of a kingdom; and the dinners they gave, and the government they
maintained, are matters to which description can hardly do justice.
The faction in question was headed by, and almost solely consisted
of, three men in Erythra, who stood, in regard to Cnopus, the King,
as “adorers and flatterers” (πρόσκυνες καὶ κόλακες). They murdered
their Sovereign, and, by a _coup-d’état_, possessed themselves of
his authority. Their names were Ortyges, Irus, and Echarus; and they
ruled with a triple rod of iron, held in very effeminate fingers.
They silenced all opponents by slaying them; and, when no one dared
utter a breath against them, they vaunted their universal popularity.
They administered a ferociously absurd sort of justice at the gates
of Erythra, where they sat decked out in purple and gold. They were
sandaled like women, wore ornaments only suitable to females, and sat
down to dinner in diadems that dazzled the company.
The guests were once free citizens, who were now compelled to bear the
litters of their _parvenu_ masters, to cleanse the streets, and then,
by way of contrast, to attend the banquet of the Triumvirs, with their
wives and daughters. If they objected to drag these latter to the scene
of splendid infamy, the objection was only made at the price of death.
The unhappy women were nothing the safer from insult by the decease of
their natural protectors; and the scenes at the palace were such as
only the uncleanest of demons could rejoice in. If the authorities had
reason to be grave, the whole city was compelled to affect sorrow; and
duly-appointed officers went round, with hard-thonged whips, to scourge
a sense of “decent horror” into the countenances of the bewildered
inhabitants. Things at last reached such a pitch of extravagant
atrocity, that the people took heart of grace, screwed up their courage
by Chian wine, and swept their oppressors into Hades;--and, for years
afterwards, commemorative banquets celebrated the restoration of the
people from the oppression of the parasites.
I would recommend those who would see the parasite in action, to
study the comedies of Plautus, wherein he figures as necessarily
as the impertinent valet in a Spanish comedy. Plautus calls the
parasites _poetæ_, as being given to lying; and it is singular that
the Gauls called their poets “parasites,” as being fond of good
living, and not being always in a condition to procure it. They had
their “dull season:” it was when the wealthy were at their villas;
at which time the parasites dined upon nothing, in town, with good
“Duke Humphrey.” When the city was again resorted to by the rich,
then the parasite might sometimes be seen purchasing, by order of his
patron, the provisions for the evening feast. We find one of these
gentry, in Plautus, boasting that he knows a story that will be worth
thirty dinners to him. Before the era of printing, the parasite, with
his jests and histories, was a sort of living Circulating Library.
Saturion (another of Plautus’s pictures of the parasite) is at peace
with himself, because, as he says, he can provide for his daughter by
bequeathing to her his rich collection of jokes and dinner-stories.
“They are all sparkling Attic,” he says; “and there is not a dull
Sicilian anecdote among them.”
If the race were, in some sense of the word, “literary,” they were
not at all in love with science, or the improvements wrought by
its application. Witness the bitterness with which Plautus makes
one denounce the sun-dial, then of recent introduction. Before that
tell-tale appeared, dinners used to be served when people were hungry;
but _now_ even hungry people wait for the appointed hour. In short,
throughout life, they worked but for the sake of the banquet and
wine-pot; and, even after death, they longed for libations, as appears
in the epitaph on the parasite, Sergius of Pola, who is made to say,
from the grave,--
“_Si urbani perhiberi vultis
Arenti meo cineri,
Cantharo piaculum vinarium festinate._”
“If you’ve any regard for this corpse here of mine,
Be so good as to damp it with hogsheads of wine.”
Finally, these diners-out by profession were essentially selfish; and
the fire of their attachment blazed up, or died away, according to that
in the kitchen of the Amphitryon by whom they were maintained.
A good specimen of the parasite of the last century may be found in the
Captain Cormorant of Anstey’s “Bath Guide;” but the race is by no means
extinct, though the individual be more rarely met with; and, be it said
as their due, they execute their office with something more of decency
than did their ancient predecessors. Modern flattery, like modern oils,
is “double refined.” Let us see if we can trace the course of this
refinement through the Table Traits of Utopia and the Golden Age.
THE TABLES OF UTOPIA AND THE GOLDEN AGE.
