And now to cheese. I have had quite enough of digressions and of
follies. They are the happy youth of an article. They are the springtime
of it. They are its riot. I am approaching the middle age of this
article. Let us be solid upon the matter of cheese.

I have premised its antiquity, which is of two sorts, as is that of a
nobleman. First, the antiquity of its lineage; secondly, the antiquity
of its self. For we all know that when we meet a nobleman we revere his
nobility very much if he be himself old, and that this quality of age in
him seems to marry itself in some mysterious way with the antiquity of
his line.

The lineage of cheese is demonstrably beyond all record. What did the
faun in the beginning of time when a god surprised him or a mortal had
the misfortune to come across him in the woods? It is well known that
the faun offered either of them cheese. So he knew how to make it.

There are certain bestial men, hangers-on of the Germans, who would
contend that this would prove cheese to be acquired by the Aryan race
(or what not) from the Dolichocephalics (or what not), and there are
certain horrors who descend to imitate these barbarians--though
themselves born in these glorious islands, which are so steep upon their
western side. But I will not detain you upon these lest I should fall
head foremost into another digression and forget that my article,
already in its middle age, is now approaching grey hairs.

At any rate, cheese is very old. It is beyond written language. Whether
it is older than butter has been exhaustively discussed by several
learned men, to whom I do not send you because the road towards them