compounded of five ingredients, had formerly fifty in it.  So in cookery, if the nature of the ingredients be well known, much fewer will do.  Then as you cannot make bad meat good, I would tell what is the best butcher’s meat, the best beef, the best pieces; how to choose young fowls; the proper seasons of different vegetables; and then how to roast and boil, and compound.’  Dilly.  ’Mrs. Glasse’s Cookery, which is the best, was written by Dr. Hill.  Half the trade know this.’  Johnson.  ’Well, Sir.  This shews how much better the subject of cookery may be treated by a philosopher.  I doubt if the book be written by Dr. Hill; for, in Mrs. Glasse’s Cookery, which I have looked into, salt-petre and sal-prunella are spoken of as different substances whereas sal-prunella is only salt-petre burnt on charcoal; and Hill could not be ignorant of this.  However, as the greatest part of such a book is made by transcription, this mistake may have been carelessly adopted.  But you shall see what a Book of Cookery I shall make!  I shall agree with Mr. Dilly for the copy-right.’  Miss Seward.  ’That would be Hercules with the distaff indeed.’  Johnson.  ’No, Madam.  Women can spin very well; but they cannot make a good book of Cookery.’

Mrs. Knowles affected to complain that men had much more liberty allowed them than women.  Johnson.  ’Why, Madam, women have all the liberty they should wish to have.  We have all the labour and the danger, and the women all the advantage.  We go to sea, we build houses, we do everything, in short, to pay our court to the women.’  Mrs. Knowles.  ’The Doctor reasons very wittily, but not convincingly.  Now, take the instance of building; the mason’s wife, if she is ever seen in liquor, is ruined; the mason may get himself drunk as often as he pleases, with little loss of character; nay, may let his wife and children starve.’  Johnson.  ’Madam, you must consider, if the mason does get himself drunk, and let his wife and children starve, the parish will oblige him to find security for their maintenance.  We have different modes of restraining evil.  Stocks for the men, a ducking-stool for women, and a pound for beasts.  If we require more perfection from women than from ourselves, it is doing them honour.  And women have not the same temptations that we have:  they may always live in virtuous company; men must mix in the world indiscriminately.  If a woman has no inclination to do what is wrong being secured from it is no restraint to her.  I am at liberty to walk into the Thames; but if I were to try it, my friends would restrain me in Bedlam, and I should be obliged to them.’  Mrs. Knowles.  ’Still, Doctor, I cannot help thinking it a hardship that more indulgence is allowed to men than to women.  It gives a superiority to men, to which I do not see how they are entitled.’  Johnson.  ’It is plain, Madam, one or other must have the superiority.  As Shakspeare says, “If