[6] When George IV. once complained that he had lost his royal appetite, “What a scrape, sir, a poor man would be in if he found it!” said his Rochester companion.
[7] The very word Novelty has become in common parlance synonymous with danger, change, by the fear of which all Spaniards are perplexed; as in religion it is a heresy. Bitter experience has taught all classes that every change, every promise of a new era of blessing and prosperity has ended in a failure, and that matters have got worse: hence they not only bear the evils to which they are accustomed, rather than try a speculative amelioration, but actually prefer a bad state of things, of which they know the worst, to the possibility of an untried good. Mas vale el mal conocido, que el bien por conocer. “How is my lady the wife of your grace?” says a Spanish gentleman to his friend. “Como está mi Señora la Esposa de Usted?” “She goes on without Novelty”—“Sigue sin Novedad,” is the reply, if the fair one be much the same. “Vaya Usted con Dios, y que no haya Novedad!” “Go with God, your grace! and may nothing new happen,” says another, on starting his friend off on a journey.
[8] Forks are an Italian invention: old Coryate, who introduced this “neatnesse” into Somersetshire, about 1600, was called furcifer by his friends. Alexander Barclay thus describes the previous English mode of eating, which sounds very ventaish, although worse mannered:—
“If the dishe be pleasaunt, eyther flesche or fische,
Ten hands at once swarm in the dishe.”
[9] The kings of Spain seldom use any other royal signature, except the ancient Gothic rubrica, or mark. This monogram is something like a Runic knot. Spaniards exercise much ingenuity in these intricate flourishes, which they tack on to their names, as a collateral security of authenticity. It is said that a rubrica without a name is of more value than a name without a rubrica. Sancho Panza tells Don Quixote that his rubrica alone is worth, not one, but three hundred jackasses. Those who cannot write rubricate; “No saber firmar,”—not to know how to sign one’s name,—is jokingly held in Spain to be one of the attributes of grandeeship.
[10] “Chacun fuit à le voir naître, chacun court à le voir mourir!”—Montaigne.
[11] Hallarse en Cinta is the Spanish equivalent for our “being in the family way."
[12] Recopilacion. Lib. iii. Tit. xvi. Ley 3.
[13] The love for killing oxen still prevails at Rome, where the ambition of the lower orders to be a butcher, is, like their white costume, a remnant of the honourable office of killing at the Pagan sacrifices. In Spain butchers are of the lowest caste, and cannot prove “purity of blood.” Francis I. never forgave the “Becajo de Parigi” applied by Dante to his ancestor.