feems had a coming ftomach, fhould continue there all the time the mufick was playing and longer But to ease them of their pain, by an invention which the poets call Catastrophe, Valentine, though with a long beard, and very weak with fafting, is reconciled to Florida, who embracing him says, "I doubt I have "offended him too much; but I will attend him "home,cherish him with cordials, make him broths," (poor good-natured creature! I wish she had Dr. Lifter's book to help her!) "anoint his limbs, and "be a nurse, a tender nurse! to him." Nor do bleffings come alone; for the good mother having refreshed him with warm baths, and kept him tenderly in the house, orders Favourite, with repeated injunctions, "to get the best entertainment she ever yet prc"vided, to confider what she has and what she wants, "and to get all ready in few hours:" and fo this most regular work is concluded with a dance and a wedding-dinner. I cannot believe there was any thing ever more of a piece than the comedy. Some perfons may admire your meagre tragedies; but give me a play where there is a prospect of good meat or good wine ftirring in every act of it.

Though I am confident the author had written this play and printed it long before The Art of Cookery was thought of, and I had never read it till the other poem was very nearly perfected, yet it is admirable to see how a true rule will be adapted to a good work,

or a good work to a true rule. I should be heartily glad, for the fake of the publick, if our poets for the future would make ufe of fo good an example. I doubt not but whenever you or I write comedy we shall obferve it.

I have just now met with a furprising happiness; a friend that has feen two of Dr. Lifter's works, one De Buccinis Fluviatilibus et Marinis Exercitatio, An Excrcitation of Sea and River Shell-fish, in which he fays fome of the chiefeft rarities are the pizzle and fpermatick veffels of a fnail delineated by a microscope, the omentum or caul of its throat, its fallopian tube, and its fubcrocean tefticle, which are things Hippocrates, Galen, Celfus, Farnelius, and Hervey,were never mafters of; the other curiofity is the admirable piece of Calius Apicius De Opfoniis et Condimentis, five Arte Coquinaria, Libri decem, being ten books of Soups and Sauces, and The Art of Cookery, as it is excellently printed for the Doctor, who in this fo important affair is not sufficiently communicative. My friend says he has a promise of leave to read it: what remarks he makes I fhall not be envious of, but impart to him I love as well as his

Most humble fervant, &c.

LETTER IX. TO MR..

DEAR SIR,

MUST communicate my happiness to you, because you are so much my friend as to rejoice at it. I fome days ago met with an old acquaintance, a curious perfon, of whom I enquired if he had feen the book concerning Soups and Sauces? He told me he had, but that he had but a very flight view of it, the perfon who was mafter of it not being willing to part with fo valuable a rarity out of his closet. I defired him to give me what account he could of it. He says that it is a very handsome octavo, for ever fince the days of Ogilby good paper, and good print, and fine cuts, make a book become ingenious, and brighten up an author ftrangely; that there is a copious index, and at the ́end a catalogue of all the Doctor's works concerning cockles, English beetles, fnails, fpiders that get up in→ to the air and throw us down cobwebs, a monster vomited up by a baker, and fuch like, which if careful> ly perufed would wonderfully improve us. There is it seems no manufcript of it in England, nor any other country that can be heard of; fo that this impression is from one of Humelbergius, who as my friend fays he does not believe contrived it himself, because the things are fo very much out of the way

that it is not probable any learned man would set himfelf seriously to work to invent them. He tells me of this ingenious remark made by the editor, "That “whatever manuscripts there might have been they "must have been extremely vicious and corrupt, as "being written out by the Cooks themselves, or fome "of their friends or fervants, who are not always the "most accurate." And then as my friend obferved, if the Cook had used it much it might be sullied, the Cook perhaps not always licking his fingers when he had occafion for it. I fhould think it ng improvident matter for the state to order a felect fcrivener to transcribe receipts, left ignorant women and housekeepers fhould impofe upon future ages by ill-fpelt and uncorrect receipts for potting of lobsters or pickling of turkeys. Cælius Apicius it feems paffes for the author of this treatife, whofe fcience, learning, and discipline, were extremely contemned, and almost abhorred, by Seneca and the Stoicks, as introducing luxury, and infecting the manners of the Romans; and fo lay neglected till the inferiour ages, but then were introduced as being a help to phyfick, to which a learned author, called Donatus, says that "the kitchen " is a handmaid." I remember in our days, though we cannot in every respect come up to the Ancients, that by a very good author an old gentleman is introduced as making ufe of three doctors, Dr. Diet, Dr. Quiet, and Dr. Merryman. They are reported to be

excellent phyficians, and if kept at a constant pension their fees will not be very costly.

It seems, as my friend has learnt, there were two persons that bore the name of Apicius, one under the republick, the other in the time of Tiberius, who is recorded by Pliny "to have had a great deal of wit "and judgment in all affairs that related to eating," and consequently has his name affixed to many sorts of amulets and pancakes. Nor were emperours lefs contributors to fo great an undertaking, as Vitellius, Commodus, Didius Julianus, and Varius Heliogaba lus, whofe imperial names are prefixed to manifold receipts; the last of which emperours had the peculiar glory of first making sausages of shrimps, crabs, oyfters, prawns, and lobsters; and thefe fausages being mentioned by the author which the editor publishes, from that and many other arguments the learned Doctor irrefragably maintains that the book, as now printed, could not be transcribed till after the time of Heliogabalus, who gloried in the titles of Apicius and Vitellius more than Antoninus, who had gained his reputation by a temperate, auftere, and folid virtue. And it seems under his administration a person that found out a new soup might have as great a reward as Drake or Dampier might expect for finding a new continent. My friend fays the editor tells us of unheard-of dainties! how " Æfopus had a fupper "of the tongues of birds that could speak;" and that

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