TO CHARLES MANNERS ST. GEORGE, ESQ.,
STOCKHOLM.
(With a box of sauces and spices, and The Cook’s Oracle).
London, June 26, 1822.
Various means of increasing your powers of pleasing accompany this letter. Accept a didactic volume, showing you how to make the best use of them. Neither Walter Scott nor Lord Byron have had so quick and profitable a sale. It is thought the best book of cookery extant; but, as it unveils the secrets of the trade, professional cooks would willingly burn, stew, bake, boil, mince, hash, broil, pound, fry, baste, hang, quarter, cut up, or otherwise execute it and its author. If the Oracle is the first that speaks on the subject in Sweden, I shall think myself a national benefactor.
I hope you have read every word of Sir James Mackintosh’s speeches on the Criminal Code and the Alien Bill—both admirable; the first a chef-d’œuvre, and touching on many points of interest—Napoleon, and the Code which would immortalize him, were his victories forgot—Charles Fox, and his inextinguishable philanthropy—our native sœurs de la charité, with that meek and energetic woman at their head, who has raised the character of her sex. All these are panegyrized with taste and selection—the whole speech vivified by arguments, illustrations, facts, and quotations, apt but not commonplace; while good temper, and a simplicity which refrains from any appeal to the passions, shows his calm sincerity in the cause of humanity, and his willingness to sacrifice all the brilliancy that satire and pathos might give, rather than lose the strong hold a plain statement always best retains on an English audience.
Foscolo’s Lectures are concluded, which I regret, though I learned little from them. But it was something to hear a language one wished to improve in, although one brought scarce any recollections away. The atmosphere was of the deepest cerulean tint—authors, blue ladies, chemists, politicians, poets, with a slight infusion of couleur de rose. Foscolo’s merits induced many to subscribe who, from other avocations, could only look in once or twice; and for him it has been successful, both as to fame and profit. He made these lectures subservient to his great object of awakening a horror of despotism with infinite ingenuity; and to one who had once remarked this primary view, there was a double source of amusement in listening to him.
July, 1822.— ... Who can talk of public speaking and not mention Mr. Irving, the chief subject of conversation, for whom people brave pressure, fatigue, and the most intolerable heat? Young men, in their eagerness to hear him, make parties ‘to board the pews;’ that is, to jump in over the sides, in defiance of locks, sextonesses, and private property. Lady Jersey says he is perfect; and Mrs. Canning, whose opinion begins to be quoted (‘what a kind of being is circumstance’), and who is said to be a dissenter, declares herself ‘entirely satisfied with his doctrine;’ while Colonel Abercrombie professes he could bring twenty preachers from Scotland of superior powers.