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Updated: May 1, 2025
His 'Physiologic du Goût' "that olla podrida which defies analysis," as Balzac calls it belongs, like Walton's 'Compleat Angler', or White's 'Selborne', among those unique gems of literature, too rare in any age, which owe their subtle and imperishable charm primarily to the author's own delightful personality.
In Elizabethan times the vogue of travelling to become a "compleat person" was fully established. And though in mean and trivial men the ideal took on such odd shapes and produced such dubious results that in every generation there were critics who questioned the benefits of travel, the ideal persisted. There was always something, certainly, to be learned abroad, for men of every calibre.
When the uneasiness is either small in itself, or remote from us, it engages not the imagination, nor is able to convey an equal concern for the future and contingent good, as for the present and real evil Upon its acquiring greater force, we become so interested in the concerns of the person, as to be sensible both of his good and had fortune; and from that compleat sympathy there arises pity and benevolence.
Such perfidious Treachery in the merciless perpetrators of the Deed will shock your gentle nature Dearest Marianne as much as it then affected the Delicate sensibility of Edward, Sophia, your Laura, and of Augustus himself. To compleat such unparalelled Barbarity we were informed that an Execution in the House would shortly take place. Ah! what could we do but what we did!
The best Support of an Arbitrary Power is undoubtedly Ignorance, and this cannot be better cultivated than by an Absolute Denial of Printing; the Oppressions of the Popularity cannot be thoroughly Stated, or Liberty in general Propagated without the use of the Press in some measure, and therefore the Subjects must inevitably submit to such Ordinances as an Ambitious or Ignorant Monarch and his Tyrannical Council shall think fit to impose upon them, how Arbitrary soever: And the Hands of the Patriots and Men of Eminence who should Illuminate the Age, and open the Eyes of the deluded People are thereby tied up, and the Infelicity of the Populace so compleat that they are incapable of either seeing their approaching Misery, or having a redress of present Grievances.
But pure information does not live long, and the fact that its information is inaccurate or incomplete does not rot a book like "The Compleat Angler" or the "Georgics." Thus it may happen that the first book on a subject is the best, and its successors mere treatises destined to pave the way for other treatises. "The Gypsies of Spain" is still read as no other book on the Gypsy is read.
In the "Compleat Cook," 1655 and 1662, the beneficial operation of actual experience of this kind, and of the introduction of such books as the "Receipts for Dutch Victual" and "Epulario, or the Italian Banquet," to English readers and students, is manifest enough; for in the latter volume we get such entries as these: "To make a Portugal dish;" "To make a Virginia dish;" "A Persian dish;" "A Spanish olio;" and then there are receipts "To make a Posset the Earl of Arundel's way;" "To make the Lady Abergavenny's Cheese;" "The Jacobin's Pottage;" "To make Mrs.
And my father and I admitted to all the lands; he for life, and I for myself and my heirs in reversion, and then did surrender according to bargain to Prior, Greene, and Shepheard the three cottages with their appurtenances that they have bought of us, and that being done and taken leave of the steward, I did with most compleat joy of mind go from the Court with my father home, and in a quarter of an hour did get on horseback, with my brother Tom, Cooke, and Will, all mounted, and without eating or drinking, take leave of father, mother, Pall, to whom I did give 10s., but have shown no kindness since I come, for I find her so very ill-natured that I cannot love her, and she so cruel a hypocrite that she can cry when she pleases, and John and I away, calling in at Hinchingbroke, and taking leave in three words of my Lady, and the young ladies; and so by moonlight most bravely all the way to Cambridge, with great pleasure, whither we come at about nine o'clock, and took up at the Bear, but the house being full of guests we had very ill lodging, which troubled me, but had a supper, and my mind at good ease, and so to bed.
Give our kind loves to all at Highgate, and tell them that we have finally torn ourselves outright away from Colebrooke, where I had no health, and are about to domiciliate for good at Enfield, where I have experienced good. "Lord, what good hours do we keep! How quietly we sleep!" See the rest in the "Compleat Angler." We have got our books into our new house.
The promotion of a member of parliament to the house of peers for that county in which their estate lay, happening soon after, he stood for the vacant seat, and easily obtained it: nothing now seemed wanting to compleat his perfect happiness, yet so restless is the heart of man, that gaining much, it yet craves for more; Natura had always a great passion for the court, meerly because it was a court, and gave an air of dignity to all belonging to it; he longed to make one among the shining throng; he was continually solliciting it, with an anxiety which deprived him of any true enjoyment of the blessings of his life; nor could all the arguments his father used to convince him of the vanity of his desires, nor the soft society of a most endearing and accomplished wife, render him easy under the many disappointments he received in the prosecution of this favourite aim.
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