of philosophy were trodden by Demosthenes, the blacksmith. Socrates was the ill-featured, but original-minded, son of a mason and midwife. Epicurus was only rich in a valueless boast of being descended from Ajax; and Isocrates, whose father manufactured the musical ancestry from which are descended the modern families of piano-forte and fiddle, was also one of the immortal race of intellectual giants.... Of other writers we may remark, that Quintus Curtius, whose “Alexander the Great” is the first historical romance that ever was written, and contains the best description of a Babylonian banquet that ever was painted in words, was of an ignoble family. Celsus was, at least, not a Roman citizen, though resident at Rome; and Plutarch was just “respectable,” and nothing more;--though to be worthy of respect, as the term implies, is as high rank as a man need sigh for.

But though art and science, though the Nine Sisters who made Parnassus vocal, were thus worshipped by the slave and his cousin the beggar, wealth was by no means a synonymous term for either sloth or incapacity. The opulent Lucretius, who believed nothing; the two Plinies, the soul of one of whom, “with a difference,” entered into Horace Walpole, and who wrote about his slave Zozimus, as Walpole does of his favourite servants; the tender and chivalrous Tibullus,--a Latin Sir Philip Sidney; the profligate Sophocles; Æschylus, the bottle-drainer; and the lofty Euripides: all these mounted Pegasus with golden spurs, and gave glorious dinners to guests with whom they could contend in the battle of brains. Some, like Martial, got their mouths filled with the sugar-candy of imperial recompence. Cæsar, the Commentator, was the descendant of the Sabine Kings, and the founder of an empire. In Plato we see the double condition of aristocrat and slave. From the latter condition he was rescued by his noble friends at the cost of three thousand _drachmas_; more fortunate in this than Diogenes, who, being friendless, was left to hug his irons, and teach his master’s sons to love virtue and liberty.

And the mention of the name of Plato reminds me of a more modern philosopher, who did not lack reverence for him,--I mean Bacon,--and Bacon naturally brings me from my digression to the subject of “Table Traits” in imaginary Utopias. This philosopher, in his “New Atlantis,” is even more infelicitous than More, both in the framing of his fiction, and the extracting from it of a moral. The table laws spoken of in Solomon’s house, have more of a jolly aspect than those drawn by Sir Thomas More. For instance, “I will not hold you long with recounting of our brewhouses, bakehouses, and kitchens, where are made divers drinks, breads, and meats, rare and of special effects. Wines we have of grapes, and drinks of other juice, of fruits, of grains, and of roots; and of mixtures with honey, sugar, manna, and fruits dried and decocted; also of the tears and woundings of trees, and of the pulp of canes: and these drinks are of several ages, some to the age at least of forty years. We have drinks also brewed of several herbs or roots, and spices, yea, with several fleshes and wine-meats, whereof some of the drinks are such as they are in effect meat and drink both. So that divers, especially in age, do desire to live with them, with little or no meat or bread; and, above all, we strive to have drinks of extreme thin parts, to insinuate into the body, and yet without all biting sharpness, or fretting; insomuch as some of them put upon the back of your hand will, with a little stay, pass through to the palm, and yet taste mild to the mouth. We have also waters which we ripen in that fashion as they become nourishing, so that they are, indeed, excellent drink, and many will use no other. Breads we have of several grains, roots, and kernels, yea, and some of flesh and fish dried, with divers kinds of leavenings and seasonings, so that some do extremely move appetites; some do nourish so as divers do live of them without any other meat, who live very long. So, for meats, we have some of them so beaten and made tender and mortified, yet without all corrupting, as a weak heat of the stomach will turn them into good chylus, as well as a strong heat would meat otherwise prepared. We have some meats, also, and breads and drinks which, taken by some, enable them to fast long after; and some other that will make the very flesh of men’s bodies sensibly more hard and tough, and their strength far greater than otherwise it would be.”

In this way could philosophy disport itself, and not with much attendant profit, beyond amusement. Before I conclude this section, I may notice a more graceful fiction touching banquets, than any thing to be met with among the philosophers. The inhabitants of the coast of Malabar believe that the double cocoas of the Moluccas, annually thrown on their shore by the waves, and joyfully welcomed by the expecting inhabitants, are the produce of a palm-tree growing in the fathomless recesses of the ocean; and that they arise from among coral-groves endowed with supernatural qualities and attributes. For a detailed account of this supposed phænomenon, and a very pretty illustration of the theory of seeds transported by winds and currents, I refer all curious inquirers to the “Annals of _My_ Village,” by a Lady. In the mean time, I venture to put into verse, the supposed scene which occurs at the annual cocoa-banquet in Malabar:--

’Neath the waves of Mincoy grows a magical tree,
In the sunless retreat of a dark coral-grove,
Where slumber young sprites,--the gay elves of a sea
Flinging back the bright blue of its heaven above.
There they sip the sweet fruit of that palm-tree, and leave
Of its best and its ripest for maidens who stray,
And laugh away time with their lovers at eve,
And sing to those elves of the deep by the way.

