fires of Moloch; only let us have this biscuit, such as it is." In good
faith, then, fasting reader, you are not likely to see much more than you
_have_ seen. It is a very Barmecide feast, we do assure you--this same
"jentaculum;" at which abstinence and patience are much more exercised than
the teeth: faith and hope are the chief graces cultivated, together with
that species of the _magnificum_ which is founded on the _ignotum_. Even
this biscuit was allowed in the most limited quantities; for which reason
it is that the Greeks called this apology for a a meal by the name
of [Greek: bouchismos], a word formed (as many words were in the
Post-Augustan ages) from a Latin word--viz., _buccea_, a mouthful; not
literally such, but so much as a polished man could allow himself to put
into his mouth at once. "We took a mouthful," says Sir William Waller, the
Parliamentary general, "took a mouthful; paid our reckoning; mounted;
and were off." But there Sir William means, by his plausible "mouthful,"
something very much beyond either nine or nineteen ordinary quantities of
that denomination, whereas the Roman "jentaculum" was literally such; and,
accordingly, one of the varieties under which the ancient vocabularies
express this model of evanescent quantities is _gustatio_, a mere tasting;
and again it is called by another variety, _gustus_, a mere taste: [whence
by the usual suppression of the _s_, comes the French word for a collation
or luncheon, viz. _gouter_] Speaking of his uncle, Pliny the Younger
says--"Post solem plerumque lavabatur; deinde gustabat; dormiebat minimum;
mox, quasi alio die, studebat in coenæ tempus". "After taking the air he
bathed; after that he broke his fast on a bit 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 retreat," through which a few delicacies might be insinuated
to spread verdure on this arid desert 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 we are 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 relief[6]
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 to such a breakfast as this! 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 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 stage, throw your eyes back with us, Christian reader, upon this
truly heathen meal, fit for idolatrous dogs like your Greeks and your
Romans; survey, through the vista of ages, that thrice-cursed 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 to a Christian breakfast--hot rolls, eggs, coffee, beef; but
down, down, rebellious visions: we need say no more! You, reader, like
ourselves, will breathe a malediction on the classical era, and thank your
stars for making you a Romanticist. Every morning we thank ours for keeping
us back, and reserving us to an age in which breakfast had been already
invented. In the words of Ovid we 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, our faithful reader, that perhaps he will not always
be thus unhappy. We could bring waggon-loads of sentiments, Greek as well
as Roman, which prove, more clearly than the most eminent pikestaff, 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 we 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 are 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 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 we
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 things--the Roman _prandium_, of which we shall presently show you
that the most approved translation is _moonshine_.
Reader, we are not jesting here. In the very spirit of serious truth, we
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 laborer 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 recognize 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 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
sate 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 trying or sipping? "_Post larationem sine mensâ
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! we, 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 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 of the English luncheon; yet it stood in the
same relation to the Roman day. Now to English_men_ that meal scarcely
exists; and were it not for women, whose delicacy of organization 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 at Rome. Every man who knows anything of Latin critically,
sees the connection of the word _integer_ with _in_ and _tetigi_: _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 coenam afferam_; I shall bring 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 _coena_: expired 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 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 universally held to be full of pollution;
and, finally, to _profane_ a motion of nature. Such was the language.
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_ 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--be had traversed that whole sandy Zaarah, without calling, or
needing to call at one of those fountains, stages, or _mansiones_,[7] by
which (according to our former explanation) Providence has relieved the
continuity of arid soil, which else disfigures that long dreary level. This
happens to all; but was dinner not dinner, and did supper become dinner,
because Sir Isaac Newton ate nothing at the first, and threw the whole
day's support upon the last? No, you will say, a rule is not defeated by
one casual deviation, nor by one person's constant deviation. Everybody
else was still dining at two, though Sir Isaac might not; and Sir Isaac
himself on most days no more deferred his dinner beyond two, than he sate
with one stocking off. But what if everybody, Sir Isaac included, had
deferred his substantial meal until night, and taken a slight refection
only at two? The question put does really represent the very case which has
happened with us in England. In 1700, a large part of London took a meal
at two, P.M., and another at seven or eight, P.M. In 1839, a large part
of London is still doing the very same thing, taking one meal at two, and
another at seven or eight. But the names are entirely changed: the two
o'clock meal used to be called _dinner_, and is now called _luncheon_; the
eight o'clock meal used to be called _supper_, and is now called _dinner_.