The good Archbishop Fénelon, in his “_Voyage dans l’Ile des Plaisirs_,”
cites some charming examples of the pleasant way in which people lived
in the Utopian Land of Cocagne, which he describes from imagination,
and where the laws were characterized by more good sense than
distinguishes the legislation of the Utopian authorities of More.
The “_Voyage_” of Fénelon was probably founded on a fragment of
Teleclides, who has narrated, in rattling Greek metres, how the
citizens of the world lived and banqueted in the golden age of its
lusty youth. The poet puts the description into the mouth of Saturn,
who says, “I will tell you what sort of life I vouchsafed to men in the
early ages of creation. In the first place, peace reigned universally,
and was as common as the water you wash your hands with. Fear and
disease were entirely unknown; and the earth provided spontaneously for
every human want. The rivers then poured cataracts of wine into the
valleys; and cakes disputed with loaves to get into the mouth of man,
as he walked abroad, supplicating to be eaten, and giving assurances of
excellent flavour and quality. The tables were covered with fish which
floated into the kitchens, and courteously put themselves to roast.
By the sides of the couches rolled streams of sauces, bearing with
them joints of ready-roasted meat; while rivulets full of _ragoûts_
were near the guests, who dipped in, and took therefrom, according to
their fancy. Every one could eat of what he pleased; and all that he
ate was sweet and succulent. There were countless pomegranate seeds
for seasoning; little _pâtés_ and _grives_, done to a turn, insinuated
themselves into the mouths of the banqueters; and tarts got smashed in
trying to force their way into the throat. The children played with
sow-paps and other delicacies as they would with toys; and the men were
gigantic in height, and obese in figure.”
The above is a specimen of the classical idea of that delicious--
----“Land of Cocagne,
That Elysium of all that is friand and nice,
Where for hail they have bon-bons, and claret for rain,
And the skaters, in winter, show off on cream-ice.”
It is a theme with which modern poets have been as fond of dealing as
Teleclides and others of the tuneful children of song, in the early
period when young Time counted his birthdays by the sun. It has been
well treated by Béranger, who thus describes, through my imperfect
translation, his own impressions of
A JOURNEY TO THE LAND OF COCAGNE.
Ho, friends, every one!
Let us up, and be gone;--
To where care is not known,
Let us hasten away!
Yes; fired with champagne,
I reel o’er the plain,
And see dear Cocagne
In its sunny array.
O! land full of glee,--
Here long may I be,
And laugh merrilie
At Fate’s changeable way.
For here--what a treat!--
I may love, drink, and eat,
And--this makes it more sweet--
There is nothing to pay!
My appetite’s great,
And I see the huge gate
Of a tower of state
At my elbow, handy:
The tower is a pie;--
And tall guards, standing by,
Carry spears ten feet high,
All in sugar-candy.
Ah! banquet of fun,
It will please ev’ry one:
Look, there is not a gun
But of sugar is made!
See the paintings, how grand!
And the statues, they stand,
All wrought by the hand
Out of sweet marmalade.
Here the people repair
In gay crowds to the square,
Where the jests of a fair
With loud merriment shine;
Where the fountains so gay
Not with water do play,
But are sparkling away
With rich, rosy, old wine!
Here, the baking’s begun;
There, the baking is done;--
See the folks how they run,
With beef, mutton, and veal.
And the eaters think fit,
That the man who lacks wit,
Shall be made a “turnspit,”
And be bound to the wheel.
To the palace I haste,
With two Falstaffs I feast,
(Twenty stone weighs the least,)
And with them hob and nob.
And here, too, I’ve found,
Where such good things abound,
Shy Venus quite round,
And young Cupid a squab.
No sadness of brow,
No pedantic vain show,
No pompous state-bow,
Can be ever allow’d:--
But with feasting and song
We carry night on,
Drink deep and drink long,
And toast beauty aloud.
Now, good-natured lasses,
To the music of glasses,
As the sweet dessert passes,
Let’s laugh the time by.
Let fools sigh and snuffle,
And merriment muffle,
But you, dears, shall ruffle
Our pro--priety.
* * * * *
So, in this joyous way,
With fresh loves ev’ry day,
And with no debts to pay,
We scamper time o’er;
While between drinking deep,
And light visions in sleep,
Our young years will creep
To a hundred or more.
Yes, dear old Cocagne,
It’s with thee,--free from pain,--
But who checks my strain,
In an accent so shrill?
For, while singing, I thought,--
But, my friends, we are caught,--
’Tis the waiter who’s brought
His confounded long bill.
