whatever they may be worth, of Alfred and the burnt cakes, and of Tom
Thumb's mamma and her Christmas pudding, made in a bowl, of which the
principal material was pork, stand almost alone; for we get, wherever
we look, nothing but descriptions by learned and educated men of their
equals or betters, how they fed and what they ate--their houses, their
furniture, their weapons, and their dress. Even in the passage of
the old fabliau of the "King and the Hermit" the latter, instead of
admitting us to a cottage interior, has a servant to wait on him,
brings out a tablecloth, lights two candles, and lays before his
disguised guest venison and wine. In most of our own romances, and
in the epics of antiquity, we have to be satisfied with vague and
splendid generalisations. We do not learn much of the dishes which
were on the tables, how they were cooked, and how [Greek: oi polloi]
cooked theirs.

The _Liber_, or rather _Codex, Princeps_ in the very long and
extensive catalogue of works on English Cookery, is a vellum roll
called the Form of Cury, and is supposed to have been written about
the beginning of the fifteenth century by the master-cook of Richard
II who reigned from 1377 to 1399, and spent the public money in eating
and drinking, instead of wasting it, as his grandfather had done, in
foreign wars. This singular relic was once in the Harleian collection,
but did not pass with the rest of the MSS. to the British Museum;
it is now however, Additional MS. 5016, having been presented to the
Library by Mr. Gustavus Brander. It was edited by Dr. Pegge in 1780,
and included by Warner in his "Antiquitates Culinariae," 1791. The
Roll comprises 196 receipts, and commences with a sort of preamble
and a Table of Contents. In the former it is worth noting that the
enterprise was undertaken "by the assent and avisement of masters of
physic and of philosophy, that dwelled in his (Richard II.'s) court,"