THE HAPPINESS OF HAVING A CATHOLIC TASTE.
There's no want of meat, Sir;
Portly and curious viands are prepared
To please all kinds of appetites.
MASSINGER.
A fastidious taste is like a squeamish appetite; the one has its
origin in some disease of mind, as the other has in some ailment of
the stomach. Your true lover of literature is never fastidious. I do
not mean the _helluo librorum_, the swinish feeder, who thinks that
every name which is to be found in a title-page, or on a tomb-stone,
ought to be rescued from oblivion; nor those first cousins of the
moth, who labour under a bulimy for black-letter, and believe every
thing to be excellent which was written in the reign of Elizabeth. I
mean the man of robust and healthy intellect, who gathers the harvest
of literature into his barns, threshes the straw, winnows the grain,
grinds it at his own mill, bakes it in his own oven, and then eats the
true bread of knowledge. If he bake his loaf upon a cabbage leaf, and
eat onions with his bread and cheese, let who will find fault with him
for his taste,—not I!
The Doves, father as well as son, were blest with a hearty
intellectual appetite, and a strong digestion: but the son had the
more catholic taste. He would have relished caviare; would have
ventured upon laver undeterred by its appearance—and would have liked
it.
What an excellent thing did God bestow on man
When he did give him a good stomach![1]
[Footnote 1: BEAUMONT and FLETCHER.]
He would have eaten sausages for breakfast at Norwich, Sally Luns at
Bath, Sweet Butter in Cumberland, Orange Marmalade at Edinburgh,
Findon Haddocks at Aberdeen, and drunk punch with Beef steaks to
oblige the French if they insisted upon obliging him with a _dejeûner
a l'Angloise_.
A good digestion turneth all to health.[2]
[Footnote 2: HERBERT.]
He would have eaten squab-pye in Devonshire, and the pye which is
squabber than squab in Cornwall; sheep's head with the hair on in
Scotland, and potatoes roasted on the hearth in Ireland; frogs with
the French, pickled herrings with the Dutch, sour-krout with the
Germans, maccaroni with the Italians, aniseed with the Spaniards,
garlic with any body; horse-flesh with the Tartars; ass-flesh with the
Persians; dogs with the North Western American Indians, curry with the
Asiatic East Indians, birds' nests with the Chinese, mutton roasted
with honey with the Turks, pismire cakes on the Orinoco, and turtle
and venison with the Lord Mayor; and the turtle and venison he would
have preferred to all the other dishes, because his taste, though
catholic, was not indiscriminating. He would have tried all, tasted
all, thriven upon all, and lived contentedly and cheerfully upon
either, but he would have liked best that which was best. And his
intellectual appetite had the same happy catholicism.
He would not have said with Euphues, “if I be in Crete, I can lie; if
in Greece, I can shift; if in Italy, I can court it:” but he might
have said with him, “I can carouse with Alexander; abstain with
Romulus; eat with the Epicure; fast with the Stoic; sleep with
Endymion; watch with Chrysippus.”
The Reader will not have forgotten I trust, (but if he should I now
remind him of it,) that in the brief inventory of Daniel's library
there appeared some odd volumes of that “book full of Pantagruelism,”
the inestimable life of the Great Gargantua. The elder Daniel could
make nothing of this book; and the younger, who was about ten years
old when he began to read it, less than he could of the Pilgrim's
Progress. But he made out something.
Young Daniel was free from all the _isms_ in Lily, and from rhotacism
to boot; he was clear too of schism, and all the worse _isms_ which
have arisen from it: having by the blessing of Providence been bred up
not in any denomination ending in _ist_ or _inian_, or _erian_ or
_arian_, but as a dutiful and contented son of the church of England.
In humour however he was by nature a Pantagruelist. And indeed in his
mature years he always declared that one of the reasons which had led
him to reject the old humoral pathology was that it did not include
Pantagruelism, which he insisted depended neither upon heat or cold,
moisture or dryness, nor upon any combination of those qualities; but
was itself a peculiar and elementary humour; a truth he said, of which
he was feelingly and experimentally convinced, and lauded the Gods
therefore.
Mr. Wordsworth in that Poem which Mr. Jeffrey has said _won't do_—(Mr.
Jeffrey is always lucky in his predictions whether as a politician or
a critic,—bear witness Wellington! bear witness Wordsworth and
Southey! bear witness Elia and Lord Byron!) Mr. Wordsworth in that
Poem which
The high and tender Muses shall accept
With gracious smile deliberately pleased,
And listening Time reward with sacred praise:
Mr. Wordsworth in that noble Poem observes,
Oh many are the Poets that are sown
By nature!
Among the Emblems of Daniel Heinsius (look at his head, Reader, if
thou hast a collection of portraits to refer to, and thou wilt marvel
how so queer a conceit should have entered it, for seldom has there
been a face more gnarled and knotted with crabbed cogitation than that
of this man, who was one of the last of the Giants;)—among his
emblems, I say, is one which represents Cupid sowing a field, and
little heads springing out of the ground on all sides, some up to the
neck, others to the shoulders, and some with the arms out. If the crop
were examined I agree with Mr. Wordsworth that Poets would be found
there as thick as darnel in the corn;—and grave counsellors would not
be wanting whose advice would be that they should be weeded out.
The Pantagruelists are scarcer. Greece produced three great tragic
Poets, and only one Aristophanes. The French had but one Rabelais when
the seven Pleiades shone in their poetical hemisphere. We have seen a
succession of great Tragedians from Betterton to the present time; and
in all that time there has been but one Grimaldi in whom the
Pantagruelism of Pantomime has found its perfect representative.
And yet the Reader must not hastily conclude that I think
Pantagruelism a better thing than Poetry, because it is rarer; that
were imputing to me the common error of estimating things by their
rarity rather than their worth, an error more vulgar than any which
Sir Thomas Brown has refuted. But I do hold this, that all the
greatest Poets have had a spice of Pantagruelism in their composition,
which I verily believe was essential to their greatness. What the
world lost in losing the Margites of Homer we know not, we only know
that Homer had there proved himself a Pantagruelist. Shakespear was a
Pantagruelist; so was Cervantes; and till the world shall have
produced two other men in whom that humour has been wanting equal to
these, I hold my point established.
Some one objects Milton. I thank him for the exception; it is just
such an exception as proves the rule; for look only at Milton's Limbo
and you will see what a glorious Pantagruelist he might have been,—if
the Puritans had not spoilt him for Pantagruelism.