and is described as "the marrow of collections."

But Hartman is not the only witness to Digby's connoisseurship in the joint
mysteries. Better to my mind than even Hartman's are the style and the
spirit of Master May. In 1660 appeared _The Accomplisht Cook,_ or the Art
and Mystery of Cookery ... approved by the fifty years experience and
industry of Robert May, in his attendance on Several Persons of Honour. It
is dedicated to Lord Lumley, Lord Lovelace, Sir Wm. Paston, Sir Kenelme
Digby, and Sir Frederick Cornwallis, "so well known to the Nation for their
admired Hospitalities," and generally to

"the race
Of those that for the Gusto stand,
Whose tables a whole Ark command
Of Nature's plentie."

"He is an Alien, a meer Stranger in England that hath not been acquainted
with your generous housekeeping; for my own part, my more particular Tyes
of Service to you, my Honoured Lords, have built me up to the height of
this experience." His preface is a heartrending cry of regret for the good
old times before usurping Parliaments banished splendidly extravagant
gentlemen across the seas, "those golden days of Peace and Hospitality,
when you enjoy'd your own, so as to entertain and relieve others ... those
golden days wherein were practised the Triumphs and Trophies of Cookery,
then was Hospitality esteemed and Neighbourhood preserved, the Poor
cherished and God honoured; then was Religion less talk't on and more
practis't, then was Atheism and Schisme less in Fashion, and then did men
strive to be good rather than to seem so." High-souled were the _chefs_ of
the seventeenth century!