Once making a low obeisance to the queen, before the whole court, this stately and inflated peer suffered a mischance, which has happened, it is said, on a like occasion—­it was “light as air!” But this accident so sensibly hurt his mawkish delicacy, and so humbled his aristocratic dignity, that he could not raise his eyes on his royal mistress.  He resolved from that day to “be a banished man,” and resided for seven years in Italy, living in more grandeur at Florence than the Grand Duke of Tuscany.  He spent in those years forty thousand pounds.  On his return he presented the queen with embroidered gloves and perfumes, then for the first time introduced into England, as Stowe has noticed.  Part of the new presents seem to have some reference to the earl’s former mischance.  The queen received them graciously, and was even painted wearing those gloves; but my authority states, that the masculine sense of Elizabeth could not abstain from congratulating the noble coxcomb; perceiving, she said, that at length my lord had forgot the mentioning the little mischance of seven years ago!

This peer’s munificence abroad was indeed the talk of Europe; but the secret motive of this was as wicked as that of his travels had been ridiculous.  This Earl of Oxford had married the daughter of Lord Burleigh, and when this great statesman would not consent to save the life of the Duke of Norfolk, the friend of this earl, he swore to revenge himself on the countess, out of hatred to his father-in-law.  He not only forsook her, but studied every means to waste that great inheritance which had descended to him from his ancestors.  Secret history often startles us with unexpected discoveries:  the personal affectations of this earl induced him to quit a court where he stood in the highest favour, to domesticate himself abroad; and a family pique was the secret motive of that splendid prodigality which, at Florence, could throw into shade the court of Tuscany itself.

ANCIENT COOKERY, AND COOKS.

The memorable grand dinner given by the classical doctor in Peregrine Pickle, has indisposed our tastes for the cookery of the ancients; but, since it is often “the cooks who spoil the broth,” we cannot be sure but that even “the black Lacedaemonian,” stirred by the spear of a Spartan, might have had a poignancy for him, which did not happen at the more recent classical banquet.

The cookery of the ancients must have been superior to our humbler art, since they could find dainties in the tough membranous parts of the matrices of a sow, and the flesh of young hawks, and a young ass.  The elder Pliny records, that one man had studied the art of fattening snails with paste so successfully, that the shells of some of his snails would contain many quarts.[121] The same monstrous taste fed up those prodigious goose livers; a taste still prevailing in Italy.  Swine were fattened with whey and figs;