Books
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Books
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"He had never heard of such books before I mentioned them, but he is determined to get them now as soon as ever he can." |
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| On Eating | |||
| The Miseries of Human Life | |||
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On Eating A curious work is now publishing annually in Paris, entitled "Almanach des Gourmands," in 12mo., of about 300 pages each volume. It began in 1803, and the fourth volume appeared last January. The first and second volumes have gone through two or three editions. Those volumes are the most entertaining; the two others, especially the last, consist of little more than indications of the principal taverns, coffee houses, cooks, confectioners, fruiterers, vintners, grocers, butchers, fishmongers, and other venders of victuals and liquors, in Paris. The mottoes to the title-pages are as follows: --- 1803. --- Tanquam leo rugiens, circuit quaerens devoret. S. Pet. Ep. i. cap. v. ver. 8 As a roaring lion walketh about, seeking whom he may devour. 1804. --- Non in solo pane vivit homo. S. Mat. cap. iv. v.4. Man shall not live by bread alone. 1805. --- Jejunus raro stomachus vulgaria temnit. Hor. Sat. ii. lib. 2. A hungry stomach seldom loathes common victuals. 1806. --- Nil actum reputans si quid superesset agendum. Lucan. Thinking nothing is done, if any thing remains to be done. The title at large is, "The Gormands Almanack; or, Nutritive Calendar: being a guide to the means of procuring the best provisions, and having excellent cheer." Among the gormandizing maxims, reflections, anecdotes, and follies, are the following: The method of serving dish by dish is the garlick of the art of good eating. It enables us to eat hot, long, and much. Soup must be eaten boiling hot, and coffee drank burning. Happy those who have their palates delicate and their throats paved. Cheese is the biscuit of drunkards. Hot milk is the true and excellent dissolvent of oysters. Mercier says, he, in 1786 saw Crebillon (the son) eat a hundred dozen of oysters without bursting; he drank nothing but hot milk during his meal. New wine, a common friendly dinner, and music by amateurs are three things to be dreaded. Five hours at table are a reasonable latitude for a numerous company at a sumptuous dinner. A gormand is in his prime from forty to sixty years of age. Some persons are afraid to sit at a table with twelve others. We are of opinion that the number thirteen ought to create no other apprehension that that of there being a sufficient provision made for twelve only. Others are alarmed at the spilling of salt; the essential point is, that it be not spilt in a good dish. A few drops of Ether on a lump of sugar, are sufficient to precipitate digestion, and to dispose a person to begin a good dinner over again. Let a sugar-plumb dissolve in half a glass of water; if the water whitens, it is to be ascribed to flour or starch; if it remains limpid, the sugar is unmixed. The Abbe Roubaud, in his Synonyms, gives the following definitions, which appear in the Almanack: --- The Gormand (Gourmand) loves eating, and good cheer; he must eat, but not without choice. The Glutton (Glouton) runs to his victuals and makes a disagreeable noise whilst eating, which he does with such voracity, that one morsel does not wait for the other; every thing that is set before him soon disappears; all is swallowed. The Goulu eats with so much avidity, that he barely gives his meat a bite before he swallows it; he does not chew, but only bolts, or gulps down. The Goinfre has such a greedy or rather brutal appetite, that he eats with his mouth as full as it can hold; he guttles, gorges himself with every thing indiscriminately, and devours for the sake of devouring. The Bufreur is another term for one of this species. These terms applied to the fair sex, are La Gourmande, la Gloutonne, la Goulae, la Goinfre, and la Bafreuse. Some of our turtle-eating aldermen may perhaps find two English words for the three last French ones. The French Encyclopedia defines gormandizing (la Gourmandise), a refined love of good cheer. Lickerishes (la Friandise), is particularly understood to mean, a taste for every thing in which sugar forms an essential part. There is a very large caldron in a house in Paris, which is called la Marmite Perpetuelle, from its having been on the fire eighty-seven years, during which period it must have boiled at least four hundred thousand capons; and it boils nothing else. It is situated near the principal market for fowls, which have thus only a step to take from the market into the caldron. At any hour of the day or night, on applying at that succulent house, a boiled capon issues from that nutritious gulph, where they are incessantly regenerated in a wonderful manner. A little girl, of eight or nine years of age, one day heard her father discoursing with his friends on the different kinds of enjoyments attendant on gormandizing and lickerishes. --- For my part, said the child, I prefer being lickerish, because, after being so, I am still hungry. |
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THE MISERIES
OF HUMAN LIFE.
