and a belt
round his waist, cast a horn about his neck, and went to perform his
duty in the hall. He approaches the king, dish in hand, and kneels.
When he has served his sovereign, he hands the meats to the others.
We see a handsome assortment of victuals on this occasion, chiefly
venison and birds, and some of the latter were baked in bread,
probably a sort of paste. The majority of the names on the list are
familiar, but a few--the teal, the curlew, the crane, the stork,
and the snipe--appear to be new. It is, in all these cases, almost
impossible to be sure how much we owe to the poet's imagination and
how much to his rhythmical poverty. From another passage it is to be
inferred that baked venison was a favourite mode of dressing the deer.

The precaution of coming to table with clean hands was inculcated
perhaps first as a necessity, when neither forks nor knives were used,
and subsequently as a mark of breeding. The knife preceded the spoon,
and the fork, which had been introduced into Italy in the eleventh
century, and which strikes one as a fortuitous development of the
Oriental chopstick, came last. It was not in general use even in
the seventeenth century here. Coryat the traveller saw it among the
Italians, and deemed it a luxury and a notable fact.

The precepts delivered by Lydgate and others for demeanour at table
were in advance of the age, and were probably as much honoured in the
breach as otherwise. But the common folk did then much as many of
them do now, and granted themselves a dispensation both from knife and
fork, and soap and water. The country boor still eats his bacon or his
herring with his fingers, just as Charles XII. of Sweden buttered his
bread with his royal thumb.

A certain cleanliness of person, which, at the outset, was not
considerably regarded, became customary, as manners softened and
female influence asserted itself; and even Lydgate, in his "Stans
Puer ad Mensam (an adaptation from Sulpitius)," enjoins on his page or
serving-boy a resort to the lavatory before he proceeds to discharge
his functions at the board--

"Pare clean thy nails; thy hands wash also
Before meat; and when thou dost arise."

Other precepts follow. He was not to speak with his mouth full. He
was to wipe his lips after eating, and his spoon when he had finished,
taking care not to leave it in his dish. He was to keep his napkin as
clean and neat as possible, and he was not to pick his teeth with his