The fairy-land of Cocagne is said to derive its name from the Latin,
_coquere_, “to cook.” Duchat says, that its flocks and herds present
themselves perfectly cooked, and that the larks descend from the skies
ready roasted. For it is there alone--
“Where so ready all nature its cookery yields,
_Maccaroni au parmesan_ grows in the fields;
Little birds fly about with the true pheasant taint,
And the geese are all born with a liver complaint.”
The Utopian banquets, which are described by More, present an imaginary
view of society in another extreme. The learned Chancellor, amid much
invented nonsense, pictures the manners of the citizens of Amaurat
after the fashion of those of Crete and Lacedæmonia, especially with
regard to their common halls for their repasts,--a fashion, by the way,
which was partially followed in the club-rooms of Attica. Others of the
author’s ideas have been realized since he wrote; and, in this respect,
his Utopia may be said to have done good service; but there is a woful
residue of nonsense, nevertheless, which is neither amusing nor useful.
Sir Thomas describes the citizens of Amaurat as possessing
provision markets abundantly supplied with herbs, fruits, bread,
fowl, and cattle. The latter were previously slain in extra-mural
slaughter-houses, well-furnished with running water, for washing away
the filth after killing. The butchers were slaves, (for serfdom “was a
peculiar institution” of this happy republic,) the free citizens not
being permitted to kill animals, lest such pursuit should harden their
singularly tender characters. “In every street,” we are told by the
author, “there are great halls that lie at an equal distance from one
another, and are marked by peculiar names. The Syphogrants dwell in
those, that are set over thirty families, fifteen lying on one side of
it, and as many on the other. In these they do all meet and eat. The
stewards of every one of them come to the market-place at an appointed
hour, and, according to the number of those that belong to their hall,
they carry home provisions. But they take more care of their sick than
of any others.... After the steward of the hospitals has taken for them
whatever the physician does prescribe for them, at the market-place,
then the best things that remain are distributed equally among the
halls, in proportion to their numbers; only, in the first place, they
serve the Prince, the Chief Priest, the Tranibors, and Ambassadors,
and strangers, if there are any, which, indeed, falls out but seldom,
and for whom there are houses well-furnished, particularly appointed,
when they come among them. At the hours of dinner and supper, the
Syphogranty, being called together by sound of trumpet, meets and
eats together, except only such as are in the hospitals, or lie sick
at home. Yet, after the halls are served, no man is hindered to carry
provisions home from the market-place, for they know none does that
but for some good reason; for, though any that will may eat at home,
yet none does it willingly, since it is both an indecent and foolish
thing for any to give themselves the trouble to make ready an ill
dinner at home, when there is a much more plentiful one made ready for
him so near at hand. All the uneasy and sordid services about these
halls are done by their slaves; but the dressing and cooking of their
meat, and ordering of their tables, belong only to the women, which
goes round all the women of every family by turns. They sit at three
or more tables, according to their numbers; the men sit towards the
wall, and the women sit on the other side, that if any of them fall
suddenly ill, which is ordinary to those expecting to be mothers, she
may, without disturbing the rest, rise and go to the nurses’ room, who
are there with the suckling children, where there is always fire and
clean water at hand, and some cradles in which they may lay the young
children,” &c. But, to return from this public nursery to the public
dining hall, “all the children under five years of age dined with the
nurses: the rest of the younger sort of both sexes, till they are fit
for marriage, do either serve those that sit at table; or, if they are
not strong enough for that, they stand by them in great silence, and
eat that which is given them by those that sit at table, nor have they
any other formality of dining.” The whole formality was bad enough, and
that last-mentioned was a Doric custom prevailing in Crete. As to the
personal arrangements at these Utopian tables, the infelicitous guests
stood much upon their order of precedence: the syphogrant and his
wife, the _gnädige Frau Syphograntinn_, presided at the centre of the
cross-table, at the upper end of the hall. After the Magistrates and
their mates, came the Priests and their ladies,--for More placed the
Church below the State, and hinted that celibacy in the Clergy was not
to be commended. Below these, groups of the young and gay were placed,
between flanking companies of the aged and grave, to spoil their mirth,
and improve their manners; and this Spartan custom was occasionally
imitated at Athenian feasts, albeit the Athenians looked with something
like contempt upon the institutions of old Laconia. The best dishes
were placed before the oldest men, and the latter gave of the dainty
bits to the young, if these merited such favour by their behaviour; if
not, they took their chance of what the older gourmands might leave, or
were obliged to be content with the plainer fare allotted to them.
