The era of Queen Anne, a noted gourmande, who achieved the feminine distinction of acquiring the gout, was marked by the appearance of a work on "Royal Cookery, or the Complete Court Book" (1710), by Patrick Lamb, Esq., chef to her Majesty, who had previously served Charles II, James II, and William and Mary. Pope's description in the "Dunciad" would indicate that cookery was in a flourishing state under the last of the Stuarts: "On some a priest succinct in amice white Attends; all flesh is nothing in his sight! Beeves, at his touch, at once to jelly turn, And the huge boar is shrunk into an urn; The board with specious miracles he loads, Turns hares to larks, and pigeons into toads. Another (for in all what one can shine?) Explains the _sève_ and _verdeur_ of the wine." In 1730 appeared "The Compleat Practical Cook, or A new System of the whole Art and Mystery of Cooking," a work with sixty curious copperplates of courses, written by Charles Carter, cook to the Duke of Argyll, the Earl of Pontefract, and Lord Cornwallis. In the preface to his "City and Country Cook" the author says: "What I have published is almost the only book, one or two excepted, which of late years has come into the world, that has been the result of the author's own practice and experience; for though very few eminent practical Cooks have ever cared to publish what they knew of the art, yet they have been prevailed on, for a small premium from a Bookseller, to lend their names to performances in this art, unworthy their owning." The titles of many of the early cook-books are not wanting in quaintness or directness, as the case may be, however devoid of practical worth their contents. Thus we find the following among a host of other English works relating to the subject: