er in Clare
Market, who endeavoured to corrupt me with a dozen and a half of
marrow-bones. I had likewise a bribe sent me by a fishmonger, consisting
of a collar of brawn, and a joll of salmon; but not finding them
excellent in their kinds, I had the integrity to eat them both up,
without speaking one word of them. However, for the future, I shall have
an eye to the diet of this great city, and will recommend the best and
most wholesome food to them, if I receive these proper and respectful
notices from the sellers, that it may not be said hereafter, my readers
were better taught than fed.

[Footnote 159: "Iliad," xiv. 157.]

[Footnote 160: Lotus is the name of a native genus akin to the trefoil
and clovers. It is best known as the supposed opium-like food of a
people on the shores of the Mediterranean, visited by
Ulysses,--Tennyson's "mild-eyed melancholy lotos-eaters," living in a
land where all things always seemed the same.]

[Footnote 161: The preceding portion of this paper was by Addison
(Tickell)]

[Footnote 162: This sale was advertised in No. 145.]

No. 148. [ADDISON.

From _Saturday, March 18_, to _Tuesday, March 21, 1709-10_.

----Gustus elementa per omnia quaerunt,
Nunquam animo pretiis obstantibus.
JUV., Sat. xi. 14.

* * * * *

_From my own Apartment, March 20._

Having intimated in my last paper, that I design to take under my
inspection the diet of this great city, I shall begin with a very
earnest and serious exhortation to all my well-disposed readers, that
they would return to the food of their forefathers, and reconcile
themselves to beef and mutton. This was the diet which bred that hardy
race of mortals who won the fields of Cressy and Agincourt. I need not
go up so high as the history of Guy Earl of Warwick, who is well known
to have eaten up a dun cow of his own killing.[163] The renowned King
Arthur is generally looked upon as the first who ever sat down to a
whole roasted ox (which was certainly the best way to preserve the
gravy), and it is further added, that he and his knights sat about it at
his Round Table, and usually consumed it to the very bones before they
would enter upon any debate of moment. The Black Prince was a professed
lover of the brisket; not to mention the history of the sirloin, or the
institution of the Order of Beef-eaters