During this delectable process, the young could not have offended by
their gaiety, nor the old have improved them by conversation, seeing
that a reader was appointed, to assist digestion by reading aloud an
Essay on Morality. The Romans had the same office performed at some of
their meals by learned slaves. More expressly says that the Utopian
lecture was so short, that it was neither tedious nor uneasy to those
that heard it; and that after it, the elders not only wagged their
beards by “pleasant enlargements,” but encouraged the young to follow
them in the same track. This must have been after the supper, when it
was the law of Utopia, not to “run a mile,” but to “rest awhile.” The
dinners were dispatched quickly, because work awaited the diners, while
the supper-eaters had nothing to do afterwards but sleep. This must
have been all terribly dreary, if it had ever been realized. The only
pleasant feature in More’s Utopian banquets is, that wherein he says
that there was always music at supper, and fruit served up after meat,
(which, by the way, was a cruel trial for the digestive powers,) and
that as the repast proceeded, “some burn perfumes, and sprinkle about
sweet ointments, and sweet waters; and they are wanting in nothing
that may cheer up their spirits; for they give themselves a large
allowance in that way, and indulge themselves in all such pleasures as
are attended with no inconvenience. Thus,” he adds, “do they that are
in towns eat together; but in the country, where they live at a greater
distance, every one eats at home, and no family wants any necessary
sort of provision; for it is from them that provisions are sent in to
them that live in the towns.”
I have noticed above the slave-readers at Roman dinners. These were
seldom born slaves; indeed, of born slaves, among the Greeks or Romans,
the numbers were fewer than might be reasonably imagined. Those who
became authors or teachers, were the distinguished and illustrious of
their class; and it was they who relieved the tedium of a Roman repast
by reading livelier sallies than Essays on Morality, like the Utopians.
If their rank in humanity was low, their ability secured for them many
privileges which even freedmen did not enjoy. Of this rank of reading
slaves was Andronicus, the inventor of dramatic poetry. Plautus, the
witty, but coarse, play-writer, miller, and Jack of all trades, was
a slave. Terence was also a dramatist, and not only a slave, but a
Negro slave. Æsop the fabulist, Phædrus, his imitator, and the moral
philosopher Epictetus, were slaves. The latter, who was as low in
condition among bondsmen as he was exalted in his character of teacher
of mankind, was the slave of one who had been a slave,--a depth of
degradation than which there can be none deeper. But his mission was
a great one; for he appears to me to have been an instrument employed
to prepare men’s minds for a change from the vices of Paganism to the
virtues of Christianity. His writings are as stepping-stones across the
dark and rapid stream dividing error from truth. They are admirably
calculated to enable men to go forward; not only to induce them to
make the first step out of infidelity; but, having made it, rather to
make a second in advance towards Christ, than go backward again in the
direction of the dazzling unintelligibilities of the Capitoline Jove.
From slavery, if we turn our eyes towards mere poverty, the next
condition to it, we shall see that the poor men characteristically
paid their addresses to poetry;--and they were the “lions” at the
dinners and assemblies of Rome. Such was Horace, who, if he were not
in want, was of inferior descent, his father having been a slave, and
subsequently, on being enfranchised, a tax-gatherer. Virgil was of
equally mean descent on the paternal side; but he derived some portion
of nobility from his mother. Juvenal, too, was not only poor and a
poet,--a condition that could draw upon it only a serf’s contempt,--but
he was, moreover, an exceedingly angry poet. In equal proportion as he
was poor, angry, and satirical in poetry, was Lucian poor, angry, and
satirical in prose.
If the dining-out poets were poor, it was much the same with the
philosophers. The proudest walks of philosophy were trodden by
Demosthenes, the blacksmith. Socrates was the ill-featured, but
original-minded, son of a mason and midwife. Epicurus was only rich in
a valueless boast of being descended from Ajax; and Isocrates, whose
father manufactured the musical ancestry from which are descended the
modern families of piano-forte and fiddle, was also one of the immortal
race of intellectual giants.... Of other writers we may remark, that
Quintus Curtius, whose “Alexander the Great” is the first historical
romance that ever was written, and contains the best description of a
Babylonian banquet that ever was painted in words, was of an ignoble
family. Celsus was, at least, not a Roman citizen, though resident at
Rome; and Plutarch was just “respectable,” and nothing more;--though
to be worthy of respect, as the term implies, is as high rank as a man
need sigh for.
