Dov. English it, Von Osdat; thou'rt a scholar.
Von Os. "God and Nature have made nothing in vain. Posterity may discover as much in mosses, as of utility in other herbs."
Dov. And, truly, so they may: one lichen is already used as a blessed medicine in asthma; and another to thicken milk, as a nutritive posset. And who, enjoying the rich productions of our present state of horticulture, can recur without wonder to the tables of our ancestors? They knew absolutely nothing of vegetables in a culinary sense; and as for their application in medicine, they had no power unless gathered under planetary influence, "sliver'd in the moon's eclipse."
Von Os. When Mercury was culminating, or Mars and Venus had got into the ninth house.
Dov. 'Tis curious to reflect, that at the vast baronial feasts, in the days of the Plantagenets and Tudors, where we read of such onslaught of beeves, muttons, hogs, fowl and fish, the courtly knights and beauteous dames had no other vegetable save bread—not even a potato!
Von Os.
"They carved at the meal with their gloves of steel,
And drank the red wine through the helmet barr'd."
Dov. And when the cloth was drawn—
Von Os. Cloth!—