Ο! to see them at sunset, when down by the shore
Of their own Malabar in gay clusters they stand,
Like spirits of light shedding softness all o’er
The broad sea, and its tribute of fruit, from the land!
There troops of young girls, in their light-hearted mirth,
Are laughing at youths who, reclined on the earth,
Drink the white wine of Kishna;--while some are at play,
Flinging glances and handsfull of roses, in showers,
That their lovers can’t tell, as they bend ’neath the fray,
Which are falling the fastest,--the glances, or flowers.

And then on the sands where these young people meet,
What hushing of songs and suppressing of glee,
As the waves bring in gently, and waft to their feet,
The ripe fruit of the palm that lives under the sea!
There, while, half in earnest, fair Malabar’s daughters,
Half play, dip their white, sandal’d feet in the waters,
To catch the ripe cocoas, and run back again,
As the wave washes over their small anklet bells,
There are some, youths and maidens, who, link’d in a chain,
Like pearls strung, and mix’d, here and there, with sea-shells,
Dash into the flood for the fruit of the palm,
Which they strive for, and, winning, bring joyously out;
Then lean on their lovers, all panting and warm
With laughter and splashing the waters about.

O, who would not like to pass summer away
Amid scenes such as this? O, who would not love
With Malabar’s daughters, at twilight, to play,
And taste the ripe fruit of that dark coral-grove?

The Malabar palm was not the only tree of its kind that used to afford holidays and banquetings to the people of the East, that is, according to the poets. The Talipot palm of Ceylon, or, as the natives somewhat unmusically call it, “_lanka dwipa_,” _was_, in the olden time of pleasant fiction, one of this gifted species. But the banquet it afforded was not of annual occurrence; for the tree never flowers till it is fifty years old, and dies immediately after producing its fruit. The Kings of Candy used to bestow the rich gift of some of its blossoms on the favoured fair one whose head rested on the bosom of the Sovereign at the feast, and who lifted the bowl to his painted lips. It was, however highly esteemed, not such a present as Demetrius Poliorcetes made to Lamia, after that accomplished courtezan had erected at Sicyon a portico so superb, that Polemo wrote a book to describe it; and poem and portico became the table-talk of all Greece. The gift of Demetrius was a magnificent purse, containing two hundred and fifty talents, which, by the way, he had compelled the reluctant Athenians to contribute; and this he sent to Lamia, saying, that it was merely “for soap.” The extravagant lady spent it all in one single, but consuming, feast! How pleasantly, by contrast, shines that other courtezan, Leæna, whose wit made guests forget that the feast was frugal; and to whom the Athenians erected a bronze lioness, without a tongue, in honour of the lady who heroically had bitten out her own, that torture might not make her betray the accomplices of her protector Harmodius, in the murder of her tyrant Hipparchus!----

We have not found much of the refinement we looked for in these remote periods and banquets. Let us see what may be discovered in the Table Traits of England in Early Times.

TABLE TRAITS OF ENGLAND IN EARLY TIMES.

When Diodorus Siculus wrote an account of the aboriginal inhabitants of Britain, some fifty years before the Christian era, he described the island as being thickly inhabited, ruled by many Kings and Princes, and all living peaceably together,--though with war-chariots and strong arms, to settle quarrels when they occurred. But if our ancestors lived peaceably among themselves, they can hardly be said to have lived comfortably. Their habitations were of reed, or of wood; and they gathered in the harvest by cutting off the ears of corn. These ears they garnered in subterranean repositories, wherefrom they daily culled the ripest grain; and, rudely dressing the same, had thence their sustenance. Diodorus says that our primitive sires were far removed from the cunning and wickedness of the rest of the world; and other writers contrast them favourably with the Irish, who are said to have fed on human flesh, to have had enormous appetites for such food, and to have been given to the nasty habit of devouring their deceased fathers; but it is not uncommon for others, as well as for Irish sons, to devour, at least, their parents’ substance, even at the present day. The food of an Irish child was certainly illustrative of character,--we should rather say that the solemnity of offering the first food to a child was characteristic. Caius Julius Solinus, a writer of the first century, says, that “when a Hibernian mother gives birth to a male child, she puts its first food on the point of her husband’s sword, and lightly inserts this foretaste of meat into the mouth of the infant, on its very tip; and, by family vows, desires that it may never die but under arms.” In other words, the relations wished that the little stranger might never be in want of a row, when disposed to distinguish the family name!

