Page:Johnsonian Miscellanies I.djvu/235

 Anecdotes.

��notions about eating however was nothing less than delicate ; a leg of pork boiled till it dropped from the bone, a veal-pye with plums and sugar, or the outside cut of a salt buttock of beef, were his favourite dainties x : with regard to drink, his liking was for the strongest, as it was not the flavour, but the effect he sought for, and professed to desire 2 ; and when I first knew him, he used to pour capillaire into his Port wine. For the last twelve years however, he left off all fermented liquors 3. To make himself some amends indeed, he took his chocolate liber ally, pouring in large quantities of cream, or even melted butter ; and was so fond of fruit, that though he usually eat seven or eight large peaches of a morning before breakfast began 4, and treated them with proportionate attention after dinner again, yet I have heard him protest that he never had quite as much as he wished of wall-fruit, except once in his life, and that was when we were all together at Ombersley, the seat of my Lord Sandys 5. I was saying to a friend one day, that I did not like

��Thrale justly observed that the cookery of the French was forced upon them by necessity; for they could not eat their meat unless they added some taste to it.' Life, ii. 403. Arthur Young wrote : ' There is not better beef in the world than at Paris.' Travels in France (1792-4), 1890, p. 306. In 1769 there was a tax of fifty shillings upon every ox sold in Paris. Burke's Works, ed. 1808, ii. 88.

1 By plums Mrs. Piozzi probably meant raisins. In Johnson's Dic tionary the second definition of plum is raisin ; grape dried in the sun. In the Art of Cookery, by a Lady, ed. 1748, p. 134, among the ingredients of a veal-pie are included ' some stoned raisins and currants washed clean, and some sugar.' Opposite the passage in the Life (i. 470) where Johnson says, 'This was a good dinner enough, to be sure; but it was not a dinner to ask a man to,' Mr. Hussey wrote on the margin of

��his copy : ' I have more than once allowed him to dine with me on a Buttock of Beef; but he could not expect more at my house.' For his gross feeding see Life, i. 467. For the plums with the veal pie see ante, p. 109, where he has 'farcimen fari- naceum cum uvis passis.'

2 * Brandy,' he said, ' will do soonest for a man what drinking can do for him.' Ib. iii. 381.

3 Three years before his death he was drinking wine at Mr. Thrale's house. Ib. iv. 72.

4 Susan Burney, describing her visit to Streatham in 1779, says : ' There sat Mrs. Thrale and Dr. Johnson, the latter finishing his breakfast upon peaches. ... He insisted upon my eating one of his peaches, and, when I had eat it, took a great deal of pains to persuade me to take another.' Early Diary of F. Burney, ii. 256.

5 Life, v. 455. Johnson, a few months before his death, wrote to Dr. Brocklesby : ' What I consider as a

goose

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