and spicy anecdote, doubly
piquant for its prevailing tone of mock seriousness and intentional
grandiloquence.

In emulation of the poet Lamartine, Savarin divided his subject into
'Meditations', of which the seventh is consecrated to the 'Theory of
Frying', and the twenty-first to 'Corpulence'. In the familiar aphorism,
"Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you what you are", he strikes his
key-note; man's true superiority lies in his palate! "The pleasure of
eating we have in common with the animals; the pleasure of the table is
peculiar to the human species." Gastronomy he proclaims the chief of all
sciences: "It rules life in its entirety; for the tears of the new-born
infant summon the breast of its nurse, and the dying man still receives
with some pleasure the final potion, which, alas, he is not destined to
digest." Occasionally he affects an epic strain, invoking Gasteria,
"the tenth muse, who presides over the pleasures of taste." "It is the
fairest of the Muses who inspires me: I will be clearer than an oracle,
and my precepts will traverse the centuries." Beneath his pen, soup,
"the first consolation of the needy stomach," assumes fresh dignity; and
even the humble fowl becomes to the cook "what the canvas is to the
painter, or the cap of Fortunatus to the charlatan." But like the worthy
epicure that he was, Savarin reserved his highest flights of eloquence
for such rare and toothsome viands as the _Poularde fine de Bresse_, the
pheasant, "an enigma of which the key-word is known only to the adepts,"
a _saute_ of truffles, "the diamonds of the kitchen," or, best of all,
truffled turkeys, "whose reputation and price are ever on the increase!
Benign stars, whose apparition renders the gourmands of every category
sparkling, radiant, and quivering!" But the true charm of the book lies
in Savarin's endless fund of piquant anecdotes, reminiscences of bygone
feasts, over which the reader's mouth waters. Who can read without a
covetous pang his account of 'The Day at Home with the Bernadins,' or of
his entertainment of the Dubois brothers, of the _Rue du Bac_, "a bonbon
which I have put into the reader's mouth to recompense him for his
kindness in having read me with pleasure"?

'Physiologic du Gout' was not published until 1825, and then
anonymously, presumably because he thought its tone inconsistent with
his dignity as magistrate. It would almost seem that he had a
presentiment of impending death, for in the mi