Stuckius hath written lately of this subject, in his great volume _De
Antiquorum Conviviis_, and of our present age; _Quam [1405]portentosae
coenae_, prodigious suppers, [1406]_Qui dum invitant ad coenam efferunt ad
sepulchrum_, what Fagos, Epicures, Apetios, Heliogables, our times afford?
Lucullus' ghost walks still, and every man desires to sup in Apollo;
Aesop's costly dish is ordinarily served up. [1407]_Magis illa juvant, quae
pluris emuntur_. The dearest cates are best, and 'tis an ordinary thing to
bestow twenty or thirty pounds on a dish, some thousand crowns upon a
dinner: [1408]Mully-Hamet, king of Fez and Morocco, spent three pounds on
the sauce of a capon: it is nothing in our times, we scorn all that is
cheap. "We loathe the very [1409]light" (some of us, as Seneca notes)
"because it comes free, and we are offended with the sun's heat, and those
cool blasts, because we buy them not." This air we breathe is so common, we
care not for it; nothing pleaseth but what is dear. And if we be
[1410]witty in anything, it is _ad gulam_: If we study at all, it is
_erudito luxu_, to please the palate, and to satisfy the gut. "A cook of
old was a base knave" (as [1411]Livy complains), "but now a great man in
request; cookery is become an art, a noble science: cooks are gentlemen:"
_Venter Deus_: They wear "their brains in their bellies, and their guts in
their heads," as [1412]Agrippa taxed some parasites of his time, rushing on
their own destruction, as if a man should run upon the point of a sword,
_usque dum rumpantur comedunt_, "They eat till they burst:" [1413]All day,
all night, let the physician say what he will, imminent danger, and feral
diseases are now ready to seize upon them, that will eat till they vomit,
_Edunt ut vomant, vomut ut edant_, saith Seneca; which Dion relates of
Vitellius, _Solo transitu ciborum nutriri judicatus_: His meat did pass
through and away, or till they burst again. [1414]_Strage animantium
ventrem onerant_, and rake over all the world, as so many [1415]slaves,
belly-gods, and land-serpents, _Et totus orbis ventri nimis angustus_, the
whole world cannot satisfy their appetite. [1416]"Sea, land, rivers, lakes,