Et rédise cent fois un has et méchant mot,
Que de brûler ma viande ou saler trop mon pot.
Je vis de bonne soupe, et non de beau langage,
Vaugelas n’apprend point à bien faire un potage;
Et Malherbe et Balzac, si savans en beaux mots,
En cuisine peutêtre auraient été des sots.
Very few people, I am afraid, read the entirely delightful verse of Mortimer Collins, poet, journalist, novelist, epicure (in the best sense), and country-lover—all in one. He was among the nowadays less-known masters of gastronomics, a man who, although no cook himself, knew by intuition and experience just what was right, and if it were wrong, just why it was wrong. His novels and poems, although very unequal, do not deserve to be forgotten, for they contain many fine, thoughtful, and beautiful passages. His burlesque of Aristophanes, “The British Birds,” is, in its way, a masterpiece. He wrote much and well on cookery and dining, both in prose and verse. Here follows one of his sonnets from a sequence addressed to the months—from a gastronomic point of view.
JUNE
O perfect period of the sweet birds’ tune,
Of Philomel and Procne, known to fable;