Now the question is easily solved: because, upon reviewing the idea of
dinner, we soon perceive that time has little or no connection with it:
since, both in England and France, dinner has travelled, like the hand of a
clock, through _every_ hour between ten, A.M. and ten, P.M. We have a list,
well attested, of every successive hour between these limits having been
the known established hour for the royal dinner-table within the last three
hundred and fifty years. Time, therefore, vanishes from the equation: it is
a quantity as regularly exterminated as in any algebraic problem. The true
elements of the idea, are evidently these:--1. That dinner is that meal, no
matter when taken, which is the principal meal; _i.e._ the meal on which
the day's support is thrown. 2. That it is the meal of hospitality. 3. That
it is the meal (with reference to both Nos 1 and 2) in which animal food
predominates. 4. That it is that meal which, upon necessity arising for the
abolition of all _but_ one, would naturally offer itself as that one. Apply
these four tests to _prandium_:--How could that meal answer to the first
test, as _the day's support_, which few people touched? How could that meal
answer to the second test, as the _meal of hospitality_, at which nobody
sate down? How could that meal answer to the third test, as the meal of
animal food, which consisted exclusively and notoriously of bread? Or to
the fourth test, of the meal _entitled to survive the abolition of the
rest_, which was itself abolished at all times in practice?
Tried, therefore, by every test, _prandium_ vanishes. But we have something
further to communicate about this same _prandium_.
I. It came to pass, by a very natural association of feeling, that
_prandium_ and _jentuculum_, in the latter centuries of Rome, were
generally confounded. This result was inevitable. Both professed the
same basis Both came in the morning. Both were fictions. Hence they were
confounded.
That fact speaks for itself,--breakfast and luncheon never could have been
confounded; but who would be at the pains of distinguishing two shadows? In
a gambling-house of that class, where you are at liberty to sit down to a
splendid banquet, anxiety probably prevents your sitting down at all; but,
if you do, the same cause prevents your noticing what you eat. So of the
two _pseudo_ meals of Rome, they came in the very midst of the Roman
business; viz. from nine, A.M. to two, P.M. Nobody could give his mind
to them, had they been of better quality. There lay one cause of their
vagueness, viz.--in their position. Another cause was, the common basis of
both. Bread was so notoriously the predominating "feature" in each of these
prelusive banquets, that all foreigners at Rome, who communicated with
Romans through the Greek language, knew both the one and the other by the
name of [Greek: artositos], or the _bread repast_. Originally this name
had been restricted to the earlier meal. But a distinction without a
difference could not sustain itself: and both alike disguised their
emptiness under this pompous quadrisyllable. In the identity of substance,
therefore, lay a second ground of confusion. And, then, thirdly, even as
to the time, which had ever been the sole real distinction, there arose
from accident a tendency to converge. For it happened that while some had
_jentaculum_ but no _prandium_, others had _prandium_ but no _jentaculum_;
a third party had both; a fourth party, by much the largest, had neither.
Out of which varieties (who would think that a nonentity could cut up
into so many somethings?) arose a fifth party of compromisers, who,
because they could not afford a regular _coena_, and yet were
hospitably disposed, fused the two ideas into one; and so, because the
usual time for the idea of a breakfast was nine to ten, and for the idea
of a luncheon twelve to one, compromised the rival pretensions by what
diplomatists call a _mezzo termine_; bisecting the time at eleven, and
melting the two ideas into one. But by thus merging the separate times
of each, they abolished the sole real difference that had ever divided
them. Losing that, they lost all.
Perhaps, as two negatives make one affirmative, it may be thought that two
layers of moonshine might coalesce into one pancake; and two Barmecide
banquets might compose one poached egg. Of that the company were the best
judges. But probably, as a rump and dozen, in our land of wagers, is
construed with a very liberal latitude as to the materials, so Martial's
invitation, "to take bread with him at eleven," might be understood by the
[Greek: sunetoi] as significant of something better than
[Greek: artositos]. Otherwise, in good truth, "moonshine and turn-out"
at eleven, A.M., would be even worse than "tea and turn-out" at eight,
P.M., which the "fervida juventus" of young England so loudly detests. But
however that might be, in this convergement of the several frontiers, and
the confusion that ensued, one cannot wonder that, whilst the two bladders
collapsed into one idea, they actually expanded into four names, two Latin
and two Greek, _gustus_ and _gustatio_, [Greek: geusis], and
[Greek: geusma], which all alike express the merely tentative or
exploratory act of a _prægustator_ or professional "taster" in a
king's household: what, if applied to a fluid, we should denominate
sipping.
At last, by so many steps all in one direction, things had come to such
a pass--the two prelusive meals of the Roman morning, each for itself
separately vague from the beginning, had so communicated and interfused
their several and joint vaguenesses, that at last no man knew or cared to
know what any other man included in his idea of either; how much or how
little. And you might as well have hunted in the woods of Ethiopia for
Prester John, or fixed the parish of the everlasting Jew,[8] as have
attempted to say what "jentaculum" might be, or what "prandium." Only one
thing was clear--what they were _not_. Neither was or wished to be anything
that people cared for. They were both empty shadows; but shadows as they
were, we find from Cicero that they had a power of polluting and profaning
better things than themselves.
