The board with specious miracles he loads,

Turns hares to larks, and pigeons into toads.

Another (for in all what one can shine?)

Explains the sève and verdeur of the wine."

In 1730 appeared "The Compleat Practical Cook, or A new System of the whole Art and Mystery of Cooking," a work with sixty curious copperplates of courses, written by Charles Carter, cook to the Duke of Argyll, the Earl of Pontefract, and Lord Cornwallis. In the preface to his "City and Country Cook" the author says: "What I have published is almost the only book, one or two excepted, which of late years has come into the world, that has been the result of the author's own practice and experience; for though very few eminent practical Cooks have ever cared to publish what they knew of the art, yet they have been prevailed on, for a small premium from a Bookseller, to lend their names to performances in this art, unworthy their owning."

The titles of many of the early cook-books are not wanting in quaintness or directness, as the case may be, however devoid of practical worth their contents. Thus we find the following among a host of other English works relating to the subject:

Here are manuals enough, in all conscience, to have produced a progressive cuisine, were not the majority a repetition of the crudities and barbarisms of their antecedents, where one heresy was passed on to be augmented by another author, and by him transmitted to his successors. Essentially differing from France, England was unblessed with originality, and not until the influence of the splendid restaurants of the Parisian capital had extended across the Channel did the Briton awaken from his lethargy and cease to see through Mrs. Glasse and Mrs. Smith darkly. Then Ude and Kitchener, Francatelli, Walker, and Soyer appeared, to pave the way for a better condition of cookery in the kingdom.

That the works referred to, where one has the facilities of consulting them and the patience to peruse them, are not entirely lacking in wit will be obvious if only from the repetition—in her "Compleat Housewife," by Mrs. Smith, who professes "to serve the publick in what she may"—of Ray's proverb, "God sends meat and the devil sends cooks," as well as from her namesake's rendition in the "Compleat Housekeeper" of sauce Robert as "Roe-Boat sauce," omelette as "Hamlet," and soupe à la reine as "Soup a la Rain." Neither should a really witty quatrain from "The Philosopher's Banquet," whose aroma almost suggests the spikenards, musks, and galbanums of the "Hesperides," be allowed to pass unnoticed:

"If Leekes you like, but do their smelle dis-leeke,