In the days of Julius Cæsar, our stalwart sires supported their thews and sinews on milk and flesh,--the diet of a pugilist. We see how much progress was made by the time of Constantine,--the Constantine that was crowned in Britain,--“when,” says a contemporary writer, “the harvests sufficed alike for the gifts of Ceres and Bacchus, and the pastures were covered with innumerable multitudes of tame flocks, distended with milk, or laden with fleeces.”

I very much fear, however, notwithstanding the rather poetical accounts of certain early writers, that our aboriginal ancestry were very little superior to the New Zealanders. They were, perhaps, more uncivilized, and quite as ignorant; and their abstinence from the flesh of hares and poultry, and, in the northern parts of the island, from fish, bespeaks a race who lacked, at once, industry and knowledge. Indeed, it is by no means certain, that we do not wrong the New Zealanders by suggesting their possible inferiority to the Britons, seeing that the latter are very strongly suspected of being guilty of the most revolting cannibalism.

They were clever enough to brew mead and ale; but wine and civilization were brought to them by their enemies, the Romans,--invaders whom, for some reasons, they might have welcomed with a sentiment akin to the line in Béranger:--

“_Vivent nos amis! nos amis, les ennemis!_”

They ate but twice a day. The last meal was the more important one. Their seats were skins, or bundles of hay, flung on the ground. The table was a low stool, around which British Chiefs sat, and, even in the locality occupied by modern Belgravia, tore their food with teeth and nails, or hacked at it with a wretched knife, as bad as any thing of the sort now in common use in Gaul. In short, they committed a thousand solecisms, the very idea of which is sufficient to make the Sybarites of Belgravia very much ashamed of their descent from the savages of Britain.

It was characteristic of the sort of civilization which the Anglo-Saxons brought with them to England, that they introduced the rather vulgar custom of taking four meals a day. The custom was, however, one solemnly observed by the high-feeding nobility of the Saxons. They ate good solid joints of flesh-meat, boiled, baked, or broiled. It would seem, that, in those days, cooks were not of such an illustrious guild as that which they subsequently formed. A cook among the Anglo-Saxons was little more accounted of than the calf he cut up into collops. The cook, in fact, was a slave; and was as unceremoniously bequeathed by his owner, in the latter’s last will and testament, as though the culinary artist had been a mere kitchen utensil. At Saxon tables, both sexes sat together,--a custom refined in itself, refining in its effects, and of such importance, that half-a-dozen nations claim the honour of being the inventors of that excellent custom. In Europe, Turkey alone has obstinately refused to follow this civilizing example; and Turkey is falling to pieces. It may, therefore, be logically proved, that where table rights are not conceded to the ladies, nations slowly perish; and--“serve them right.”

It is a mark of Anglo-Saxon delicacy, that table-cloths were features at Anglo-Saxon feasts; but, as the long ends were used in place of napkins, the delicacy would be of a somewhat dirty hue, if the cloth were made to serve at a second feast. There was a rude sort of display upon the board; but the order of service was of a quality that would strike the “Jeameses” of the age of Victoria with inexpressible disgust. The meat was never “dished,” and “covers” were as yet unknown. The attendants brought the viands into the dining hall on the spits, knelt to each guest, presented the spit to his consideration; and, the guest having helped himself, the attendant went through the same ceremony with the next guest. Hard drinking followed upon these same ceremonies; and even the monasteries were not exempt from the sins of gluttony and drunkenness. Notwithstanding these bad habits, the Anglo-Saxons were a cleanly people. The warm bath was in general use. Water, for hands and feet, was brought to every stranger on entering a house wherein he was about to tarry and feed; and, it is said that one of the severest penances of the Church was the temporary denial of the bath, and of cutting the hair and nails.

