most in vogue, according to his
complaint, formerly; and he represents to us that in lieu of it one
had to put up with goose-giblets, pigs' pettitoes, and so many other
boiled meats, forced meats, and made dishes. Things were hardly so
very bad, however, if, as he states previously, the curtailment of the
expenditure on the table still left, as a medium repast, two or three
dishes, with fruit and cheese after. The black jack here mentioned was
not discarded till comparatively modern days. Nares, who published his
Glossary in 1822, states that he recollects them in use.

"A meal's meat twice a week, worth a groat," is mentioned as the farm
servant's portion in "Civil and Uncivil Life," 1579. In "A Piece of
Friar Bacon's Brasen-heads Prophesie," a unique poem, 1604, we read
that at that time a cheesecake and a pie were held "good country
meat." The author adds:

"Ale and Spice, and Curdes and Creame,
Would make a Scholler make a Theame."

Breton, in his "Fantasticks," 1626, observes: "Milk, Butter and Cheese
are the labourers dyet; and a pot of good Beer quickens his spirits."

Norfolk dumplings were celebrated in John Day the playwright's time.
He has put into the mouth of his east-country yeoman's son, Tom
Strowd, in "The Blind Beggar of Bethnal Green," written long before
it was printed in 1659, the following:--"As God mend me, and ere
thou com'st into Norfolk, I'll give thee as good a dish of Norfolk
dumplings as ere thou laydst thy lips to;" and in another passage of
the same drama, where Swash's shirt has been stolen, while he is in
bed, he describes himself "as naked as your Norfolk dumplin." In
the play just quoted, Old Strowd, a Norfolk yeoman, speaks of his
contentment with good beef, Norfolk bread, and country home-brewed
drink; and in the "City Madam," 1658, Holdfast tells us that before
his master got an estate, "his family fed on roots and livers, and
necks of beef on Sundays." I cite these as traits of the kind of
table kept by the lower grades of English society in the seventeenth
century.

MEATS AND DRINKS.

Slender: You are afraid, if you see the bear loose, are you not?

Anne: Aye, indeed, Sir

Slender: That's meat and drink to me, now.

MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR, i, 1.

The manufacture of wine and of fruit preserves, and many of the
processes of cookery, could have scarcely been accomplished without a
large and constant supply of sugar.

The exact date of the first in