seeing the dishes, could at least form some vague idea of them; whereas, from reading only, it was impossible to distinguish animals from vegetables, much less one kind of animal from another. But that my readers in the country, who dine in their vernacular language, and are not ashamed of a few provincialisms, whether boiled or roasted, may have some notion of the difficulty of reading a modern dinner, I shall briefly inform them that, besides certain plain dishes, such as turtle, venison, salmon, and trout, which by some mistake, I presume, were allowed to cruize under English colours, it consisted of lappins ragout, vegetables Chartreux, marbree in jelly, galentine de veau, potatoes bechemele, pigeons comport, tart carimel'd, puits d'amour, gateaux de Savoy, and a variety of other articles equally recondite. I must farther inform my distant readers, that, should they be inclined to consult their Dictionaries as my friend was, it may be necessary they should also be prepared for disappointments. The Compilers of our French Dictionaries, certainly without neglecting matters of inferior moment, appear to have been chiefly anxious to enable us to study the best authors in that language, but never foresaw the day when it would be necessary to study the

up

nomenclature of the best cooks. Many of the articles, therefore, communicated above, will not be found in these works, or, if found, will convey an idea of the meaning of the words as they occur in books, but not when served in dishes. My friend, who had been studying them, had made such progress before I entered his room, as to discover that lappins ragout meant rabbits ragoued, and only wished he had known as much the day before; but when he came to vegetable Chartreux, he was wholly at a stand. Boyer could inform him that Chartreux, in ecclesiastical history, meant a Carthusian Friar; but Boyer could not foresee that, in Epicurean history, Carthusian Friars would become either vegetable or eatable; and my friend, having no recollection of any such personages being present, very wisely concluded that there might be more meant here than met the eye. For marbre, he could find nothing more probable than marble, and nothing so improbable for digestion; and as to galentine de veau, bechemele, comport, and carimel'd, he was, after much search, obliged to return every one of them non est inventus. It frequently happens in our own language, that we do not acquire the meaning of words merely by tracing the etymology; and here we have an

example of the same difficulty in puits d'amour. We know that puits means a well, and amour, love; but who would expect to find a dish fit for plain Englishmen compounded out of such ingredients? "Gateaux," added my friend, shrewdly, "I knew meant cakes; and, Mr. Projector, you and I can remember the time when cakes, aye, and biscuits too, would have been permitted to enter our halls in plain English."

The complaint, implied in my friend's remarks on this bill of fare, is now of considerable standing, although of late the grievance spreads faster, and consequently to many will

appear new.

a few

The French language bids fair in years to be universal; and whatever objections the critics in prose or poetry may offer, and whatever preference they may be inclined to give to the manly energies and sterling bullion of the English, they can never stand their ground against a confederacy of cooks. We are every day submitting more and more complacently to the continued invasions making on our native tongue : and what renders the grievance the more serious is, that these invasions are not attempted with a view to amend or alter, or give a different pronunciation, or termination, to English words, but to banish them

entirely, and fill their places with the victorious intruders. Another circumstance, just hinted at, which is peculiarly humiliating, and which, I should hope, a little recollection of the manly spirit of our ancestors would yet cause us to resent, is, that all these endeavours to expel the natives, and to place foreigners in their room, is not the work of scholars and critics, but of who have never, persons in any nation, been ranked among the ablest linguists. We are not beat out of our language by Royal Academies and Royal Societies, by armies of Lexicographers, and hords of Philologists, but by combinations of Milliners and of Mantuamakers, of Perfumers and of Hair-dressers, of Cabinet-makers and Upholsterers, of Taylors, and of Cooks, the fabricators of pantaloons, and the architects of pastry, by the Authors of stews, and Compilers of soups. It is from them we are humbly to receive the language in which we must dress our wives and our daughters, and furnish our houses and our wardrobes, our dinners and our deserts. It is they who are rendering Dr. Johnson's Dictionary obsolete, that they may supply its place by a Polyglott of pies and puddings, of pickles and flummeries. It is not by the labours of the student in his closet, or the pedant in his college, that our lan

guage is to be rendered obscure or useless. We owe that revolution to the Cook in his kitchen, armed with no more formidable weapons than the stew-pan and the gridiron, the bastingladle and the cullender. Antient literature will therefore be soon discarded; and he only will pass for a scholar, whose application has been such that he can pronounce what he what he carves, and

spell what he eats.

But it is much easier to exaggerate a complaint than to propose a remedy; and as justice ought to be impartially administered to the tenants of the kitchen, as well as to the guests in the parlour, I am willing to suppose that the innovations in the language of cookery may have been at first highly palatable to certain persons of fashion, who in their travels acquired such a grammatical acquaintance with foreign diet, as to be able to dine fluently in every modern language; and that on their return they encourage their cuisiniers to introduce lappins, marbre, and galentine, &c. occasionally; as persons who have travelled are apt to introduce foreign phrases, to give a little zest and variety to their conversation. All this I am willing to concede, with respect to the origin of these innovations. But, having made so liberal an allowance, it must surely at the