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THE FLOWING BOWL,
by EDWARD SPENCER
A Memory of many Meals; the wholeinterspersed with various Recipes, more or less original, andAnecdotes, mainly veracious.
AND HOW IT IS PLAYED
full of Tales
PREFACE
Iclaim no merit for the following pages, otherthan may attach to industry, application, thegift of copying accurately, and the acquisition ofwriter’s cramp. The mechanical writing is—tothe great joy of the compositors who havedealt with it—every letter mine own; but thebest part of the book has been conveyed fromother sources. In fact the book is, as the oldlady said of the divine tragedy of Hamlet, “fullof quotations.” The hand is the hand of Gubbins,but the voice is, for the most part, thevoice of the great ones of the past, includingPliny and Gervase Markham. The matter, ormost of it—I am endeavouring to drive the facthome—is culled from other sources; and if thisis the most useful and interesting work everpublished it is more my fortune than my fault.
The genial reception of my earlier effort,Cakes and Ale—which was condemned only byworshippers of Ala, who were not expectedto applaud—together with the hopeof earningsomething towards the purchase of a Bath Chair—have