"the air, generally speaking, he bathed ; after that he broke "his fast on a morsel of biscuit, and took a very slight siesta: "which done, as if awaking to a new day, he set in regularly "to his studies, and pursued them to dinner-time." Gustabat here meant that nondescript meal which arose at Rome when jentaculum and prandium were fused into one, and that only a taste or mouthful of biscuit, as we shall show farther on.

Possibly, however, most excellent reader, like some epicurean traveller, who, in crossing the Alps, finds himself weather-bound at St. Bernard's on Ash-Wednesday, you surmise a remedy: you descry some opening from "the loopholes of a retreat" through which a few delicacies might be insinuated to spread verdure on this arid wilderness of biscuit. Casuistry can do much. A dead hand at casuistry has often proved more than a match for Lent with all his quarantines. But sorry I am to say that, in this case, no relief is hinted at in any ancient author. A grape or two (not a bunch of grapes), a raisin or two, a date, an olive— these are the whole amount of relief1 which the chancery of the Roman kitchen granted in such cases. All things here hang together, and prove each other,—the time, the place, the mode, the thing. Well might man eat standing, or eat in public, such a trifle as this. Go home, indeed, to such a breakfast! You would as soon think of ordering a cloth to be laid in order to eat a peach, or of asking a friend to join you in an orange. No man in his senses makes "two bites of a cherry." So let us pass on to the other stages of the day. Only, in taking leave of this morning's stage, throw your eyes back with me, Christian reader, upon this truly heathen meal, fit for idolatrous dogs like your Greeks and your Romans; survey, through the vista of ages, that thriceaccursed biscuit, with half a fig, perhaps, by way of garnish, and a huge hammer by its side, to secure the certainty of mastication by previous comminution. Then turn your eyes

1 "The whole amount of relief" :-From which it appears how grossly Locke (see his "Education") was deceived in fancying that Augustus practised any remarkable abstinence in taking only a bit of bread and a raisin or two by way of luncheon. Augustus did no more than most people did; secondly, he abstained only upon principles of luxury with a view to dinner; and, thirdly, for this dinner he never waited longer than up to four o'clock.

to a Christian breakfast-hot rolls, eggs, coffee, beef; but down, down, rebellious visions: we need say no more! You, reader, like myself, will breathe a malediction on the Classical era, and thank your stars for making you a Romanticist. Every morning I thank mine for keeping me back from the Augustan age, and reserving me to a period in which breakfast had been already invented. In the words of Ovid, I

say :

"Prisca juvent alios: ego me nunc denique natum

Gratulor. Hæc ætas moribus apta meis."

Our friend, the Roman cit, has therefore thus far, in his progress through life, obtained no breakfast, if he ever contemplated an idea so frantic. But it occurs to you, my faithful reader, that perhaps he will not always be thus unhappy. I could bring waggon-loads of sentiments, Greek as well as Roman, which prove, more clearly than the most eminent pike-staff, that, as the wheel of fortune revolves, simply out of the fact that it has carried a man downwards, it must subsequently carry him upwards, no matter what dislike that wheel, or any of its spokes, may bear to that man: “non, si male nunc sit, et olim sic erit": and that, if a man, through the madness of his nation, misses coffee and hot rolls at nine, he may easily run into a leg of mutton at twelve. True it is he may do so: truth is commendable: and I will not deny that a man may sometimes, by losing a breakfast, gain a dinner. Such things have been in various ages, and will be again, but not at Rome. There were reasons against it. We have heard of men who consider life under the idea of a wilderness-dry as a "remainder biscuit after a voyage ”—and who consider a day under the idea of a little life. Life is the macrocosm, or world at large day is the microcosm, or world in miniature. Consequently, if life is a wilderness, then day, as a little life, is a little wilderness. And this wilderness can be safely traversed only by having relays of fountains, or stages for refreshment. Such stages, they conceive, are found in the several meals which Providence has stationed at due intervals through the day, whenever the perverseness of man does not break the chain, or derange the order of succession.

