I verily believe, however I have titled this opinion, yet it will by no
means be allowed for a Paradox by a number of those, whose judgement
ought to bear the greatest sway. And, to speak freely, it would seem
to me very uncouth, that any man that makes a profession of more
understanding than a beast, should open his mouth to the contrary,
or make any scruple at all of readily subscribing to the truth and
evidence of this position, that a frugal and simple diet is much better
than a full and dainty.
Tell me, you that seem to demur on the business, whether a sober and
austere diet serves not, without further help, to chase away that
racking humour of the gout, which by all other helps that can be used,
scarce receives any mitigation at all; but, do what can be done, lies
tormenting the body, till it have spent itself. Tell me whether this
holy medicine serve not to the driving away of headache, to the cure
of dizziness, to the stopping of rheums, to the stay of flukes, to
the getting away of loathsome diseases, to the freedom from dishonest
belchings, to the prevention of agues, and, in a word, to the clearing
and draining of all ill humours whatsoever in the body. Nor do the
benefits thereof stay only in the body, but ascend likewise to the
perfecting of the soul itself: for how manifest is it, that through
a sober and strict diet, the mind and all the faculties thereof
become waking, quick, and cheerful, how is the wit sharpened, the
understanding solidated, the affections tempered, and, in a word, the
whole soul and spirit of a man freed from encumbrances, and made apt
and expedite for the apprehension of wisdom, and the embracement of
virtue?
The ancient sages, were, I am sure, of this opinion; and Plato in
particular made notable remonstrance of it; when upon his coming into
Sicily from Athens, he did so bitterly condemn the Syracusian tables,
which being furnished with precious and dainty cates, provoking
sauces, and rich wines, sent away their guests twice a day full of
good cheer. But what wouldst thou have said, oh, Plato! if thou hadst
perhaps lighted upon such as we Christians nowadays are; amongst whom,
he that eats but two good meals a day, as we term them, boasts himself,
and, is applauded by others for a person of great temperance and
singular good diet?
Undoubtly, our extravagance in this matter, having added prologues
of breakfasts, interludes of banquets, epilogues of rere-suppers to
the comedy would have caused thee to turn thy divine eloquence to the
praise of those Syracusion gluttons, which, in respect of our usages
and customs, might seem great masters of temperance.
Nay, very Epicurus himself, however, he may thank Tully’s slanders, his
name is become in this regard so infamous, yet placed his chief delight
this way in no greater dainties than savoury herbs, and fresh cheese.
But I would fain once understand from these gluttons, that seem born
only to waste good meat, what the reason may be, that nowadays the
store of victuals is so much abated, and the price enhanced of that
it was in time of old, when yet the world appears to have been then
much fuller of people than it now is? Undoubtedly, that scarcity
and dearness under which we labour, can proceed from nothing but
our excessive gluttony which devours things faster than Nature can
bring them forth. And that plenty and cheapness, which crowned their
happy days, was maintained and kept on foot chiefly through the good
husbandry of that frugal and simple diet which they used.
S. Jerome, writing of the course of life held by those good fathers
that retired themselves into the deserts of Egypt, the better to serve
God, tells us, that they were so enamoured of spare and simple diet,
that they censured it in themselves for a kind of riot, to feed on
anything that was dressed with fire. The same in every point doth
Cassian report, in his relations of the holy monks and hermits of his
time.
I find in ancient physicians, that the inhabitants of the old world
were such strict followers of sobriety, that they kept themselves
precisely to bread in the morning; and at night they made their supper
of flesh only without addition of sauces, or any first or second
courses. And by this means it came to pass, that they lived so long and
in continual health without so much as once hearing the names of those
many grievous infirmities that nowadays vex mankind.
What think you might be the cause, that the Romans, the Arcadians,
and the Portugals passed so many hundred of years, without having any
acquaintance at all with physic or physicians? Surely nothing else
but their sober spare diet, which when all is done, we are ofttimes
constrained to undergo, and ever indeed directed and advised unto,
by those who really practise this divine science of physic, for the
recovery and conservation of their patient’s health, and not covetously
for their own gain. I read in approved histories, that Ptolemy,
upon some occasion or other out-riding his followers in Egypt, was
so pressed with hunger, that he was fain to call in at a poor man’s
cottage, who brought him a piece of rye-bread; which when he had eaten,
he took a solemn oath, that he never in all his life tasted better, nor
more pleasing meat: and from that day forward, he set light by all the
costly sorts of bread, which he had been formerly accustomed unto.
The Thracian women, that they might bear healthful, strong, and hardy
children, ate nothing but milk and nettles, and the greatest dainties
that the Lacedemonians had amongst them, was a certain kind of black
pottage, that looked no better than melted pitch, and could not by
computation stand in above three half-pence a gallon at the most. The
Persians, that in their time were the best disciplined people on the
earth, ate a little Nasturtium[B] with their bread; and that was all
the victuals that this brave nation used, when they made conquest of
the world.
Artaxerxes, the brother of Cyrus, being overthrown in battle, was
constrained in his flight to sit down with dry figs and barley-bread
which upon proof he found so good, as he seriously lamented his
misfortune, in having,--through the continual cloying of artificial
dainties, wherewith he had been bred up,--been so long time a stranger
to that great pleasure and delight, which natural and simple food
yields, when it meets with true hunger.