With the Normans came greater grandeur and increased discomfort. They neither knew nor tolerated the use of table-cloths or plain steel forks; but their bill of fare showed more variety and costliness than the Saxons cared for. Their cookery was such an improvement on that of their predecessors in the island, that Norman French, and Norman dishes, flung the Saxon tongue and table into the annihilating position of “vulgarity.” The art was so much esteemed, that Monarchs even granted estates, on condition that the holder thereof should, through his cook, prepare a certain dish at stated periods, and set it before the King. It was under the Normans that the boar’s head had regal honours paid it; and its progress from the kitchen to the banquet was under escort of a guard, and behind the deafening salutes of puffy-cheeked trumpeters. The crane was then what the goose is now,--highly esteemed; yet labouring under the shadow of a suspicion of being “common.” The peacock, on the other hand, was only seen, tail and all, at the tables of the wealthy. Their beverage was of a very bilious character,--spicy and cordialed; namely, hippocras, piment, morat, and mead. The drink of the humbler classes partook of a more choleraic quality. It consisted of cider, perry, and ale. The Norman maxim for good living and plenty of it, was to “rise at five, dine at nine, sup at five, and bed at nine, if you’d live to a hundred all but one.” _Dinner_ at nine is, however, a contradiction of terms; for _dinner_, as I have said, is the abbreviation of _dixième heure_, or “ten o’clock,” the time at which all people sat down to a solid repast in the days of the first Williams.

In the two following centuries, cooks and Kings launched into far greater magnificence than had ever, hitherto, been seen in England. Richard II. entertained ten thousand guests daily at his numerous tables; and the exceedingly fast Earl of Leicester, grandson of the equally slow Henry III., is said to have spent twenty-two thousand pounds of silver in one year, in eating, alone. His thirsty household retainers drank no less than three hundred and seventy-one pipes of wine, in the same space of time. At great banquets, the dishes were reckoned by thousands, and Kings in vain dictated decrees denouncing such dinners; for cooks and _convives_ considered them with contempt. As a show of moderation, the old four meals a day were now reduced to two; but these two were connected by such a savoury chain of intermeats and refections, that the board was spread all day long, and guests were never weary:--

“Their life like the life of the Germans would be,
_Du lit à la table; de la table au lit_.”

To have things “brennying like wildfire,” was the characteristic of the cookery of the period. Confectionery of the richest sorts were the lighter materials of meals, which were abundantly irrigated by hippocras, piment, or _claret_, or the simpler and purer wines of France, Spain, Syria, and Greece. Thus might a host say:--

“Ye shall have rumney and malespine,
Both ypocrasse and vernage wine;
Mountrasse and wyne of Greke,
Both algrade and despice eke,
Antioche and bastarde,
Pyment also and garnarde,
Wyne of Greke and muscadell,
Both clary, pyment, and Rochelle.”

Ricobaldi of Ferrara, writing, about the year 1300, of the Italian social condition in the age of Frederick II., illustrates the former rudeness of the Italian manners, by showing that in those days “a man and his wife ate off the same plate. There were no wooden-handled knives, nor more than one or two drinking-cups in a house. Candles of wax or tallow were unknown; a servant held a torch during supper. The clothes of men were of leather unlined; scarcely any gold or silver was seen on their dress. The common people ate flesh but three times a week, and kept their cold meat for supper. Many did not drink wine in summer. A small stock of corn seemed riches. The portions of women were small; their dress, even after marriage, was simple. The pride of men was to be well provided with arms and horses; that of the nobility to have lofty towers, of which all the cities in Italy were full. But now, frugality has been changed for sumptuousness; every thing exquisite is sought after in dress,--gold, silver, pearls, silks, and rich furs.”

