xation that I did not live in those days.

_Apicius_.--Well you might, well you might. You don't know what eating
is. You never could know it. Nothing less than the wealth of the Roman
Empire is sufficient to enable a man of taste to keep a good table. Our
players were infinitely richer than your princes.

_Darteneuf_.--Oh that I had but lived in the blessed reign of Caligula,
or of Vitellius, or of Heliogabalus, and had been admitted to the honour
of dining with their slaves!

_Apicius_.--Ay, there you touch me. I am miserable that I died before
their good times. They carried the glories of their table much farther
than the best eaters of the age in which I lived. Vitellius spent in
feasting, within the compass of one year, what would amount in your money
to above 7,200,000 pounds. He told me so himself in a conversation I had
with him not long ago. And the two others you mentioned did not fall
very short of his royal magnificence.

_Darteneuf_.--These, indeed, were great princes. But what most affects
me is the luxury of that upstart fellow AEsopus. Pray, of what
ingredients might the dish he paid so much for consist?

_Apicius_.--Chiefly of singing birds. It was that which so greatly
enhanced the price.

_Darteneuf_.--Of singing birds! Choke him! I never ate but one, which I
stole out of its cage from a lady of my acquaintance, and all London was
in an uproar, as if I had stolen and roasted an only child. But, upon
recollection, I doubt whether I have really so much cause to envy AEsopus.
For the singing bird which I ate was not so good as a wheat-ear or
becafigue. And therefore I suspect that all the luxury you have bragged
of was nothing but vanity. It was like the foolish extravagance of the
son of AEsopus, who dissolved pearls in vinegar and drank them at supper.
I will stake my credit that a haunch of good buck venison and my
favourite ham pie were much better dishes than any at the table of
Vitellius himself. It does not appear that you ancients ever had any
good soups, without which a man of taste cannot possibly dine. The
rabbits in Italy are detestable. But what is better than the wing of one
of our English wild rabbits? I have been told you had no turkeys. The
mutton in Italy is ill-flavoured. And as for your boars roasted whole,
they were only fit to be served up at a corporation feast or election
dinner. A small barbecued hog is worth a hundred of them. And a good
collar of