True it is, our stomach is a troublesome creditor, and ofttimes
shamelessly exacts more than its due: but undoubtedly, if we were not
partial, and corrupted by the allurements of that base content which
dainties promise, we might easily quiet the grudgings and murmurings
thereof. It’s not the stomach, I wis, which would rest apayed with
that which is at hand; but the satisfaction of our capricious
fancies, that makes us wear out our selves, and weary all the world
besides with uncessant travel in the search of rarities, and in the
compounding of new delicacies. If we were but half as wise as we
ought to be, there need none of all this ado that we make, about this
and that kind of Manchet, Dutch-bread, and French-bread: and I know
not what new inventions are brought on foot, to make more business
in the world; whereas with much less cost and trouble we might be
much better served with that which grows at home, and is to be found
ready in every thatched cottage. That which is most our own, and that
which we therefore perhaps, fools as we be, most contemn in this
kind,--barley-bread I mean,--is by all the old physicians, warranted
for a most sound and healthful food. He that eats daily of it, say
they, shall undoubtedly never be troubled with the gout in the feet.
Shew me such a virtue in any of these new inventions, and I’ll yield
there were some reason perhaps in making use of them, if they might
with ease and quiet be procured. But to buy them at the price of so
much pains, time, and hazard as they cost us, undoubtedly too much,
although they brought as much benefit as they do prejudice. Consider
well, I pray, whether it be not a thing to make a wise man run beside
himself, to see such a ransacking of all the elements by fishers
and fowlers, and hunters; such a turmoiling of the world by cooks
and comfit-makers, and tavern-keepers and a numberless many of such
needless occupations; such a hazarding of mens lives on sea and land,
by heat and cold, and a thousand other dangers and difficulties; and
all forsooth in procuring dainties for the satisfaction of a greedy
maw, and senseless stomach, that within a very short while after must
of necessity make a banquet of itself to worms.
What an endless maze of error, what an intolerable hell of torments and
afflictions hath this wicked gluttony brought the world unto. And yet,
wretched men that we are, we have no mind to get out of it, but like
silly animals led by the chaps, go on all day long, digging our graves
with our teeth, till at last we bring the earth over our heads much
before we otherwise need to have done. And yet there was a certain odd
fellow once in the world, I would there were not too many of the same
mind nowadays! Philoxenus by name, that seriously wished he might have
a swallow as long and as large as the cranes, the better to enjoy the
full relish of his licorish morsels. Long after him, I read of another
of the same fraternity, Apicius, I trow, that set all his happiness in
good cheer: but little credit, I am sure, he hath got by the means; no
more than Maximinus, for all he was an Emperor, by his using every meal
to stuff into his paunch thirty pounds of flesh, beside bread and wine
to boot. But Geta deserves, in my opinion, the monarchy of gluttons, as
he had of the Romans. His feasts went alway according to the letters
of the alphabet, as when P’s turn came, he would have plovers, and
partridges, and peacocks, and the like; and so in all the rest, his
table was always furnished with meats whose names began with one and
the same letter.
But what do I raking up this carrion? Let them rot in their corruption
and lie more covered over with infamy than with earth. Only, to give
the world notice who have been the great masters of this worthy science
of filling the stomach and following good cheer, I have been enforced
to make this remembrance of some of their goodly opinions and pranks.
Which let who so will be their partner in: for my part, I solemnly
avow, that I find no greater misery than to victual the camp, as the
proverb is, cramming in lustily over night, and to be bound next
morning to rise early and to go about serious business.
Oh what a piece of purgatory is it, to feel within a man’s self those
qualms, those gripings, those swimmings, and those flashing heats that
follow upon over-eating! And what a shame, if our foreheads were not of
brass, and our friends before whom we act them, infected with the same
disease, would it be to stand yawning, stretching, and perbreaking the
crudities of the former day’s surfeit!
On the contrary, what a happiness do I prove, when after a sober
pittance I find sound and quiet sleep all night long, and at peep of
day get up as fresh as the morning itself, full of vigour and activity
both in mind and body, for all manner of affairs! Let who will take his
pleasure in the fulness of delicates; I desire my part may be in this
happy enjoyment of my self, although it should be with the abatement of
much more content than any dainties can afford.
When I was last at Messina, my lord Antonio Doria, told me that he
was acquainted in Spain with an old man who had lived above a hundred
years. One day having invited him home and entertained him sumptuously,
as his lordship’s manner is, the good old man instead of thanks told
him, “_My lord, had I been accustomed to these kind of meals in my
youth, I had never come to this age which you see, nor been able to
preserve that health and strength both of mind and body, which you make
shew so much to admire in me._”
See now! here’s a proof even in our age, that the length and happiness
of men’s lives in the old world was chiefly caused by the means of
blessed temperance. But what need more words in a matter as evident
as the sun at noonday, to all but those whose brains are sunk down
into the quagmire of their stomachs? I’ll make an end with that which
cannot be denied, nor deluded, nor resisted; so plain is the truth,
and so great is the authority of the argument; and this it is: Peruse
all histories of whatever times and people, and you shall always find
the haters of a sober life and spare diet to have been sworn enemies
against goodness and virtue: witness Claudius, Caligula, Heliogabalus,
Clodius the tragedian, Vitellius, Verus, Tiberius, and the like. And on
the contrary, the friends and followers of sobriety and frugality to
have been men of divine spirits, and most heroical performances for the
benefit of mankind; such as were Augustus, Alexander Severus, Paulus
Æmilius, Epaminondas, Socrates, and all the rest who are registered for
excellent in the lists of princes, soldiers and philosophers.
A spare diet then is better than a splendid and sumptuous, let the
Sardanapaluses of our age prattle what they list. Nature, and reason,
and experience, and the example of all virtuous persons prove it to be
so. He that goes about to persuade me otherwise shall lose his labour,
though he had his tongue and brain furnished with all the sophistry and
eloquence that ever Greece and Italy could jointly have afforded.