SALAD FOR THE SOLITARY. BY AN EPICURE. "Oh, herbaceous treat! "T would tempt the dying anchorite to eat; Back to the world he'd turn his weary soul, And plunge his fingers in the salad bowl!"-SIDNEY SMITH. "The herbal savor gives his sense delight."-QUARLES. LONDON: RICHARD BENTLEY, NEW BURLINGTON STREET. 1853. 270.0.298. A WORD PRELIMINARY. "Canst feed upon such nice and waterish diet?" SHAKSPEARE. EXCELLENT salads, according to parson Adams, are to be found in every field; we have garnered from the fertile fields of literature. Should any one be curious to know why we have ventured to select Salad for the entertainment of the reader, we beg to premise that it has an undoubted preference over a rich ragout, fricassee, or any other celebrated product of culinary art, from the fact that it is suitable to all seasons, as well as all sorts of persons, being a delectable conglomerate of good things,-meats, vegetables, acids and sweets,-oils, sauces, and other condiments too numerous to detail. It is expressed by a single word-Salmagundi. There is a Spanish proverb which insists that four persons are indispensable to the production of a good salad, a spendthrift for oil, a miser for vinegar, a counsellor for salt, and a madman to stir it all up. Our Salad-a consarcination of many good things for the literary palate, "Various-that the mind Of desultory man, studious of change, And pleased with novelty, may be indulged;" will, it is hoped, felicitate the fancy, and prove an antidote to ennui, or any tendency to senescent foreboding, should such mental malady chance ever to haunt the b |