330 A LOVING FRIEND'S REBUKE. avoid you. We read of Channing when at school,where he was known as "Peacemaker" and "Little King Pepin," that he made a point of rebuking among his schoolmates every sally that touched on the profane or the licentious, and this in so gentle a tone, manifestly so much more in sorrow than in anger, that the censure was well taken. Perthes was noted for a certain aptness for reproof-a "bold freshness," is said to have "characterized his youth," in this respect; and "in administering reproof Perthes generally hit the nail on the head." Against insolence, falsehood, and baseness, he to the last would "blaze up instantly and vehemently," even when under no apparent obligation to speak. Prior echoes Cicero in the assertion that "Of all the gifts the gods afford (If we may take old Tully's word) A loving friend's rebuke is a rebuke-sinks into the heart, and convinces the judgment; an enemy's or stranger's rebuke, adds Mr. Charles Reade, "is invective, and irritates-not converts." "This from a friend!" cries angered Antony, in Dryden's Roman tragedy; and Dolabella answers, "Yes, Antony, a true one; A friend so tender, that each word I speak SATED WITH SUPERFLUITY. WHILE PROVERBS Xxvii. 7. 7HILE to the hungry soul every bitter thing even is sweet, the full soul loatheth an honeycomb. Sated with sweets, the sweetest of things is, to the surfeited, worse than insipid,—it is sickening. Enough is as good as a feast, and better than a feast of which the feaster is too full. To know when to stop is an essential rule in the epicurean art. Extremes meet, and to be overdone with dainties is to be overcome with disgust. "Eat thou honey, because it is good; and the honeycomb, which is sweet to thy taste." But that the honey may still be accounted good, and honeycomb remain sweet to thy taste, (What is sweeter than honey? runs Samson's riddle,) so eat of them as not to be sated with and sick of them, so eat as not to provoke a surfeit, a turning of the stomach, a revolting and reaction of disgust. So eat of any and every kind of food as not to be set against any and every other. For, to be stuffed full, however it may have come about, is ipso facto to have lost all stomach for the choicest of cates, so that one loathes the rarest dainty of them all. "The sweetest honey Is loathsome in his own deliciousness, And in the taste confounds the appetite ;" because, as Mr. Dallas analyses the sensation, the prolonging to surfeit of pleasure produces a pain, which is afterwards through memory associated with the return of the pleasure. Feasts satiate, as we read in one of the Preludes to Mr. Patmore's Angel in the House, and roses 332 'TOUJOURS PERDRIX? even, if too long regarded, afflict the mind with fond unrest; "Whate'er the uplooking soul admires, Whate'er the senses' banquet be, Fatigues at last with vain desires, The sated yet insatiable old sensualist in Shelley's tragedy professes, or confesses, "When I was young I thought of nothing else There are flowers whose scent is so luscious that, as Mr. Charles Kingsley says, silly children will plunge their heads among them, drinking in their odour, to the exclusion of all fresh air: on a sudden, sometimes, comes a revulsion of the nerves: the sweet odour changes in a moment to a horrible one; and the child cannot bear for years after the scent which has disgusted it by over sweetness. A French proverb exists which hints, as an English paraphrase of it runs, that partridges unvaryingly served up at table during the whole of September may be advantageously replaced by some other plat during the month which follows. Toujours perdrix. Even on canvas this was found too much for Spain and the Spaniards to stomach-witness their protest against the invariable partridge (plus a cat and a dog) introduced by the painter royal, El Mudo (J. H. Naverete), as pictorial accessories sine quibus non. The Spanish Titian was even compelled to bind himself in a contract with King Philip to give up the partridge (and puss). Fenimore Cooper describes the meanest dweller in Oswego of old as habitually feasting on game that would have formed TOO MUCH OF A GOOD THING. 333 the boast of a Parisian table; and it was no more than a healthful commentary on the caprices of taste, and of the waywardness of human desires, that the very diet which in other scenes would have been deemed the subject of envy and repinings, got to pall on the appetite. He tells us how the coarse and regular food of the army, which it became necessary, at the time in question, to husband, on account of the difficulty of transport, rose in the estimation of the common soldier, who would at any time cheerfully desert his venison, and ducks, and pigeons, and salmon, to banquet on the sweets of pickled pork, stringy turnips, and half-cooked cabbage. Even an alderman has been known to weary of too unvarying a round of civic banquets, and to be not unwilling to allot one evening in seven to a beneficial change from turtle and champagne to roast mutton and pale sherry. So has it been surmised by apologists for literature not of the highest class of all, that the maximum of intellect might itself, perhaps, weary of the maximum of intellectual enjoyment, and crave from time to time permission to recur to a less refined but more substantial diet. Even objects that originally excited the highest interest, will, if long continued, cease to interest, and soon become even painful. The most beautiful couplet of the most beautiful poem, as Dr. T. Brown suggests, if repeated to us without intermission, for a very few minutes, would excite more uneasiness than could have been felt from a single recitation of the dullest stanza of the most soporific inditer of rhymes. Partridge or porridge-either is good in its way, but of either one may have too much. That is a suggestive story Sir Walter Scott tells of a lunatic patient he knew in the Edinburgh Infirmary, who took the hospital and servants to be his own large establishment, reflecting his own wealth and grandeur, but who was puzzled by one 334 STOMACHS CLOGGED WITH COSTLY FARE. thing. Though provided, as he said, with a first-rate cook and proper assistants, and though his table was regularly supplied with every delicacy of the season, yet he confessed that, by some uncommon depravity of the palate, everything which he ate "tasted of porridge.” That was because he was fed upon nothing else—le pauvre homme! The priest's slave, in Horace, tired of living on the delicacies offered to his master's god, runs away from his service, that he may get a little common bread. Pane egeo jam mellitis potiore placentis-placenta being cheesecakes, and cheesecakes are cloying for a continuance. They may soon cease to be placenda. Well says Swift, that "To stomachs clogg'd with costly fare While high, and nice, and curious meats Molière's Marquis protests with effusion, when inviting himself to a humble, pot-luck sort of dinner-table, quite out of his way, Je suis des grands repas fatigué, je te jure. To apply what Molière's Mercure says in another comedy, Tels changements ont leurs douceurs, qui passent indeed l'intelligence of the uninitiated. It was Byron's boast, that the day he came of age he dined on eggs and bacon and a bottle of ale; and this favourite fare (which by no means agreed with him) he afterwards reserved for great occasions, once in four or five years or so. Genuine enough was his appreciation of the whim of his friend Matthews (who gave him and Hobhouse such a "splendid entertainment" before they set out for Constantinople) for dining at all sorts of out-of-the-way places; somebody once popping upon him in a cheap Strand eatinghouse, where the alleged attraction was, that he paid a shilling to dine with his hat on. A pic |