s not the only crowned
head in danger of being dispatched by means of some tempting morsel
smilingly proffered by some titled rogue. A deadly dish under the
disguise of "Apicius" must have been particularly convenient in those
days for such sinister purposes. The sacred obligations imposed upon
"barbarians" by the virtue of hospitality had been often forgotten by
the super-refined hosts of the Renaissance.

But Apicius continued to prove unhealthful to a number of later
amateurs. Lister, with his perfectly sincere endeavor to popularize
Apicius, achieved precisely the opposite. The publication of his work
in London, 1705, was the signal for a number of people, scholars and
others, to crack jokes, not at the expense of Apicius, as they
imagined, but to expose their own ignorance. Smollet, Dr. W. King
("Poor starving wit"--Swift), Dr. Hunter and others. More recently, a
party of English dandies, chaperoned, if we remember correctly, by the
ponderous George Augustus Sala, fared likewise badly in their attempt
to stage a Roman feast, being under the impression that the days of
Tiberius and the mid-Victorian era may be joined with impunity, _a la
minute_, as it were.

Even later, in one of the (alas! not so many) good books on
gastronomy, "Kettner's Book of the Table," London, 1877, the excellent
author dismisses Roman cookery with a few lines of "warning." Kettner,
admirer of Sala, evidently was still under the baneful influence.
Twenty years later, Danneil, colleague of Kettner's, joined the chorus
of "irreverent critics." They all based their judgment on mere idle
conversation, resulting from disappointments in ill-fated attempts to
cook in the Apician style. Even the best experts, it appears, fall
victims to the mysterious spell surrounding, protecting things of
sacred antiquity, hovering like an avenging angel over them, to ward
off all "irreverent critics" and curious intruders.

THE PROOF OF THE PUDDING

After all, the proof of the pudding is in the eating. This homely
solid wisdom is literally true of our good old Apicius. We have tested
many of his precepts, and have found them practical, good, even
delightful. A few, we will say, are of the rarest beauty and of
consummate perfection in the realm of gastronomy, while some others
again are totally unintelligible for reasons sufficiently explained.
Always remembering Humelbergius, we have "laid off" of these torsos,
recommending them to some more competent comm