When you rise from your Dinner as light as before,
'Tis a sign you have eat just enough and no more.

Thomas Gray.

I confess I am not indifferent

I am no Quaker at my food. to the kinds of it. Those unctuous morsels of deer's flesh were not made to be received with dispassionate services. I hate a man who swallows it, affecting not to know what he is eating. I suspect his taste in higher matters. I shrink instinctively from one who professes to like minced veal. There is a physiognomical character in the tastes for food. C- - holds that a man cannot have a pure mind who refuses apple-dumplings. I am not certain but he is right.

Charles Lamb.

Dr. Middleton misdoubted the future as well as the past of the man who did not, in becoming gravity, exult to dine. That man he deemed unfit for this world and the next.

George Meredith.

Ben Invites a Friend to Supper

TO-NIGHT, grave sir, both my poor house and I Do equally desire your company :

Not that we think us worthy such a guest,

But that your worth will dignify our feast,

With those that come; whose grace may make that

seem

Something, which else would hope for no esteem.

It is the fair acceptance, sir, creates

The entertainment perfect, not the cates.
Yet shall you have, to rectify your palate,
An olive, capers, or some better sallad
Ushering the mutton: with a short-legg'd hen,
If we can get her full of eggs, and then,
Limons, and wine for sauce: to these, a coney
Is not to be despair'd of for our money;

And though fowl now be scarce, yet there are clerks,

The sky not falling, think we may have larks.
I'll tell you of more, and lie, so you will come :

Of partridge, pheasant, woodcock, of which some
May yet be there; and godwit if we can ;
Knat, rail, and ruff too. Howsoe'er, my man

Shall read a piece of Virgil, Tacitus,
Livy, or of some better book to us,

Of which we'll speak our minds, amidst our meat ;
And I'll profess no verses to repeat:

To this if aught appear, which I not know of,
That will the pastry, not my paper, show of,
Digestive cheese, and fruit there sure will be ;
But that which most doth take my muse and me,
Is a pure cup of rich Canary wine,

Which is the Mermaid's now, but shall be mine :
Of which had Horace or Anacreon tasted,
Their lives, as do their lines, till now had lasted.
Tobacco, nectar, or the Thespian spring,
Are all but Luther's beer, to this I sing.
Of this we will sup free, but moderately,
And we will have no Pooly, or Parrot by ;
Nor shall our cups make any guilty men :
But at our parting, we will be, as when
We innocently met. No simple word,
That shall be utter'd at our mirthful board,
Shall make us sad next morning; or affright
The liberty, that we'll enjoy to-night.

Ben Jonson.

Ad Ministram

DEAR

Lucy, you know what my wish is,—
I hate all your Frenchified fuss;

Your silly entrées and made dishes
Were never intended for us.

No footman in lace and in ruffles

Need dangle behind my arm-chair;
And never mind seeking for truffles,
Although they be ever so rare.

But a plain leg of mutton, my Lucy,
I prithee get ready at three :

Have it smoking, and tender and juicy,
And what better meat can there be?
And when it has feasted the master,
'Twill amply suffice for the maid ;
Meanwhile I will smoke my canaster,
And tipple my ale in the shade.

William Makepeace Thackeray.

Roast Pig

IT

T must be agreed, that if a worthy pretext for so dangerous an experiment as setting houses on fire (especially in these days) could be assigned in favour of any culinary object, that pretext and excuse might be found in ROAST PIG.

Of all the delicacies in the whole mundus edibilis, I will maintain it to be the most delicate--princeps obsoniorum.

I speak not of your grown porkers-things between pig and pork-those hobbydehoys-but a young and tender suckling-under a moon old-guiltless as yet

of the sty with no original speck of the amor immunditia, the hereditary failing of the first parent, yet manifest—his voice as yet not broken, but something between a childish treble and a grumble—the mild forerunner, or præludium, of a grunt.

He must be roasted. I am not ignorant that our ancestors ate them seethed, or boiled-but what a sacrifice of the exterior tegument!

There is no flavour comparable, I will contend, to that of the crisp, tawny, well-watched, not overroasted, crackling, as it is well called-the very teeth are invited to their share of the pleasure at this banquet in overcoming the coy, brittle resistancewith the adhesive oleaginous-O call it not fat—but an indefinable sweetness growing up to it-the tender blossoming of fat--fat cropped in the bud—taken in the shoot-in the first innocence-the cream and quintessence of the child-pig's yet pure food-the lean, no lean, but a kind of animal manna—or, rather, fat and lean (if it must be so) so blended and running into each other, that both together make but one ambrosian result, or common substance.

Behold him, while he is doing-it seemeth rather a refreshing warmth, than a scorching heat, that he is so passive to. How equably he twirleth round the string!-Now he is just done. To see the extreme sensibility of that tender age, he hath wept out his pretty eyes—radiant jellies-shooting stars

See him in the dish, his second cradle, how meek he lieth-wouldst thou have had this innocent grow