Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 60, No. 370, August 1846Various
History
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 60, No. 370, August 1846
Various
England -- Periodicals; Scotland -- Periodicals
The "Gastronomic Regenerator" has not assumed his imposing title without a
full appreciation of the dignity of his office and the elevation of his
mission. The brief and graceful "dialogue culinaire" between Lord M. H.
and himself, illustrates the grand doctrines that man is a cooking animal,
and that the progress of cooking is the progress of civilisation. There is
something prodigiously sublime in the words of the noble interlocutor,
when he declares, "Read history, and you see that in every age, and among
all nations, the good which has been done, and sometimes the evil, has
been always preceded or followed by a copious dinner." This language, we
presume, must be considered on the great scale, as applicable to the most
solemn and momentous occurrences in the history of governments and
countries. Not that we can exclude it from individual biography.
Benevolence we have always regarded as a good sauce, and have often
observed it to be an excellent dessert. The man who tucks his napkin under
his chin immediately after conferring a benefit on a fellow-creature,
invariably manifests marvellous capabilities for digestion; and, on the
other hand, the man who has dined to his own entire satisfaction, if
solicited in the nick of time, will frequently evince an open-handed
generosity, to which his more matutine emotions would have been strangers.
But--to reverse the picture--any interruption to the near prospect of a
"copious dinner" is at all times inimical to charity; while repletion, we
know, occasionally reveals such unamiable dispositions as could not have
been detected by the most jealous scrutiny at an earlier period of the
day. Nations are but hives of individuals. We understand, therefore, the
noble lord to mean, that all the history of all the thousand races of the
globe concurrently teaches us that every great event, social or political,
domestic or foreign, involving their national weal or woe, has been
harbingered or commemorated by a "copious dinner." Many familiar instances
of this profound truth--some of very recent date--crowd into our
recollection. But we cannot help suspecting a deeper meaning to be
inherent in the enunciation of this "great fact." Copious dinners are, as
it strikes us, here covertly represented as the means of effecting the
most extensive ameliorations. To dine is insinuated to be the first step
on the highway to improvement. In the consequences which flow from dining
copiously, what is beneficial is evidently stated to preponderate over
what is hurtful, the qualifying "sometimes" being only attached to the
latter. In this respect, dinners seem to differ from men, that the evil is
more frequently "interred with their bones," while the "good they do lives
after them." This is, assuredly, ringing a dinner-bell incessantly to the
whole universe. We have ourselves, not half an hour ago, paid our quota
for participating within the last week in congratulatory festivities to
two eminent public characters.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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