(DEDICATION):
THE plan of this work is original, and as such, of itself, would be entitled to merit; it has, however, a still further claim, it is pleasingly original, and has a meaning as well as spirit. It is a raillery of those minor miseries, those petty disappointments, those minute obstructions of comfort which constitute the character of life, and occasion many to imagine themselves as superlatively miserable as those who are suffering under objects of more dignity and magnitude. The pinch of a shoe, the concussion of a stone and a corn, the start of an over-drawn stocking, the fall of a dish or a tumbler, a spoilt dinner, and such like, are perhaps the greater part of the calamities of the larger portion of mankind; and upon which foundation they gravely assert the "Miseries of Human Life," and cross themselves with the holy exclamation, that "Man is born to trouble, and the sparks fly upwards." In high, low, and middle life, how many of those beings do we see who are too gross for any other feelings than such as result from these petty miseries. In one part of their lives or other they may doubtless meet with heavier calamities; the loss of children or friends; but, with a happy insensibility, whatever may be their sensations for a moment, the duration is so short that they can scarcely be added to the catalogue of their misfortunes. Their misery is of a different kind; the misery of fretfulness, and a mind ingenious in self-tormenting. This folly is a worthy object of ridicule, and the author of the above work has performed it well; he has introduced two characters in the dramatic form, as exposing this folly in their own persons; but he has sometimes varied the sameness of his scene by the introduction of a lady, the wife of Mr. Testy, the acknowledged hero of the piece. This good lady is fretful, with a vengeance. The dialogue, together with the form, has much of the spirit of comedy, though occasionally disfigured by the formality of a college, and the ungraceful pedantry of a learned man labouring at a joke. Mr. Testy is a man of hardy and sententious make; his stream of life is every moment worked into agitation, but presently clears itself by its commotion. His friend, Mr. Sensitive, on the other hand, is described as a languid, yet fretting current, which by a peculiar and happy attraction, collects to itself all the colluvies through which it moves, which it has not afterwards the strength to precipitate or disperse. In plainer words, Testy is the angry, passionate man, who flies out upon all occasions, and bounces with a load of misery at his back, the accumulation of his own folly. He is always in a state of ebullation; the cauldron of his calamities is always boiling over; the daily and most petty occurrences of life supply him with perpetual fuel, and he flames away, with a vigour and permanency of heat which is never extinguished but when burnt out. On the contrary, Mr. Sensitive is a man of nerve, a man formed for all the finer disquietudes, of quivering susceptibility and feverish fastidiousness, which are so well calculated to make any possible state of life so perfectly miserable. He is well said to be an ambidexter in misery, and to possess a most laudable ingenuity in the art of self-martyrdom. These characters are not kept distinct beyond the introductory dialogue; in the progress of the work, Sensitive and Testy are the same. There is another character who is perhaps the most pleasing of the assemblage, namely, Mr. Testy, junior. This gentleman literally understands the old adage, "Life's a jest, and all things shew it." It is his employment to act the part of a chorus to the scenes of Testy senior and Sensitive, and to furnish a kind of ludicrous moral to their dialogue. He converts everything into a pun, and is perpetually lying in wait to intercept, in the current of conversation, something to supply food to his favorite propensity. His puns are sometimes very ingenious, though, for the most part, they smack of the college, and are too pedantic and abstruse for the comprehension of general readers. Sometimes the train is too ostensibly laid for them, and a whole page of dialogue is introduced for the purpose of bringing in a long meditated joke. This is too artificial, and easily seen through. Mrs. Testy is occasionally brought forward for the purpose of introducing a few supplementary groans, which are borrowed from those miseries which are peculiar to ladies. She must certainly be allowed to acquit herself well to her sex; and to do full justice to those scenes of sorrow and vexation which disturb the serenity of female life. The groans which she reports from dressing room and ball-room, though with all the aggravation of her natural temper, and for the purpose of supporting her character, are truly comical; and such as are daily endured, though in a more serene and philosophical manner, by most of our female readers, if we may be allowed to make this conjecture. Such are the Dramatis Personae who open this Pandora box of misfortune. They are assembled together at the house of Mr. Testy senior, which is the settled rendezvous of these malcontents. It is here they strive, in sullen emulation to shade the canvas with the blackest of tints; and, in this strife of misery, this contest of calamity, each draws from his peculiar fund, his own personal bank, some contribution to the capital stock of calamity. This dolorous disposition, this habit of submitting to the tyranny of small trouble, and the incursions of petty disquietudes, of suffering the general system of life to be vexed, fretted, and rubbed in parts, by those minor anxieties, which take of its polish, obstruct its tranquil progress, and sometimes, perhaps, throw it off its balance; but, in truth, menace nothing more dangerous than an occasional discomposure, which fancy alone swells to magnitude, and colours with aggravation; this disposition, we believe, is almost peculiar to this country, which, in the words of a witty and sarcastic Frenchman, has been denominated the land of fogs and spleen. That it does not arise from the want of philosophy, or true dignity of mind, is sufficiently evident; its real source is in the possession of too much of the above qualities. Our habit, as a people, of the constant thought, and balancing of every thing, of feeding our patience and philosophy with every sort of material, whether favourable or not to our dispositions, --- this habit it is which gives the dignity of consideration, the importance of reflection, to those minor disquietudes, which the mercurial temperament of the Frenchman never suffers to take hold of him, which the sullenness of the Dutchman does not feel, and the German shuffles off in habitual indifference. This, in truth, is one of our most prominent national foibles; and, as its origin is air, so its food is air. Its cameleon-like quality is suited to every light, and will harmonize with every object. We draw in this spleen almost with our mother's milk, and perhaps its cure, if possible, would present no very solid advantages. It might impair that national propensity to meditation, the effects of which have been our advancement in the scale of national society, and our improvement in all the comforts and benefits of civil life. If the philosopher demands pardon for the foibles of a good man, the physiognomist of manners may safely exact it for those traits (frailties if you please to call them) of national character; which as the crust that envelopes the diamond, cannot be removed without inquiry to the stone. The author of this work, however, is not without praise in his attempt, and, in having elicited wit and humour from subjects which ,as the mere grievances of fancy, the caricature of spleen, are the most laudable topics of jest, he deserves to be numbered amongst those wits who have raised a chaste and harmless merriment upon the noble and eternal basis of virtue and utility. _____________________________________________________________________ (see The Miseries of Human Life, elsewhere in these pages) |