far as relates to appetite—was to be found in
London, some twenty years ago, in the person
of the celebrated Dando. He was never known
to have eaten his fill of oysters, though he
repeatedly made the attempt, and always at the
expense of those who could have supplied him,
if they would, with an unlimited number.
Not until the oyster-opener's arms were
wearied—not until his knife was blunted and
broken—not until dozen after dozen had
disappeared, in company with mounds of
bread-and-butter and floods of porter, did the
oyster-shop keeper—the Pim, the Quinn, or whoever
it might be—discover in the seedy foe to the
genus oyster, the inappeasable, the impecunious
Dando. He ate his oysters with so much relish,
he seemed so entirely at home with them, he
handled them so completely with the touch of a
master, that—for a time at least—self-interested
criticism was lost in admiration. The waiters
who hurried in with relays, grinned as they
passed each other, and swore they had never
seen "such a One-er;" the guests, who clamoured
to be served, suppressed their clamour to gaze,
more or less furtively, on an individual who
seemed to be all throat, and with stomach of
immeasurable profundity; the fishmonger, from
whose stores the oysters were transferred, felt a
pleasing sense of dismay at the rapidity with
which they vanished—till, suddenly, flashed the
thought: " Suppose this should be Dando!" And
Dando it always was, ever penniless, impenetrable,
cool, and craving, into whose mind the
thought of paying had never once entered, even
had it been possible, which it never was, for him
to have shelled out a single farthing. For Dando
to be "had-up" for oyster-eating became the
standing police amusement of every week during
the season. It was of no use committing Dando
to prison, for the treadmill, oakum picking,
prison fare itself, however liberal, only aggravated
his appetite for oysters; and, after he
had sojourned for a week or two in Coldbath
Fields or elsewhere, the oyster-shops were the
real sufferers. When Ancient Pistol exclaimed
that the world was his oyster, he merely typified
the tendencies of Dando, to whom everything
in existence was, as it were, an oyster, to be
always eaten. At last Dando died—of starvation
— with his mission unfulfilled. Alexander
wept at having no more worlds to conquer, and
Dando died because there were no more
oyster-shops to victimise. He had succeeded in
establishing his fame from Whitechapel to
Knightsbridge, from Highgate to Camberwell, he was
everywhere better known than trusted. What
could he do, but calmly lay down his head on a
dust-heap, and pray for contentment beneath a
pile of oyster-shells?

Oysters have been, at all times, a favourite
mangeaille with every nation, except the
Hebrews, to whom, as being without fins or scales,
they were forbidden. The Athenians turned
their oysters to a very unworthy purpose.
When they had eaten the fish—having
banqueted, we will suppose, at the expense of
some such eminent citizen as Aristides—they
wrote on the shells their vote for his banishment;
perhaps, on the plea of his giving bad
dinners; possibly stale oysters, than which there
is nothing more unpleasant or disappointing,
because, when you swallow a bad oyster, you are
let in for it without reserve. The Romans, who
loved oysters better than the Greeks, and who
fed more luxuriously than any other people of
antiquity, were the first to plant them out, or
"park" them. Pliny (in the 45th chapter of
the 9th book of his Natural History) thus
describes how: " The first that invented stewes
and pits to keep oysters in, was Sergius Orata,
who made such about his house at Baianum, in
the days of L. Crassus, that famous oratour,
before the Marsian's war. And this the man did
not for his belly and to maintain gourmandise,
but of a covetous mind for very gain. And by
this and such wittie devises, he gathered great
revenues; for he it was that invented the hanging
baines and pooles to bathe in aloft upon the
top of an house: and thus, when he had set out
his manour-house for the better sale, he would
make good merchandize of them, and sell them
againe for commoditie and gaine. He was the
first man that brought the Lucrine Oisters into
name and credit for their excellent taste. In
those very daies, but somewhat before Orata,
Licinius Marcus devised pools and stewes for to
keep and feed other fishes, whose example
noblemen followed, and did the like after them."
What was done by noble Romans, in the same
manner, about " Lampreyes" and " Winkles"
does not enter into my subject.

That Pliny was himself an oyster-eater is
evident from the following passage: "Albeit I
have written already of Oisters, yet methinks I
cannot speak sufficiently of them, seeing that for
these many yeres they have bin held for the
principall dish and daintiest meat that can be
served up to the table." The old Roman was
learned in the varieties of the Oyster. Of their
different colours, he says: " In Spaine they
be reddish, whereas in Sclavonia they be brown
and duskish; but about the Cape Circeij, in
Italy, their shell and flesh both be blacke;" and
then he describes the best kind of Oyster, with
all the gusto of a real gourmet. Concerning
the best localities for oysters in his time (citing
Mutianus as his authority), Pliny says: " The
Oisters of Cyzicum, taken about the straits of
Callipolis" (was Ancient Pistol thinking of
oysters, when he exclaimed, " Feed and be fat,
my fair Callipolis?"), "be the fairest of all
other, and bigger than those which are bred in
Lake Lucrinus, sweeter than those of Brittain,
more pleasant to the mouth than the Edulian,
quicker in tast than those of Leptis, fuller
than the Lucensian, drier than those of
Coryphanta, more tender than the Istrian, and, last
of all, whiter than the Oisters of Circeij.''

The luxurious Romans were passés maîtres in
oyster-eating. To a particularly large kind of
oyster they gave the significant name of Tridacna,
for though you must not make two bites of a
cherry, or of a native, three were necessary
before this species could be consumed. Juvenal