Page:The whole familiar colloquies of Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam.djvu/264

260 FAMILIAR COLLOQUIES. as if new killed? Bu. But nobody ever knew such an instance of us as has been known by you lately, that nine persons were poisoned by one eel baked in a pie. And this is what you furnish citizens’ tables with. Fi. What you speak of was an accident; and nobody can help that, when it pleases God it shall fall out so. But it is a daily practice with you to sell young cats for rabbits, and puppies for hares, if people do not know them by their ears and rough feet; not to speak of your meat-pies made of dead men’s flesh.

Bu. That which you charge me with is the failings of men in common; and let them defend themselves that are guilty of the fault. I make my comparison between gain and gain. By the same reason you may condemn gardeners, who, by mistake, sell henbane for coleworts; or apothecaries, who administer poison instead of antidotes. There is no trade or calling that is not liable to these mistakes. But you, when you act the most faithfully in your calling, sell that which is poison. If, indeed, you sold a cramp-fish, a water-snake, or a sea-hare, caught among other fish, it would be an accident rather than a fault. Nor do I think it any more to be imputed to you than to a physician, that sometimes kills the patient he undertakes to cure. And this might be excusable if you only put off your stinking wares in the winter season; then the cold might mitigate the contagiousness of infection; but you add putrid matter to the fire of the summer season, and render autumn, which is of itself a sickly season, more sickly. And in the spring of the year, when the humours that have been locked up begin to flow to the hazard of the body, then for two whole months you exercise your tyranny and corrupt the infancy of the springing year, by bringing an old age upon it. And when nature is busied to purge the body from unwholesome juices and make it fresh and blooming with new, you throw into it more stinks and corruption; so that if there be any vicious humours in the body you increase them, adding worse to bad, and not only so, but corrupting the good juices of the body. But this might be borne with too if you only injured the body; but inasmuch as by different foods the organs of the mind are vitiated, you vitiate the very minds themselves. So that do but mind your fish-eaters, how like fishes do they look, pale, stinking, stupid, and mute?

Fi. Oh, rare Thales! But, prithee, how wise are they that live upon beets'? just as much as the beets themselves. What sort of fellows are they that feed upon beef, mutton, and goats' flesh? truly, like oxen, sheep, and goats themselves. You sell kids for a mighty delicacy, and yet this creature is very bad for the falling-sickness, and brings that distemper upon the flesh-eaters. Were it not better to satisfy a craving appetite with salt fish? Bu. Do you think, then, that all that your naturalists write is true? But were what they say ever so true, it is certain that to some persons that are inclinable to diseases, those things that are good of themselves prove hurtful. We sell kids for those that are troubled with the hectic, or phthisic, but not for those that have the vapours.

Fi. If the eating of fish be so prejudicial as you would insinuate, how comes it about that our superiors permit us to sell our ware the whole year, and make you keep holiday for a good part of it? Bu. That is none of my bxisiness to answer. But it may be this was the