Gastronomy as a fine art, or, The science of good living : A translation of the "Physiologie du goût" of Brillat-Savarin / by R.E. Anderson, M.A.

  • Brillat-Savarin, 1755-1826.
Date:
1877
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Gastronomy as a fine art, or, The science of good living : A translation of the "Physiologie du goût" of Brillat-Savarin / by R.E. Anderson, M.A. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    37/328
    they would have done incomparably better with good tools. In the same way everybody believes that Tartini would have played the violiu still better had his bow been as long as that of Baillot. I must be classed, then, with the writers who employ new words, if not even with those who throw off all allegiance to classical style and models.* The latter discover hidden treasures, while the others are like sailors, w7ho bring from afar the provisions which we need. The Northern races, especially the English, have in this respect an immense advantage over us. The genius of their language is never hampered by rules of style ; it creates or borrows. Accordingly, * The term, un romantique, according to the French philo- logists, was introduced by Madame de Stael, all modern writers being by her divided into two classes:—les classiques, who follow the models already established, and les romantiques, who act independently of classical style and standards. Thus, in recent times, Victor Hugo is pre-eminently un romantique — not only ignoring the dramatic unities and other canons sacred to Corneille and Voltaire, but actually and enthusiastically admiring such a barbarian as Shakespeare. The same terms have also been used in classifying the great masters in French gastronomy; Beauvilliers, for example (after- wards referred to fully in the chapter on restaurants), being ranked at the head of the classical school. This implied analogy between cookery and literature may remind the philosophical reader of a passage in one of Dugald Stewart’s “ Essays,” where the effects of “ sweet ” and “ bitter ” in gastronomic art are said to “ correspond to that composite beauty which it is the object of the painter and of the poet to create.”