Darteneuf.—­What will I say?  Why, that I pity my worthy friend Mr. Gibber, and that, if I had known this when alive, I should have hanged myself for vexation that I did not live in those days.

Apicius.—­Well you might, well you might.  You don’t know what eating is.  You never could know it.  Nothing less than the wealth of the Roman Empire is sufficient to enable a man of taste to keep a good table.  Our players were infinitely richer than your princes.

Darteneuf.—­Oh that I had but lived in the blessed reign of Caligula, or of Vitellius, or of Heliogabalus, and had been admitted to the honour of dining with their slaves!

Apicius.—­Ay, there you touch me.  I am miserable that I died before their good times.  They carried the glories of their table much farther than the best eaters of the age in which I lived.  Vitellius spent in feasting, within the compass of one year, what would amount in your money to above 7,200,000 pounds.  He told me so himself in a conversation I had with him not long ago.  And the two others you mentioned did not fall very short of his royal magnificence.

Darteneuf.—­These, indeed, were great princes.  But what most affects me is the luxury of that upstart fellow AEsopus.  Pray, of what ingredients might the dish he paid so much for consist?

Apicius.—­Chiefly of singing birds.  It was that which so greatly enhanced the price.

Darteneuf.—­Of singing birds!  Choke him!  I never ate but one, which I stole out of its cage from a lady of my acquaintance, and all London was in an uproar, as if I had stolen and roasted an only child.  But, upon recollection, I doubt whether I have really so much cause to envy AEsopus.  For the singing bird which I ate was not so good as a wheat-ear or becafigue.  And therefore I suspect that all the luxury you have bragged of was nothing but vanity.  It was like the foolish extravagance of the son of AEsopus, who dissolved pearls in vinegar and drank them at supper.  I will stake my credit that a haunch of good buck venison and my favourite ham pie were much better dishes than any at the table of Vitellius himself.  It does not appear that you ancients ever had any good soups, without which a man of taste cannot possibly dine.  The rabbits in Italy are detestable.  But what is better than the wing of one of our English wild rabbits?  I have been told you had no turkeys.  The mutton in Italy is ill-flavoured.  And as for your boars roasted whole, they were only fit to be served up at a corporation feast or election dinner.  A small barbecued hog is worth a hundred of them.  And a good collar of Canterbury or Shrewsbury brawn is a much better dish.

Apicius.—­If you had some meats that we wanted, yet our cookery must have been greatly superior to yours.  Our cooks were so excellent that they could give to hog’s flesh the taste of all other meats.