Which when he felt to move, he hopéd faire
To call back life to her forsaken shop.
So well he did her deadly wounds repaire,
That at the last shee ’gan to breathe out living aire.”
And now, Sir, I shall be happy to take a glass of wine with you, obsolete as that once honoured custom has become. And allow me to send you a slice of this venison. A little more of the fat? Certainly; but, if you will take currant jelly with it, the sin be upon your own head. It has always been the approved plan, you say. Ah, my dear Sir! think what the approved plan was, for years, in the treatment of small-pox. That was not a gastronomic matter, you say? I am not so sure of that; for the patient, swathed in scarlet cloth, had to drink mulled port wine. But, on a question of diet, time and numbers, you think, may be taken for authority. Alas, my dear Sir! did you ever try the once popular receipt of Apicius for a thick sauce to roasted chicken? Never! of course you have not; for, in such case, your young widow would already have touched that pretty life-assurance we wot of. English tastes, you urge? Ah! in that case, if old rule be good rule, you must camp in Kensington Gardens, and eat acorns. In Germany, where venison is a national dish, the idea of currant jelly would ruin the digestion of a whole company. But I see you are incorrigible, and William is at your elbow with the doubtful sauce.
Galen could not appreciate venison as the early Patriarchs and the Jewish people did, and as the Roman ladies did, who ate of it as a preserver of youth, as well as a lengthener of life. A roebuck of Melos would have brought tears of delight into the eyes of Diogenes. The deer was preferred to the roebuck at Rome; but the wild boar was also a favourite; and the Sicilian slave, chef to Servilius Rullus, cooked not less than three of different sizes in one. The largest had baskets of dates suspended to its tusks, and a litter of young ones in pastry lying in the same dish. Within the first was a second, within the second a third, and within the third some small birds. Cicero, who was the guest for whom the dinner was got up, was as delighted with the culinary slave, as Lucullus had been a few days before, when he had eaten a dish of sows’ paps prepared by the same artist; and the enraptured gastronome thought that all Olympus was dissolving in his mouth!
A wild boar was at marriage feasts what our wedding cakes are at those dreadful destroyers of time and digestion,—wedding breakfasts,—an indispensable accompaniment. Caranus, the Macedonian, has the reputation of having exceeded all others in his nuptial magnificence; for, instead of one boar at his banquet, he had twenty. But I have seen more than that at many a breakfast in Britain.
The ancient Britons abstained from the hare, like the Jews. Hippocrates held that, as a food, it thickened the blood, and kept people from sleep; but Galen—and such instances among the faculty are not uncommon—differed from his professional brother. People followed the advice of Galen; and though few, like Alexander Severus, could eat a whole hare at every repast, yet many ate as plentifully as they well could, accounting such diet profitable both to health and good looks.
Hares were nearly as injuriously abundant in Greece as rabbits were in Spain, where the latter animals are said to have once destroyed Tarragona, by undermining it in burrowing! Nay, more: the Balearic Isles were so overrun with them, that the inhabitants, afraid of being devoured, sent an embassy to Rome; and Augustus dispatched a military force, which not only slaughtered the enemy, but ate the half of them! The more refined gluttons of Rome did not dine on the rabbit after this fashion. They only picked a little of the young taken alive from the slaughtered mother, or killed soon after birth. They were preferable to the rabbits of the Parisian gargottes, where fricassée de lapins is invariably made of cats. And these, perhaps, are as dainty eating as the hunch of the camel, or the feet of the elephant,—pettitoes for Brobdignagian lovers to sup upon.
But we almost as villanously disguise our poultry. The latter, if not now, used—according to Darwin—to be fed for the London market, by mixing gin, and even opium, with their food, and keeping them in the dark; but “they must be killed as soon as they are fattened, or they become weak and emaciated, like human drunkards.”