Memorabilia; Or Recollections, Historical, Biographical, and AntiquarianSavage, James
History
Memorabilia; Or Recollections, Historical, Biographical, and Antiquarian
Savage, James
History -- Miscellanea; Savage, James, 1767-1845
And I heard, says Mr. Pye, (Comment. on Aristotle,) Mr. Pitt, afterwards
Lord Chatham, quote the following verse of Tate’s, in the House of
Commons, undoubtedly taking it for Shakespeare’s,
“Where the gor’d battle bleeds in every vein.”
The tragedy of Hamlet was, by order of Mrs. Garrick, thrown into
Garrick’s grave. Though he was undoubtedly great in that character, he
was equally so in many of Shakespeare’s characters, and superior in
Lear. The comic characters it is presumed were thought too light for so
solemn an occasion. If by burying that tragedy with Garrick it was meant
to infer that it was lost to the stage with him, a complete edition of
Shakespeare might, with the utmost propriety have been interred with
that inimitable actor.
LEMONS.
Theophrastus, who studied under Plato and Aristotle, says of lemons,
that they were cultivated for their fragrance, not for their taste; that
the peel was laid up with garments, to preserve them from moths; and
that the juice was administered by physicians medicinally.
Virgil in his second Georgic, describes agreeably the Lemon-tree. Pliny
mentions the lemon-juice as an antidote; but says that the fruit, from
its austere taste, was not eaten.
Plutarch, who nourished within a generation of Pliny, witnessed the
introduction of lemons at the Roman tables. Juba, king of Mauritania,
was the first who exhibited them at his dinners. And Athenæus introduces
Democritus as not wondering that old people made wry mouths at the taste
of lemons; for, adds he, in my grandfather’s time, they were never set
upon the table. And to this day the Chinese, who grow the fruit, do not
apply it to culinary purposes.
The great use of lemons began with the introduction of sugar, which is
said to have resulted from the conquest of Sicily, by the Arabs, in the
ninth century. Sestini, in his letters from Sicily and Turkey, thinks
that the best sorts of lemons, and the best sorts of sherbet, were
derived from Florence, by the Sicilians. Probably Rome continued, even
in the dark ages, to be the chief seat of luxury and refinement; and had
domesticated the art of making lemonade, before either Messina or
Florence.
In Madagascar slices of lemon are boiled, and eaten with salt.
Pomet, in his History of Drugs, gives the preference over all others to
the lemons of Madeira; but according to Ferrarius, there grows at the
Cape a sweet lemon, to which he gives the name _incomparabilis_.
ORIGIN OF THE POINT OF HONOUR.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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