"When your butler's away, and the weather's so bad That there is not a morsel of fish to be had, A crust with some salt will soothe not amiss The ravening stomach. You ask, how is this? Because for delight, at the best, you must look To yourself, and not to your wealth or your cook [1] Work till you perspire. Of all sauces 'tis best. The man that's with over-indulgence oppressed, White-livered and pursy, can relish no dish, Be it ortolans, oysters, or finest of fish. Still I scarcely can hope, if before you there were A peacock and capon, you would not prefer With the peacock to tickle your palate, you're so Completely the dupes of mere semblance and show. For to buy the rare bird only gold will avail, And he makes a grand show with his fine painted tail. As if this had to do with the matter the least! Can you make of the feathers you prize so a feast? And, when the bird's cooked, what becomes of its splendour? Is his flesh than the capon's more juicy or tender? Mere appearance, not substance, then, clearly it is, Which bamboozles your judgment. So much, then, for this." [1] "Pour l'amour de Dieu, un sou pour acheter un petit pain. J'ai si faim!" "Comment!" responded the cloyed sensualist, in search of an appetite, who was thus accosted; "tu as faim, petit drôle! Tu es bien heureux!" The readers of Pope will also remember his lines on the man who "Called 'happy dog' the beggar at his door, And envied thirst and hunger to the poor." Don't talk to me of taste, Ofellus continues-- "Will it give you a notion If this pike in the Tiber was caught, or the ocean? If it used 'twixt the bridges to glide and to quiver, Or was tossed to and fro at the mouth of the river?" Just as our epicures profess to distinguish, by flavour a salmon fresh, run from the sea from one that has been degenerating for four-and-twenty hours in the fresh water of the river--with this difference, however, that, unlike the salmon with us, the above-bridge pike was considered at Rome to be more delicate than his sea-bred and leaner brother. Ofellus next proceeds to ridicule the taste which prizes what is set before it for mere size or rarity or cost. It is this, he contends, and not any excellence in the things themselves, which makes people load their tables with the sturgeon or the stork. Fashion, not flavour, prescribes the rule; indeed, the more perverted her ways, the more sure they are to be followed. "So were any one now to assure us a treat In cormorants roasted, as tender and sweet, The young men of Rome are so prone to what's wrong, They'd eat cormorants all to a man, before long." But, continues Ofellus, though I would have you frugal, I would not have you mean-- "One vicious extreme it is idle to shun, If into its opposite straightway you run;"