GASTRONOMY IN FICTION AND DRAMA "Let me not burst in ignorance." "A chiel's amang ye, taking notes." Thomas Carlyle--Thackeray--Harrison Ainsworth--Sir Walter Scott--Miss Braddon--Marie Corelli--F. C. Philips--Blackmore--Charles Dickens--_Pickwick_ reeking with alcohol--Brandy and oysters--_Little Dorrit_--_Great Expectations_--Micawber as a punch-maker--_David Copperfield_--"Practicable" food on the stage--"Johnny" Toole's story of Tiny Tim and the goose. Considering the number of books which have been published during the nineteenth century, it is astonishing how few of them deal with eating and drinking. We read of a banquet or two, certainly, in the works of the divine William, but no particulars as to the _cuisine_ are entered into. "Cold Banquo" hardly sounds appetising. Thomas Carlyle was a notorious dyspeptic, so it is no cause for wonderment that he did not bequeath to posterity the recipes for a dainty dish or two, or a good Derby Day "Cup." Thackeray understood but little about cookery, nor was Whyte Melville much better versed in the mysteries of the kitchen. Harrison Ainsworth touched lightly on gastronomy occasionally, whilst Charles Lamb, Sydney Smith, and others (blessings light on the man who invented the phrase "and others") delighted therein. Miss Braddon has slurred it over hitherto, and Marie Corelli scorns all mention of any refreshment but absinthe--a weird liquid which is altogether absent from these pages. In the lighter novels of Mr. F. C. Philips, there is but little mention of solid food except devilled caviare, which sounds nasty; but most of Mr. Philips's men, and all his women, drink to excess--principally champagne, brandy, and green chartreuse. And one of his heroines is a firm believer in the merits of cognac as a "settler" of champagne. According to Mr. R. D. Blackmore, the natives of Exmoor did themselves particularly well, in the seventeenth century. In that most delightful romance _Lorna Doone_ is a description of a meal set before Tom Faggus, the celebrated highwayman, by the Ridd family, at Plover's Barrows:-- "A few oysters first, and then dried salmon, and then ham and eggs, done in small curled rashers, and then a few collops of venison toasted, and next a little cold roast pig, and a woodcock on toast to finish with." This meal was washed down with home-brewed ale, followed by Schiedam and hot water. One man, and one man alone, who has left his name printed deep on the sands of time as a writer, thoroughly revelled in the mighty subjects of eating and drinking. Need his name be mentioned? What is, after all, the great secret of the popularity of _Charles Dickens_