But though art and science, though the Nine Sisters who made
Parnassus vocal, were thus worshipped by the slave and his cousin the
beggar, wealth was by no means a synonymous term for either sloth
or incapacity. The opulent Lucretius, who believed nothing; the two
Plinies, the soul of one of whom, “with a difference,” entered into
Horace Walpole, and who wrote about his slave Zozimus, as Walpole does
of his favourite servants; the tender and chivalrous Tibullus,--a
Latin Sir Philip Sidney; the profligate Sophocles; Æschylus, the
bottle-drainer; and the lofty Euripides: all these mounted Pegasus
with golden spurs, and gave glorious dinners to guests with whom they
could contend in the battle of brains. Some, like Martial, got their
mouths filled with the sugar-candy of imperial recompence. Cæsar, the
Commentator, was the descendant of the Sabine Kings, and the founder
of an empire. In Plato we see the double condition of aristocrat and
slave. From the latter condition he was rescued by his noble friends
at the cost of three thousand _drachmas_; more fortunate in this than
Diogenes, who, being friendless, was left to hug his irons, and teach
his master’s sons to love virtue and liberty.
And the mention of the name of Plato reminds me of a more modern
philosopher, who did not lack reverence for him,--I mean Bacon,--and
Bacon naturally brings me from my digression to the subject of
“Table Traits” in imaginary Utopias. This philosopher, in his “New
Atlantis,” is even more infelicitous than More, both in the framing
of his fiction, and the extracting from it of a moral. The table laws
spoken of in Solomon’s house, have more of a jolly aspect than those
drawn by Sir Thomas More. For instance, “I will not hold you long with
recounting of our brewhouses, bakehouses, and kitchens, where are made
divers drinks, breads, and meats, rare and of special effects. Wines we
have of grapes, and drinks of other juice, of fruits, of grains, and of
roots; and of mixtures with honey, sugar, manna, and fruits dried and
decocted; also of the tears and woundings of trees, and of the pulp of
canes: and these drinks are of several ages, some to the age at least
of forty years. We have drinks also brewed of several herbs or roots,
and spices, yea, with several fleshes and wine-meats, whereof some of
the drinks are such as they are in effect meat and drink both. So that
divers, especially in age, do desire to live with them, with little or
no meat or bread; and, above all, we strive to have drinks of extreme
thin parts, to insinuate into the body, and yet without all biting
sharpness, or fretting; insomuch as some of them put upon the back of
your hand will, with a little stay, pass through to the palm, and yet
taste mild to the mouth. We have also waters which we ripen in that
fashion as they become nourishing, so that they are, indeed, excellent
drink, and many will use no other. Breads we have of several grains,
roots, and kernels, yea, and some of flesh and fish dried, with divers
kinds of leavenings and seasonings, so that some do extremely move
appetites; some do nourish so as divers do live of them without any
other meat, who live very long. So, for meats, we have some of them so
beaten and made tender and mortified, yet without all corrupting, as a
weak heat of the stomach will turn them into good chylus, as well as a
strong heat would meat otherwise prepared. We have some meats, also,
and breads and drinks which, taken by some, enable them to fast long
after; and some other that will make the very flesh of men’s bodies
sensibly more hard and tough, and their strength far greater than
otherwise it would be.”
In this way could philosophy disport itself, and not with much
attendant profit, beyond amusement. Before I conclude this section, I
may notice a more graceful fiction touching banquets, than any thing
to be met with among the philosophers. The inhabitants of the coast of
Malabar believe that the double cocoas of the Moluccas, annually thrown
on their shore by the waves, and joyfully welcomed by the expecting
inhabitants, are the produce of a palm-tree growing in the fathomless
recesses of the ocean; and that they arise from among coral-groves
endowed with supernatural qualities and attributes. For a detailed
account of this supposed phænomenon, and a very pretty illustration
of the theory of seeds transported by winds and currents, I refer all
curious inquirers to the “Annals of _My_ Village,” by a Lady. In the
mean time, I venture to put into verse, the supposed scene which occurs
at the annual cocoa-banquet in Malabar:--