We presume that no rational man will henceforth look for "dinner"--that
great idea according to Dr. Johnson--that sacred idea according to
Cicero--in a bag of moonshine on one side, or a bag of pollution on
the other. _Prandium_, so far from being what our foolish dictionaries
pretend--dinner itself--never in its palmiest days was more or other than
a miserable attempt at being _luncheon_. It was a _conatus_, what
physiologists call a _nisus_, a struggle in a very ambitious spark,
or _scintilla_, to kindle into a fire. This _nisus_ went on for some
centuries; but finally issued in smoke. If _prandium_ had worked out his
ambition, had "the great stream of tendency" accomplished all his wishes,
_prandium_ never could have been more than a very indifferent luncheon. But
now,
II. We have to offer another fact, ruinous to our dictionaries on another
ground. Various circumstances have disguised the truth, but a truth it is,
that "prandium", in its very origin and _incunabula_, never was a meal
known to the Roman _culina_. In that court it was never recognized except
as an alien. It had no original domicile in the city of Rome. It was a _vot
casfren-sis_, a word and an idea purely martial, and pointing to martial
necessities. Amongst the new ideas proclaimed to the recruit, this was
one--"Look for no '_coenu_', no regular dinner, with us. Resign these
unwarlike notions. It is true that even war has its respites; in these
it would be possible to have our Roman _coena_ with all its equipage of
ministrations. Such luxury untunes the mind for doing and suffering. Let us
voluntarily renounce it; that when a necessity of renouncing it arrives, we
may not feel it among the hardships of war. From the day when you enter the
gates of the camp, reconcile yourself, tyro, to a new fashion of meal, to
what in camp dialect we call _prandium_." This "prandium," this essentially
military meal, was taken standing, by way of symbolizing the necessity of
being always ready for the enemy. Hence the posture in which it was taken
at Rome, the very counter-pole to the luxurious posture of dinner. A writer
of the third century, a period from which the Romans naturally looked back
upon everything connected with their own early habits, and with the same
kind of interest as we extend to our Alfred, (separated from us as Romulus
from them by just a thousand years,) in speaking of _prandium_, says, "Quod
dictum est _parandium_, ab eo quod milites ad bellum _paret_." Isidorus
again says, "Proprie apud veteres prandium vocatum fuisse oinnem militum
cibum ante pugnam;" i.e. "that, properly speaking, amongst our ancestors
every military meal taken before battle was termed _prandium_." According
to Isidore, the proposition is reciprocating, viz., that, as every
_prandium_ was a military meal, so every military meal was called
_prandium_. But, in fact, the reason of that is apparent. Whether in the
camp or the city, the early Romans had probably but one meal in a day. That
is true of many a man amongst ourselves by choice; it is true also, to our
knowledge, of some horse regiments in our service, and may be of all. This
meal was called _coena_, or dinner in the city--_prandium_ in camps. In the
city it would always be tending to one fixed hour. In the camp innumerable
accidents of war would make it very uncertain. On this account it would
be an established rule to celebrate the daily meal at noon, if nothing
hindered; not that a later hour would not have been preferred had the
choice been free; but it was better to have a certainty at a bad hour, than
by waiting for a better hour to make it an uncertainty. For it was a camp
proverb--_Pransus, paratus_; armed with his daily meal, the soldier
is ready for service. It was not, however, that all meals, as Isidore
imagined, were indiscriminately called _prandium_; but that the one sole
meal of the day, by accidents of war, might, and did, revolve through all
hours of the day.
The first introduction of this military meal into Rome itself, would be
through the honorable pedantry of old centurions, &c., delighting (like the
_Trunnions_, &c., of our navy) to keep up in peaceful life some image or
memorial of their past experience, so wild, so full of peril, excitement,
and romance, as Roman warfare must have been in those ages. Many
non-military people for health's sake, many as an excuse for eating early,
many by way of interposing some refreshment between the stages of forensic
business, would adopt this hurried and informal meal. Many would wish to
see their sons adopting such a meal as a training for foreign service in
particular, and for temperance in general. It would also be maintained by a
solemn and very interesting commemoration of this camp repast in Rome.
This commemoration, because it has been grossly misunderstood by Salmasius,
(whose error arose from not marking the true point of a particular
antithesis,) and still more, because it is a distinct confirmation of all
we have said as to the military nature of _prandium_, we shall detach from
the series of our illustrations, by placing it in a separate paragraph.
On a set day the officers of the army were invited by Cæsar to a banquet;
it was a circumstance expressly noticed in the invitation, by the proper
officers of the palace, that the banquet was not a "coena," but a
"prandium." What followed, in consequence? Why, that all the guests sate
down in full military accoutrement; whereas, observes the historian, had it
been a coena, the officers would have unbelted their swords; for, he adds,
even in Cæsar's presence the officers lay aside their swords. The word
_prandium_, in short, converted the palace into the imperial tent; and
Cæsar was no longer a civil emperor and _princeps senatûs_, but became a
commander-in-chief amongst a council of his staff, all belted and plumed,
and in full military fig.