The subject of eating and drinking is a serious one. The stomach is the great motive power of society. It is the true sharpener of human ingenuity, _curis acuens mortalia corda_. Cookery is the first of arts. Chemistry is a mere subordinate science, whose chief value is that it enables man to impart greater relish and gust to his viands. The greatest poets, such as Homer, Milton, and Scott, treat the subject of eating and drinking with much seriousness, minuteness of detail, and lusciousness of description. Homer's heroes are all good cooks,--swift-footed Achilles, much-enduring Ulysses, and the rest of them. Read Milton's appetizing description of the feast which the Tempter set before the fasting Saviour:-- "Our Saviour, lifting up his eyes, beheld In ample space, under the broadest shade, A table richly spread in regal mode, With dishes piled, and meats of noblest sort And savor: beasts of chase or fowl of game In pastry built, or from the spit, or boiled, Gris-amber steamed; all fish from sea or shore, Freshet or purling brook, of shell or fin, And exquisitest name, for which was drained Pontus and Lucrine bay and Afric coast; And at a stately sideboard, by the wine That fragrant smell diffused in order stood Tall stripling youths, rich clad, of fairer hue Than Ganymed or Hylas." It is evident that the sublime Milton had a keen relish for a good dinner. Keats's description of that delicious moonlight spread by Porphyro, in the room of his fair Madeline, asleep, on St. Agnes' eve, "in lap of legends old," is another delicate morsel of Apician poetry. "Those lucent syrups tinct with cinnamon and sugared dainties" from Samarcand to cedared Lebanon, show that Keats had not got over his boyish taste for sweet things, and reached the maturity and gravity of appetite which dictated the Miltonian description. He died at twenty-four years. Had he lived longer, he might have sung of roast and boiled as sublimely as Milton has done. Epicurus, in exalting cookery and eating and drinking to a plane of philosophical importance, was a true friend of his race, and showed himself the most sensible and wisest of all the Greek philosophers. A psychometrical critic of the philosopher of the garden says:--