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[xix]

again, as we have it in Athenæus,[1] gave a præmium to any one that invented and served him with some novel cate; and Sergius Orata built a house at the entrance of the Lucrine lake, purposely for the pleasure and convenience of eating the oysters perfectly fresh. Richard II is certainly not represented in story as resembling any such epicures, or capriccioso's, as these.[2] It may, however, be fairly presumed, that good living was not wanting among the luxuries of that effeminate and dissipated reign.

My next observation is, that the messes both in the Roll and the Editor's MS, are chiefly soupls, potages, ragouts, hashes, and the like hotche-potches; entire joints of meat being never served, and animals, whether fish or fowl, seldom brought to table whole, but hacked and hewed, and cut in pieces or gobbets;[3] the mortar also was in great request, some messes being actually denominated from it, as mortrews, or morterelys, as in the Editor's MS. Now in this state of things, the general mode of eating must either have been with the spoon or the fingers; and this perhaps may have been the reason that spoons be-

  1. ↑ Athenæus, lib. xii. c. 7. Something of the same kind is related of Heliogabalus, Lister præf. ad Apic. p. vii.
  2. ↑ To omit the paps of a pregnant sow, Hor. I. Ep. xv. 40. where see Mons. Dacier; Dr. Fuller relates, that the tongue of carps were accounted by the ancient Roman palate men most delicious meat. Worth. in Sussex. See other instances of extravagant Roman luxury in Lister's Præf. to Apicius, p. vii.
  3. ↑ See, however, Nº 33, 34, 35. 146.

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