Nor Can Dallington Conceal His Disapproval Of Foreign Food.
The sorrows
of the beef-eating Englishman among the continentals were always
poignant.
Dallington is only one of the many travellers who, unable to
grasp the fact that warmer climes called for light diet, reproached the
Italians especially for their "parsimony and thin feeding." In Henry the
Eighth's time there was already a saying among the Italians, "Give the
Englishman his beef and mustard,"[221] while the English in turn jibed at
the Italians for being "like Nebuchadnezzar, - always picking of
sallets." "Herbage," says Dallington scornfully "is the most generall
food of the Tuscan ... for every horse-load of flesh eaten, there is ten
cart loades of hearbes and rootes, which also their open Markets and
private tables doe witnesse, and whereof if one talke with them fasting,
he shall have sencible feeling."[222] The whole subject of diet he
dismisses in his advice to a traveller as follows: "As for his viands I
feare not his surfetting; his provision is never so great, but ye may
let him loose to his allowance.... I shall not need to tell him before
what his dyet shall be, his appetite will make it better than it is: for
he shall be still kept sharpe: only of the difference of dyets, he shall
observe thus much: that of Germanie is full or rather fulsome; that of
France allowable; that of Italie tolerable; with the Dutch he shall have
much meat ill-dressed: with the French lesse, but well handled; with the
Italian neither the one nor the other."[223]
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