Moffet, another hygienic writer of the sixteenth century, demands indignantly:—
“Till God (i.e., Superstition or Fraud) would have it so [the slaying of other animals for food], who dared to touch with his lips the remnant of a dead carcase? or to set the prey of a wolf, or the meat of a falcon, upon his table? Who, I say, durst feed upon those members which, lately, did see, go, bleat, low, feel, and move?[294]
“Nay, tell me, can civil and human eyes yet abide the slaughter of an innocent ‘beast,’ the cutting of his throat, the smashing him on the head, the flaying of his skin, the quartering and dismembering of his limbs, the sprinkling of his blood, the ripping up of his veins, the enduring of ill-savours, the heaving of heavy sighs, sobs, and groans, the passionate struggling and panting for life, which only hard-hearted butchers can endure to see?
“Is not the earth sufficient to give us meat, but that we must also rend up the bowels of ‘beasts,’ birds, and fishes? Yes, truly, there is enough in the earth to give us meat; yea, verily, and choice of meats, needing either none or no great preparation, which we may take without fear, and cut down without trembling; which, also, we may mingle a hundred ways to delight our taste, and feed on safely to fill our bellies.”—Health’s Improvement, by Dr. W. Moffet (ed. 1746), as quoted by Ritson. The author died in 1604.
THE author of the Anatomy of Abuses, a writer of the same period, denouncing the unnatural and luxurious living of his time, compares the two diets with equal force and truth:—
“I cannot persuade myself otherwise, but that our niceness and cautiousness in diet hath altered our nature, distempered our bodies, and made us subject to hundreds of diseases and discrasies (indigestions) more than ever our forefathers were subject unto, and consequently of shorter life than they.... Who are sicklier than they who fare deliciously every day? Who is corrupter? Who belcheth more? Who looketh worse? Who is weaker and feebler than they? Who hath more filthy phlegm and putrefaction (replete with gross humours) than they? And, to be brief, who dieth sooner than they?
“Do we not see the poor man who eateth brown bread (whereof some is made of rye, barley, peason, beans, oats, and such other gross grains), and drinketh small drink, yea, sometimes water, and feedeth upon milk, butter and cheese—I say do we not see such a one healthfuller, stronger, fairer complexioned, and longer-living than the other that fares daintily every day; and how should it be otherwise?”—Stubbes’s Anatomy of Abuses, 1583. Quoted by Ritson (Abstinence from Flesh: A Moral Duty.).
VII.
COWLEY. 1620–1667.
AMONG the poets of the age second only to Milton and to Dryden. The Garden, from which we extract the following just sentiments, is prefixed by way of dedication to the Kalendarium Hortense of John Evelyn, his personal and political friend. The Gardener’s Almanac, it is worthy of note, is one of the earliest prototypes of the numerous more modern treatises of the kind. It had reached a tenth edition in 1706.