on's Death,) but nothing resembling stomach. And to this vile man a
philosopher would say--"Go away, sir, and come back to me two or three
centuries hence, when you have learned to be a reasonable creature, and to
make that physico-intellectual thing out of dinner which it was meant to
be, and is capable of becoming." In Henry VII.'s time the court dined at
eleven in the forenoon. But even that hour was considered so shockingly
late in the French court, that Louis XII. actually had his gray hairs
brought down with sorrow to the grave, by changing his regular hour of
half-past nine for eleven, in gallantry to his young English bride.[11] He
fell a victim to late hours in the forenoon. In Cromwell's time they dined
at one, P.M. One century and a half had carried them on by two hours.
Doubtless, old cooks and scullions wondered what the world would come to
next. Our French neighbors were in the same predicament. But they far
surpassed us in veneration for the meal. They actually dated from it.
Dinner constituted the great era of the day. _L'apres diner_ is almost the
sole date which you find in Cardinal De Retz's memoirs of the _Fronde_.
Dinner was their _Hegira_--dinner was their _line_ in traversing the ocean
of day: they crossed the equator when they dined. Our English revolution
came next; it made some little difference, we have heard people say, in
Church and State; but its great effects were perceived in dinner. People
now dined at two. So dined Addison for his last thirty years; so dined
Pope, who was coeval with the revolution through his entire life. Precisely
as the rebellion of 1745 arose, did people (but observe, very great people)
advance to four, P.M. Philosophers, who watch the "semina rerum," and the
first symptoms of change, had perceived this alteration singing in the
upper air like a coming storm some little time before. About the year 1740,
Pope complains to a friend of Lady Suffolk's dining so late as four. Young
people may bear those things, he observes; but as to himself, now turned
of fifty, if such doings went on, if Lady Suffolk would adopt such strange
hours, he must really absent himself from Marble Hill. Lady Suffolk had a
right to please herself: he himself loved her. But if she would persist,
all which remained for a decayed poet was respectfully to "cut his stick,
and retire." Whether Pope ever put up with four o'clock dinners again, we
have vainly sought to fathom. Some things advance continuou