where _biscoctus_ is verbatim reproduced in the word _bis_ (twice) _cuit_, (baked;) whence our own _biscuit_. Biscuit might do very well, could we be sure that it was cabin biscuit: but Salmasius argues--that in this case he takes it to mean "_buccellatum, qui est panis nauticus_;" that is, the ship company's biscuit, broken with a sledge-hammer. In Greek, for the benefit again of the learned reader, it is termed [Greek: dipuros], indicating that it has passed twice under the action of fire. "Well," you say, "No matter if it had passed fifty times--and through the fires of Moloch; only let us have this biscuit, such as it is." In good faith, then, fasting reader, you are not likely to see much more than you _have_ seen. It is a very Barmecide feast, we do assure you--this same "jentaculum;" at which abstinence and patience are much more exercised than the teeth: faith and hope are the chief graces cultivated, together with that species of the _magnificum_ which is founded on the _ignotum_. Even this biscuit was allowed in the most limited quantities; for which reason it is that the Greeks called this apology for a a meal by the name of [Greek: bouchismos], a word formed (as many words were in the Post-Augustan ages) from a Latin word--viz., _buccea_, a mouthful; not literally such, but so much as a polished man could allow himself to put into his mouth at once. "We took a mouthful," says Sir William Waller, the Parliamentary general, "took a mouthful; paid our reckoning; mounted; and were off." But there Sir William means, by his plausible "mouthful," something very much beyond either nine or nineteen ordinary quantities of that denomination, whereas the Roman "jentaculum" was literally such; and, accordingly, one of the varieties under which the ancient vocabularies express this model of evanescent quantities is _gustatio_, a mere tasting; and again it is called by another variety, _gustus_, a mere taste: [whence by the usual suppression of the _s_, comes the French word for a collation or luncheon, viz. _gouter_] Speaking of his uncle, Pliny the Younger says--"Post solem plerumque lavabatur; deinde gustabat; dormiebat minimum; mox, quasi alio die, studebat in coenæ tempus". "After taking the air he bathed; after that he broke his fast on a bit of biscuit, and took a very slight _siesta_: which done, as if awaking to a new day, he set in regularly to his studies, and pursued them to dinner-time." _Gustabat_ here meant that nondescript meal which arose at Rome when _jentaculum_ and _prandium_ were fused into one, and that only a _taste_ or mouthful of biscuit, as we shall show farther on.