—­the laudable use of forks,
  To the sparing of napkins.

This personage is well-known to have been that odd compound, Coryat the traveller, the perpetual butt of the wits.  He positively claims this immortality.  “I myself thought good to imitate the Italian fashion by this FORKED cutting of meat, not only while I was in Italy, but also in Germany, and oftentimes in England since I came home.”  Here the use of forks was, however, long ridiculed; it was reprobated in Germany, where some uncleanly saints actually preached against the unnatural custom “as an insult on Providence, not to touch our meat with our fingers.”  It is a curious fact, that forks were long interdicted in the Congregation de St. Maur, and were only used after a protracted struggle between the old members, zealous for their traditions, and the young reformers, for their fingers.[A] The allusions to the use of the fork, which we find in all the dramatic writers through the reigns of James the First and Charles the First, show that it was still considered as a strange affectation and novelty.  The fork does not appear to have been in general use before the Restoration!  On the introduction of forks there appears to have been some difficulty in the manner they were to be held and used.  In The Fox, Sir Politic Would-be, counselling Peregrine at Venice, observes—­

  —­Then you must learn the use
  And handling of your silver fork at meals.

[Footnote A:  I find this circumstance concerning forks mentioned in the “Dictionnaire de Trevoux.”]

Whatever this art may be, either we have yet to learn it, or there is more than one way in which it may be practised.  D’Archenholtz, in his “Tableau de l’Angleterre” asserts that “an Englishman may be discovered anywhere, if he be observed at table, because he places his fork upon the left side of his plate; a Frenchman, by using the fork alone without the knife; and a German, by planting it perpendicularly into his plate; and a Russian, by using it as a toothpick.”

Toothpicks seem to have come in with forks, as younger brothers of the table, and seem to have been borrowed from the nice manners of the stately Venetians.  This implement of cleanliness was, however, doomed to the same anathema as the fantastical ornament of “the complete Signor,” the Italianated Englishman.  How would the writers, who caught “the manners as they rise,” have been astonished that now no decorous person would be unaccompanied by what Massinger in contempt calls

  Thy case of toothpicks and thy silver fork!