These are the anchors by which man rides in that billowy

THE CASUISTRY OF ROMAN MEALS

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17

ocean between morning and night. The first anchor-viz. breakfast-having given way in Rome, the more need there is that he should pull up by the second; and that is often reputed to be dinner. And, as your dictionary, good reader, translated breakfast by that vain word jentaculum, so doubtless it will translate dinner by that still vainer word prandium. Sincerely I hope that your own dinner on this day, and through all time coming, may have a better root in fact and substance than this most visionary of all baseless thingsthe Roman prandium; of which I shall presently show you that the most approved translation is moonshine. Reader, I am anything but jesting here. In the very spirit of serious truth, I assure you that the delusion about "jentaculum" is even exceeded by this other delusion about "prandium." Salmasius himself, for whom a natural prejudice of place and time partially obscured the truth, admits, however, that prandium was a meal which the ancients rarely took ; his very words are- -“raro prandebant veteres." Now, judge for yourself of the good sense which is shown in translating by the word dinner, which must of necessity mean the chief meal, a Roman word which represents a fancy meal, a meal of caprice, a meal which few people took. At this moment, what is the single point of agreement between the noon meal of the English labourer and the evening meal of the English gentleman? What is the single circumstance common to both which causes us to denominate them by the common name of dinner? It is that in both we recognise the principal meal of the day, the meal upon which is thrown the onus of the day's support. In everything else they are as wide asunder as the poles; but they agree in this one point of their function. Is it credible, now, that, to represent such a meal amongst ourselves, we select a Roman word so notoriously expressing a mere shadow, a pure apology, that very few people ever tasted it-nobody sat down to it—not many washed their hands after it, and gradually the very name of it became interchangeable with another name, implying the slightest possible act of tentative tasting or sipping? "Post lavationem sine mensa prandium," says Seneca, "post quod non sunt lavandæ manus"; that is, “After bathing, I take a prandium without sitting down to table,

and such a prandium as brings after itself no need of washing the hands." No; moonshine as little soils the hands as it oppresses the stomach.

Reader! I, as well as Pliny, had an uncle, an East Indian uncle: doubtless you have such an uncle; everybody has an Indian uncle. Generally such a person is "rather yellow, rather yellow" (to quote Canning versus Lord Durham); that is the chief fault with his physics; but, as to his morals, he is universally a man of princely aspirations and habits. He is not always so orientally rich as he is reputed; but he is always orientally munificent. Call upon him at any hour from two to five, he insists on your taking tiffin, and such a tiffin ! The English corresponding term is luncheon: but how meagre a shadow is the European meal to its glowing Asiatic cousin! Still, gloriously as tiffin shines, does anybody imagine that it is a vicarious dinner, or ever meant to be the substitute and locum tenens of dinner? Wait till eight, and you will have your eyes opened on that subject. So of the Roman prandium: had it been as luxurious as it was simple, still it was always viewed as something meant only to stay the stomach, as a prologue to something beyond. The prandium was far enough from giving the feeblest idea even of the English luncheon; yet it stood in the same relation to the Roman day. Now to Englishmen that meal scarcely exists, and, were it not for women, whose delicacy of organisation does not allow them to fast so long as men, would probably be abolished. It is singular in this, as in other points, how nearly England and ancient Rome approximate. We all know how hard it is to tempt a man generally into spoiling his appetite by eating before dinner. The same dislike of violating what they called the integrity of the appetite (integram famem) existed in Rome. Integer means what is intact, unviolated by touch. Cicero, when protesting against spoiling his appetite for dinner by tasting anything beforehand, says integram famem ad cœnam afferam: I intend bringing to dinner an appetite untampered with. Nay, so much stress did the Romans lay on maintaining this primitive state of the appetite undisturbed that any prelusions with either jentaculum or prandium were said, by a very strong phrase indeed, polluere famem-to pollute the sanctity of

the appetite. The appetite was regarded as a holy vestal flame, soaring upwards towards dinner throughout the day: if undebauched, it tended to its natural consummation in cœna expiring like a phoenix, to rise again out of its own ashes. On this theory, to which language had accommodated itself, the two prelusive meals of nine or ten o'clock a.m. and of one P.M., so far from being ratified by the public sense, and adopted into the economy of the day, were regarded gloomily as gross irregularities, enormities, debauchers of the natural instinct; and, in so far as they thwarted that instinct, lessened it, or depraved it, were almost uniformly held to be full of pollution, and, finally, to profane a sacred motion of Such was the language.

nature.

But we guess what is passing in the reader's mind. He thinks that all this proves the prandium to have been a meal of little account, and in very many cases absolutely unknown. But still he thinks all this might happen to the English dinner that also might be neglected; supper might be generally preferred; and, nevertheless, dinner would be as truly entitled to the name of dinner as before. Many a student neglects his dinner; enthusiasm in any pursuit must often have extinguished appetite for all of us. Many a time and oft did this happen to Sir Isaac Newton. Evidence is on record that such a deponent at eight o'clock A.M. found Sir Isaac with one stocking on, one off: at two, said deponent called him to dinner. Being interrogated whether Sir Isaac had pulled on the minus stocking, or gartered the plus stocking, witness replied that he had not. Being asked if Sir Isaac came to dinner, replied that he did not. Being again asked, "At sunset, did you look in on Sir Isaac?" witness replied, "I did." And now, upon your conscience, sir, by the virtue of your oath, in what state were the stockings?" Ans.—“ In statu quo ante bellum.” It seems Sir Isaac had fought through that whole battle of a long day, so trying a campaign to many people-he had traversed that whole sandy Zaarah, without calling, or needing to call, at one of those fountains, stages, or mansiones,1 by which (according to our former explanation) Providence has relieved the con

1 "Mansiones" :- The halts of the Roman legions, the stationary places of repose which divided the marches, were so called.