Ortensio Landi

“ See now! here’s a proof even in our age, that the length and happiness of men’s lives in the old world was chiefly caused by the means of blessed temperance. But what need more words in a matter as evident as the sun at noonday, to all but those whose brains are sunk down into the quagmire of their stomachs? ”

“ Oh what a piece of purgatory is it, to feel within a man’s self those qualms, those gripings, those swimmings, and those flashing heats that follow upon over-eating! And what a shame, if our foreheads were not of brass, and our friends before whom we act them, infected with the same disease, would it be to stand yawning, stretching, and perbreaking the crudities of the former day’s surfeit! ”

“ Nor do the benefits thereof stay only in the body, but ascend likewise to the perfecting of the soul itself: for how manifest is it, that through a sober and strict diet, the mind and all the faculties thereof become waking, quick, and cheerful, how is the wit sharpened, the understanding solidated, the affections tempered, and, in a word, the whole soul and spirit of a man freed from encumbrances, and made apt and expedite for the apprehension of wisdom, and the embracement of virtue? ”

“ It’s not the stomach, I wis, which would rest apayed with that which is at hand; but the satisfaction of our capricious fancies, that makes us wear out our selves, and weary all the world besides with uncessant travel in the search of rarities, and in the compounding of new delicacies. If we were but half as wise as we ought to be, there need none of all this ado that we make, about this and that kind of Manchet, Dutch-bread, and French-bread: and I know not what new inventions are brought on foot, to make more business in the world ”

“ But what wouldst thou have said, oh, Plato! if thou hadst perhaps lighted upon such as we Christians nowadays are; amongst whom, he that eats but two good meals a day, as we term them, boasts himself, and, is applauded by others for a person of great temperance and singular good diet? ”

“ Peruse all histories of whatever times and people, and you shall always find the haters of a sober life and spare diet to have been sworn enemies against goodness and virtue: witness Claudius, Caligula, Heliogabalus, Clodius the tragedian, Vitellius, Verus, Tiberius, and the like. And on the contrary, the friends and followers of sobriety and frugality to have been men of divine spirits, and most heroical performances for the benefit of mankind ”

“ Undoubtedly, that scarcity and dearness under which we labour, can proceed from nothing but our excessive gluttony which devours things faster than Nature can bring them forth. And that plenty and cheapness, which crowned their happy days, was maintained and kept on foot chiefly through the good husbandry of that frugal and simple diet which they used. ”

“ A spare diet then is better than a splendid and sumptuous, let the Sardanapaluses of our age prattle what they list. Nature, and reason, and experience, and the example of all virtuous persons prove it to be so. ”

“ When a scholar, such as Ortensio Lando was, undertakes to defend paradoxes he is not always to be taken too seriously, but in this praise of frugal life and simple diet there is an accent of sincerity that carries conviction. ”

“ On the contrary, what a happiness do I prove, when after a sober pittance I find sound and quiet sleep all night long, and at peep of day get up as fresh as the morning itself, full of vigour and activity both in mind and body, for all manner of affairs! Let who will take his pleasure in the fulness of delicates ”

“ But I would fain once understand from these gluttons, that seem born only to waste good meat, what the reason may be, that nowadays the store of victuals is so much abated, and the price enhanced of that it was in time of old, when yet the world appears to have been then much fuller of people than it now is? ”

“ Let them rot in their corruption and lie more covered over with infamy than with earth. Only, to give the world notice who have been the great masters of this worthy science of filling the stomach and following good cheer, I have been enforced to make this remembrance of some of their goodly opinions and pranks. ”

“ Undoubtly, our extravagance in this matter, having added prologues of breakfasts, interludes of banquets, epilogues of rere-suppers to the comedy would have caused thee to turn thy divine eloquence to the praise of those Syracusion gluttons, which, in respect of our usages and customs, might seem great masters of temperance. ”

“ S. Jerome, writing of the course of life held by those good fathers that retired themselves into the deserts of Egypt, the better to serve God, tells us, that they were so enamoured of spare and simple diet, that they censured it in themselves for a kind of riot, to feed on anything that was dressed with fire. The same in every point doth Cassian report, in his relations of the holy monks and hermits of his time.
I find in ancient physicians, that the inhabitants of the old world were such strict followers of sobriety, that they kept themselves precisely to bread in the morning ”

“ And yet, wretched men that we are, we have no mind to get out of it, but like silly animals led by the chaps, go on all day long, digging our graves with our teeth, till at last we bring the earth over our heads much before we otherwise need to have done. ”

“ That which is most our own, and that which we therefore perhaps, fools as we be, most [Pg 6] contemn in this kind,—barley-bread I mean,—is by all the old physicians, warranted for a most sound and healthful food. He that eats daily of it, say they, shall undoubtedly never be troubled with the gout in the feet. ”