The Household-Book of the Earl of Northumberland admirably illustrates the interior and table life of the greater nobles of the period of Henry VII. In this well-known and well-kept record, the family is described as consisting of one hundred and sixty-six persons, masters and servants; and hospitable reckoning is allowed for more than half a hundred strangers who are expected daily to partake of the Earl’s good cheer. The cost for each individual, for board and fuel, is settled at twopence halfpenny daily, about one and sixpence of our present money, if we take into account the relative value of money, and the relative prices of provisions. The Earl allots for his annual expenditure £1178. 17_s._ 8_d._ More than two-thirds of this is consumed in meat, drink, and firing; namely, £797. 11_s._ 2_d._ The book carefully states the number of pieces which the carver is to cut out of each quarter of beef, mutton, veal, pork, nay, even stockfish and salmon; and supervising clerks were appointed to see that this was carried into effect, and to make due entry of the same in their registers. An absent servant’s share is to be accounted for, and not to be divided among the rest. The absentee, if he be on “my Lord’s” business, received 8_d._ per day, board wages, in winter, and 5_d._ in summer; with 2_d._ additional daily for the keep of a horse. A little more than a quarter of wheat, estimated at 5_s._ 8_d._ per quarter, is allowed for every month throughout the year; with this, 250 quarters of malt, at 4_s._, (two hogsheads to the quarter,) and producing about a bottle and a third of intermediate beer to each person, does not say much for the liberality of the Lord, though it may for the temperance of his retainers. One hundred and nine fat beeves are to be bought at All-Hallow’s Tide, at 13_s._ 4_d._ each; a couple of dozen of lean kine, at 8_s._, are to be bought at St. Helen’s, to be fattened for service between Midsummer and Michaelmas. All the rest of the year, nine weary months, the family was on salted provisions, to aid the digestion of which, the Earl, so chary of his liquor, allows the profuse aid of one hundred and sixty-six gallons of mustard. 647 sheep at 1_s._ 8_d._, to be eaten salted between Lammas and Michaelmas; 25 hogs at 2_s._, 28 calves at 1_s._ 8_d._, 40 lambs at 10_d._ or 1_s._,--are other articles which seem to have been reserved rather for the upper table than for the servants, whose chief fare was salted beef, without vegetables, but with mustard _à discretion_! There was great scarcity of linen, and the little there was, except that for the chapel, not often washed. No mention is made of sheets; and though “my Lord’s” table had eight “table-cloths” for the year, that of the Knights had but one, and probably went uncovered while the cloth was “at the wash.” If the ale was limited, the wine appears to have been more liberally dispensed; and ten tuns and two hogsheads of Gascony wine, at £4. 13_s._ 4_d._ per tun, show the bent of the Earl’s taste. Ninety-one dozens of candles for the year, and no fires after Lady-Day, except half-fires in the great room and the nursery; twenty-four fires, with a peck of coals daily for each, (for the offices,) and eighty chaldrons of coals, at 4_s._ 10_d._, with sixty-four loads of wood, at 1_s._ a load,--are the provisions made for lighting and firing. It must have been cold work to live in the noble Earl’s house in Yorkshire, from Lady-Day till the warm summer came; which advent is sometimes put off till next year. The family rose at six, or before; for Mass was especially ordered at that hour, in order to force the household to rise early. The dinner hour was ten A.M.; four P.M. was the hour for supper; and at nine the bell rang for bed. I have omitted the breakfast, which took place at seven, after Mass; when my Lord and Lady sat down to a repast of two pieces of salt fish, and half-a-dozen red herrings, with four fresh ones, or a dish of sprats, and a quart of beer, and the same measure of wine. This was on meagre days. At other seasons, half a chine of mutton, or of boiled beef, graced the board of the delicate Earl and Countess, who sometimes forgot that they had to dine at ten. Capons, at 2_d._ each, were only on the Lord’s table, and plovers, at a penny, (at Christmas,) were deemed too good for any digestion that was not carried on in a “noble” stomach. Game generally is specified, but without intimation as to limit of the board. No doubt the fragments were not rejected at the servants’ table; but much certainly went in doles at the gate. My Lord maintained between twenty and thirty horses for his own use. His mounted servants found their own; but their keep was at the noble master’s cost. Of mounted servants, not less than three dozen attended their Lord on a journey; and when this journey was for change of residence from one mansion to another, the illustrious Percy carried with him bed and bedding, household furniture, pots, pans, and kitchen utensils generally. The baggage waggon bore these _impedimenta_; and before and behind them went chiefs and serving men, including in the array eleven Priests,--two hundred and twenty-three persons in all,--and only two cooks to look after their material happiness! No notice is taken of plate; but the “hiring of pewter vessels” is mentioned; and with these rough elements did the Earl construct his imperfect social system, so far taking care for his soul as well as his body, inasmuch as that he contributed a groat a year to the shrine of our Lady of Walsingham, and the same magnificent sum to the holy blood at Hales, on the express condition of the interest of the Virgin for the promotion of the future welfare of the Earl in heaven. Such is an outline of a nobleman’s household in the good old days of Henry VII.

In the reign of the same King, fish was a scarce article, and for a singular reason; namely, people destroyed them at an unlawful season, for the purpose of feeding their pigs or manuring the ground. The favourite wine at table was Malmsey: it came from Candy; and there was a legal restriction against its costing more than four pounds per butt. In this reign our cooks wrought at fires made with wood imported from Gascony and Languedoc, whence also much wine was brought, but, by law, only in English bottoms. The richest man of this reign was Sir William Stanley, into whose hands fell nearly all the spoil of Bosworth Field; and therewith he maintained a far more princely house and table than his master.

In Pegge’s “_Cury_” there is an account of the rolls of provisions, with their prices, in the time of Henry VIII.; and we find that, at the dinner given at the marriage of Gervase Clifton and Mary Nevile, the price of three hogsheads of wine (one white, one red, one claret) was set down at £5. 5_s._