has no more substantial basis than a theory would have that the
"Arabian Nights" were composed by Haroun al Raschid. Warner, in the
introduction to his "Antiquitates Culinariae," 1791, adduces as a
specimen of the rest two receipts from this collection, shewing how
the Roman cook of the Apician epoch was wont to dress a hog's paunch,
and to manufacture sauce for a boiled chicken. Of the three persons
who bore the name, it seems to be thought most likely that the one who
lived under Trajan was the true godfather of the Culinary Manual.

One of Massinger's characters (Holdfast) in the "City Madam," 1658,
is made to charge the gourmets of his time with all the sins of
extravagance perpetrated in their most luxurious and fantastic
epoch. The object was to amuse the audience; but in England no "court
gluttony," much less country Christmas, ever saw buttered eggs which
had cost £30, or pies of carps' tongues, or pheasants drenched with
ambergris, or sauce for a peacock made of the gravy of three fat
wethers, or sucking pigs at twenty marks each.

Both Apicius and our Joe Miller died within £80,000 of being
beggars--Miller something the nigher to that goal; and there was this
community of insincerity also, that neither really wrote the books
which carry their names. Miller could not make a joke or understand
one when anybody else made it. His Roman foregoer, who would certainly
never have gone for his dinner to Clare Market, relished good dishes,
even if he could not cook them.

It appears not unlikely that the Romish clergy, whose monastic
vows committed them to a secluded life, were thus led to seek some
compensation for the loss of other worldly pleasures in those of the
table; and that, when one considers the luxury of the old abbeys, one