Vitellius his Table, to which every Day All Courtiers did a constant Tribute pay, Could nothing more delicious afford Than Nature’s Liberality. Help’d with a little Art and Industry, Allows the meanest Gard’ners Board, The Wanton Taste no Fish or Fowl can chuse, For which the Grape or Melon she would lose. Tho’ all th’ Inhabitants of Sea and Air. Be lifted in the Glutton’s Bill of Fare; Yet still the Sallet, and the Fruit we see Plac’d the third Story high in all her Luxury.

So the Sweet [110]_Poet_, whom I can never part with for his Love to this delicious Toil, and the Honour he has done me.

Verily, the infinite Plenty and Abundance, with which the benign and bountiful Author of Nature has stor’d the whole Terrestrial World, more with Plants and Vegetables than with any other Provision whatsoever; and the Variety not only equal, but by far exceeding the Pleasure and Delight of Taste (above all the Art of the Kitchen, than ever [111]_Apicius_ knew) seems loudly to call, and kindly invite all her living Inhabitants (none excepted) who are of gentle Nature, and most useful, to the same Hospitable and Common-Board, which first she furnish’d with Plants and Fruit, as to their natural and genuine Pasture; nay, and of the most wild, and savage too ab origine:  As in Paradise, where, as the Evangelical [112]Prophet adumbrating the future Glory of the Catholick Church, (of which that happy Garden was the Antitype) the Wolf and the Lamb, the angry and furious Lion, should eat Grass and Herbs together with the Ox.  But after all, latet anguis in herba, there’s a Snake in the Grass; Luxury, and Excess in our most innocent Fruitions.  There was a time indeed when the Garden furnish’d Entertainments for the most Renown’d Heroes, virtuous and excellent Persons; till the Blood-thirsty and Ambitious, over-running the Nations, and by Murders and Rapine rifl’d the World, to transplant its Luxury to its new Mistriss, Rome.  Those whom heretofore [113]two Acres of Land would have satisfied, and plentifully maintain’d; had afterwards their very Kitchens almost as large as their first Territories:  Nor was that enough:  Entire [114]_Forests_ and Parks, Warrens and Fish-Ponds, and ample Lakes to furnish their Tables, so as Men could not live by one another without Oppression:  Nay, and to shew how the best, and most innocent things may be perverted; they chang’d those frugal and inemptas Dapes of their Ancestors, to that Height and Profusion; that we read of [115]_Edicts_ and Sumptuary Laws, enacted to restrain even the Pride and Excess of Sallets.  But so it was not when the Pease-Field spread a Table for the Conquerors of the World, and their Grounds were cultivated Vomere laureato, & triumphali aratore: