cookery and magnificent expenditure did more than this -they conciliated the esteem and affection of the English nobility and courtiers, who were most rancorously jealous of all Scotch favourites and courtiers; nor, though his rise was astonishingly rapid, and the enormous sums he received from the sovereign notorious, did they ever show any hatred or malice against him. Never, surely, was the value of the gastronomic science more triumphantly displayed. Even national prejudices and court jealousies disappeared before Hay's savoir-vivre, which was a savoir-manger; and, in eating his dinners, the English could forget he was a Scotchman, his rivals that he was a favourite who had outstripped them in the race after wealth, titles, and honours. First of all, he was created Lord Hay; then a gentleman of the bed-chamber; then, through the mediation of King James, who, as Clarendon says, "was in this office a most prevalent prince," (meaning thereby that he married his favourites to whomsoever he chose,) he obtained the hand of the sole child and heiress of Lord Denny. To all these were added many court favours and preferments; he had a grant of the island of Barbadoes, he was made knight of the garter, and was successively created an English Baron, Viscount Doncaster, and finally Earl of Carlisle. After the death of his first wife, he married a beautiful young lady, daughter to the Earl of Northumberland. With every fresh rise his magnificence encreased, and the sumptuousness of his repasts seemed, in the eyes of the world, to prove him a man made for the highest fortunes, and fit for any rank.

"Atticus, eximie si cœnat, lautus habetur."

Abundant as were Lord Carlisle's means, they were not adequate to his expenditure; but he eked them out as men of his genius are wont to do, having, as Clarendon says, "no bowels in the point of running in debt and borrowing all he could." Such peccadilloes as breaking a few paltry tradesmen, and ruining a few admiring friends, are not to be judged of severely, particularly when we bear in mind facts of a sublime extravagance like the following.

"It was not enough for his ambition that his suppers should please the taste alone, the eye also must be gratified; and this was his device. The company was ushered in to a table covered with the most elegant art and the greatest profusion; all that the silver-smith, the shewer, the confectioner, or the cook could produce. While the company was examining and admiring this delicate display, the viands of course grew cold, and unfit for such choice palates. The whole, therefore,-called the ANTE-SUPPER,- -was suddenly removed, and another supper, quite hot, and containing the exact duplicate of the former, was served in its place.”*

Another writer of the time (Osborne) relates that at one of the feasts he gave to James, one of the King's attendants ate to his own share a pie which cost ten pounds of the money of that day. We should think, however, that this particular dish, like some of the preparations of the ancient Romans, was not very nice though very dear, -"ambergrease, magesterial of pearl, and musk" being mentioned among the materials of which the pie was

* Weldon; Court of King James, p. 271.

composed. And yet it would not perhaps be safe to deliver a decided opinion on this point, as it is the main d'œuvre, the main de maître, that make the excellence of a dish, and not the condiments. There is no knowing how scientifically a great cook may have distributed his musk and his ambergrease; but, not having tasted of such a dish, we are inclined to say, generally, that we should prefer a small Perigord pie, scented with truffles, and which may be bought in perfection for about two pounds sterling. We, however, should not have read Doctor Lister on Apicius to good purpose, did we venture flatly to condemn Lord Carlisle's pie. That learned doctor and antiquary severely reprehends Latinus Latinius, a very able Italian critic, for calling some of Apicius's messes (in which asafoetida was an ingredient) preposterous and disgusting. "These messes," says Doctor Lister with an air of stern authority, "are not immediately to be rejected because they may be displeasing to some."

Lord Carlisle, moreover, was just as splendid and expensive in his clothing as in his feeding. The magnificence of his dresses surpassed the power of description; and old Wilson, in detailing the materials and fashion of one of the meanest of his suites," says, that "it was, nevertheless, so fine as to look like romance, and savour rather of fancy than reality."

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When he travelled, this all-accomplished epicurean took his cooks with him, and sent on couriers to make magnificent preparations for his reception. He could thus convert a road-side inn into a very temple of luxury and gastronomy. Among other instances of his gigantic profusion it is recorded, that when journeying in Holland, he

munificently paid the innkeepers of the road he did not travel, because they might, in ignorance of his route, have made preparations for him. He knew that to make preparations for my Lord of Carlisle was no trifle.

He was two or three times sent as ambassador extraordinary to the Emperor of Germany and King of France. Weldon informs us that, on the occasion of his public entry into Paris, his horse was loosely shod with silver, so that at each curvet he cast his shoes about, which were picked up and pocketed by the people; and that a silversmith walked by his side, in order "to take other such shoes out of a tawny velvet bag, and tack them on, to last till he should come to another occasion to prance and cast them off." This was surely a sublime improvement on the royal practice of scattering a few silver coins among the mob. By such means Carlisle gained a golden reputation out of doors, and among the people: for indoor practice, and for winning the hearts of the great, he counted on his dinners and the magnificence of his services. Although King James had been deplorably poor in Scotland at one part of his reign, and had known what it was to dine off haggis, and sheep's heads, and similar abominations, it appears that he encouraged this lavish expenditure, and gave Carlisle large sums in order that they should be so spent, just as James's son, the ill-fated Charles I, did afterwards.

We cannot better conclude this sketch of the Earl of Carlisle than in the words of his contemporary Clarendon :

"He was surely a man of the greatest expense in his in the age he lived; and introduced

own person

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of any

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more of that expense in the excess of clothes and diet than any other man; and was indeed the original of all those inventions from which others did but transcribe copies. He had a great universal understanding, and could have taken as much delight in any other way, if he had thought any other as pleasant and worth his care. But he found business was attended with more rivals and vexations; and, he thought, with much less pleasure, and not more innocence.

"He left behind him the reputation of a very fine gentleman, and a most accomplished courtier; and, after having spent in a very jovial life above four hundred thousand pounds, which upon a strict computation he received from the crown, he left not a house nor acre of land to be remembered by. And when he had in his prospect (for he was very sharp-sighted, and saw as far before him as most men) the gathering together of that cloud in Scotland, which shortly after covered both kingdoms, he died with as much tranquillity of mind, to all appearance, as used to attend a man of more severe exercise of virtue; and with as little apprehension of death, which he expected many days."*

Fortunate to the last, he left the world just in time. A few months after his death, in the year 1636, the open quarrel about episcopacy began in Scotland, and that concerning ship-money in England, which two causes hurried on the revolution. Had Carlisle lived on to the time of the Republicans and Roundheads, he would have been reduced to beggary and obscurity, and might have hanged himself as did that Roman Carlisle, Apicius, after

* History of the Rebellion, book i.