S. Jerome, writing of the course of life held by those good fathers that retired themselves into the deserts of Egypt, the better to serve God, tells us, that they were so enamoured of spare and simple diet, that they censured it in themselves for a kind of riot, to feed on anything that was dressed with fire. The same in every point doth Cassian report, in his relations of the holy monks and hermits of his time.
I find in ancient physicians, that the inhabitants of the old world were such strict followers of sobriety, that they kept themselves precisely to bread in the morning; and at night they made their supper of flesh only without addition of sauces, or any first or second courses. And by this means it came to pass, that they lived so long and in continual health without so much as once hearing the names of those many grievous infirmities that nowadays vex mankind.
What think you might be the cause, that the Romans, the Arcadians, and the Portugals passed so many hundred of years, without having any acquaintance at all with physic or physicians? Surely nothing else but their sober spare diet, which when all is done, we are ofttimes constrained to undergo, and ever indeed directed and advised unto, by those who really practise this divine science of physic, for the recovery and conservation of their patient’s health, and not covetously for their own gain. I read in approved histories, that Ptolemy, upon some occasion or other out-riding his followers in Egypt, was so pressed with hunger, that he was fain to call in at a poor man’s cottage, who brought him a piece of rye-bread; which when he had eaten, he took a solemn oath, that he never in all his life tasted better, nor more pleasing meat: and from that day forward, he set light by all the costly sorts of bread, which he had been formerly accustomed unto.
The Thracian women, that they might bear healthful, strong, and hardy children, ate nothing but milk and nettles, and the greatest dainties that the Lacedemonians had amongst them, was a certain kind of black pottage, that looked no better than melted pitch, and could not by computation stand in above three half-pence a gallon at the most. The Persians, that in their time were the best disciplined people on the earth, ate a little Nasturtium[B] with their bread; and that was all the victuals that this brave nation used, when they made conquest of the world.
Artaxerxes, the brother of Cyrus, being overthrown in battle, was constrained in his flight to sit down with dry figs and barley-bread which upon proof he found so good, as he seriously lamented his misfortune, in having,—through the continual cloying of artificial dainties, wherewith he had been bred up,—been so long time a stranger to that great pleasure and delight, which natural and simple food yields, when it meets with true hunger.
True it is, our stomach is a troublesome creditor, and ofttimes shamelessly exacts more than its due: but undoubtedly, if we were not partial, and corrupted by the allurements of that base content which dainties promise, we might easily quiet the grudgings and murmurings thereof. It’s not the stomach, I wis, which would rest apayed with that which is at hand; but the satisfaction of our capricious fancies, that makes us wear out our selves, and weary all the world besides with uncessant travel in the search of rarities, and in the compounding of new delicacies. If we were but half as wise as we ought to be, there need none of all this ado that we make, about this and that kind of Manchet, Dutch-bread, and French-bread: and I know not what new inventions are brought on foot, to make more business in the world; whereas with much less cost and trouble we might be much better served with that which grows at home, and is to be found ready in every thatched cottage. That which is most our own, and that which we therefore perhaps, fools as we be, most contemn in this kind,—barley-bread I mean,—is by all the old physicians, warranted for a most sound and healthful food. He that eats daily of it, say they, shall undoubtedly never be troubled with the gout in the feet.
Shew me such a virtue in any of these new inventions, and I’ll yield there were some reason perhaps in making use of them, if they might with ease and quiet be procured. But to buy them at the price of so much pains, time, and hazard as they cost us, undoubtedly too much, although they brought as much benefit as they do prejudice. Consider well, I pray, whether it be not a thing to make a wise man run beside himself, to see such a ransacking of all the elements by fishers and fowlers, and hunters; such a turmoiling of the world by cooks and comfit-makers, and tavern-keepers and a numberless many of such needless occupations; such a hazarding of mens lives on sea and land, by heat and cold, and a thousand other dangers and difficulties; and all forsooth in procuring dainties for the satisfaction of a greedy maw, and senseless stomach, that within a very short while after must of necessity make a banquet of itself to worms.
What an endless maze of error, what an intolerable hell of torments and afflictions hath this wicked gluttony brought the world unto. And yet, wretched men that we are, we have no mind to get out of it, but like silly animals led by the chaps, go on all day long, digging our graves with our teeth, till at last we bring the earth over our heads much before we otherwise need to have done. And yet there was a certain odd fellow once in the world, I would there were not too many of the same mind nowadays! Philoxenus by name, that seriously wished he might have a swallow as long and as large as the cranes, the better to enjoy the full relish of his licorish morsels. Long after him, I read of another of the same fraternity, Apicius, I trow, that set all his happiness in good cheer: but little credit, I am sure, he hath got by the means; no more than Maximinus, for all he was an Emperor, by his using every meal to stuff into his paunch thirty pounds of flesh, beside bread and wine to boot. But Geta deserves, in my opinion, the monarchy of gluttons, as he had of the Romans. His feasts went alway according to the letters of the alphabet, as when P’s turn came, he would have plovers, and partridges, and peacocks, and the like; and so in all the rest, his table was always furnished with meats whose names began with one and the same letter.
But what do I raking up this carrion? Let them rot in their corruption and lie more covered over with infamy than with earth. Only, to give the world notice who have been the great masters of this worthy science of filling the stomach and following good cheer, I have been enforced to make this remembrance of some of their goodly opinions and pranks. Which let who so will be their partner in: for my part, I solemnly avow, that I find no greater misery than to victual the camp, as the proverb is, cramming in lustily over night, and to be bound next morning to rise early and to go about serious business.
Oh what a piece of purgatory is it, to feel within a man’s self those qualms, those gripings, those swimmings, and those flashing heats that follow upon over-eating! And what a shame, if our foreheads were not of brass, and our friends before whom we act them, infected with the same disease, would it be to stand yawning, stretching, and perbreaking the crudities of the former day’s surfeit!