vulgarity, when he sees that in his battles Homer
always wounds his heroes in the most learned
and anatomical way? Storm and weather! Are
we to be dictated to by these old jackdaws of
Jena, who think that the church belongs to
them because they chatter on the weathercock?
Does not Homer, in the Thirteenth Iliad,
verse 812, make Merion slay Harpalion the
Paphlagonian by a thrust under the hip bone
and through the bladder? Does he not (idiot)
represent Thoas killed by Antilochus (accomplished
blockhead) by a javelin that cuts the
hollow vein that extends to the neck along the
chine? And again I ask (wooden brains) does
not King Hypenor fall, in the Thirteenth Iliad
(five hundred and twentieth verse) pierced
through his liver? Endless, indeed, are the
ways in which this divine medical man inflicts
death on the dummies or minor personages of his
great poem." So far Klopp, who is irrefutable
till you hear Bopp. But, indeed, though there
is more acuteness about Klopp, there is more
grasp about Bopp. If Klopp be more vigorous,
Bopp is more refined. Klopp is the luxuriant
summer meadow, Bopp the rolled velvet lawn.
If Bopp steal on with his fertilising stream,
silent and unobserved as the subterranean New
River, Klopp rolls on, broad, open, and generous
as the Thames, but, like that river, stained here
and there by the dead dog of prejudice and the
floating cat of professional envy. If Bopp rise
like a skyrocket, Klopp remains longer in the
air. If Bopp blaze brighter and more like the
violent Vesuvian, Klopp, like the wax candle
of society, burns longer and clearer. Bopp's
theories astonish, but Klopp's are read with
perpetual delight. In fact, whether Klopp has
beaten Bopp, or Bopp has pounded Klopp, it
will take many centuries and many hogsheads
of ink to settle.

Madame Dacier (that learned lady of
Languedoc, who translated Iliad and Odyssey), was
of opinion that there was no allusion in Homer
to any way of cooking except roasting! From
this some critics as hasty as Madame have
argued that at the time of the siege of Troy
the Greeks had no fire-proof vessels. In the
Ninth Iliad, however, where Achilles feasts his
unbidden guests, Homer especially says that
Patroclus put by mutton and goat's flesh to
roast and boil, while a fat shoulder of pork was
being got ready for the spit; or, as old Chapman
rhymes it, in. his grand, rumbling, rough
way:

              Automedon held, while he pieces cut,
To roast and boil, right cunningly; then of a
           well-fed swine,
A huge fat shoulder he cuts out and spits it
          wondrous fine.

Another piece of evidence which shows that
the Homeric Greeks boiled meat, is, that in the
Odyssey, one of the insolent suitors flings the
foot of an ox at Ulysses, whom he takes for a
beggar on the tramp. Now, no people would ever
have served up a roast leg of beef to table; or
if they had, would they have left the hoof on?
Whereas, boiled cow heel is dainty, gelatinous,
and nutritious. Madame Dacier's arguments are
untenable; and we hereby (without arrogance)
consign them for ever to the limbo of vanities.

It is the joint, the pièce de resistance, that
constitutes the special difference between
English and French cooking. The barbaric lumps
of meat, such as the Norsemen carved with
their walruss-horn-handled daggers, are the
incarnations of discord which we and the French
have long fought over. Ever since Mary de
Medici's courtiers brought Italian cooking and
the refinement of side dishes into France, the
joint has been disregarded on the other side of the
Channel. There are some bitter people, indeed,
who say that the French are obliged to cook
better than we do, and that the Frenchwomen
are obliged to dress better; because their
meat is so bad, and because their women are
ugly. The less beauty, the more dress—the
worse the meat, the more need of sauce.
But this remark is grossly unfair, for the
French beef, though not so exquisitely marbled
as our own, nor so fat or tender, is often of
good quality; and as for Frenchwomen, though
we can scarcely be expected to allow them to be
so beautiful as the English, they are so pleasing
and so agreeable that they need no extraneous
advantages, and could afford to despise the
very cestus of Venus. But, there is no doubt,
that however much the tastes of the two
nations may once have harmonised, the tendency in
England is to the one simple dish, and in France
to a variety of savoury delicacies, often quite as
pleasant and digestible as the solid slices of meat
that the poorer Englishman affects.

The simplicity of taste (or the barbarity,
which shall we call it?) must be inherent in
our nature: it assuredly is not a question of
quantity, for most Frenchmen eat more than
most Englishmen.

It has been well said that a Frenchwoman
is always cooking, while an Englishwoman
leaves off her preparations for a meal till the
last possible moment, and then hurries the
roasting and gallops the boiling. Hence, arise
failure and indigestion. Still this incontrovertible
fact remains, that spite of all cooking
you cannot in Paris get a rumpsteak that
approaches the steak of a good London tavern.
Ask for a " bifstek" in the Palais Royal par
exemple, and François, or Pierre, will bring you
a little lump of beef of a pleasant savoury brown
colour, a little crimsoned, embedded in crisp
shavings of baked potatoes. You know that
the white capped chef has longed to anoint it
with sauce Robert, Sorel, Sharp, or Tomato,
to remove its barbarous simplicity. It eats
well and tender, but a little tasteless, and
it is without much natural fat of its own, the
Norman beast being of the lean kine genus, and
by no means a bull of Bashan; you eat, and
as you eat patiently, you ruminate on the past
life of the unknown animal, part of which you
are devouring. But a London steak is a far
different thing; it is thicker, fatter, juicier,
and of a rarer merit; it has been beaten worse
than any Christian galley slave by the Turks,