Note 250 — Chapter XV · FOOD. (Solid.)

Here, then, we have a very graphic, and evidently unbiassed, account of the cuisine of this reign. Two o'clock seems to have been the middle-class time of dining, but people with any pretension to fashion dined later. 'Why does any Body Dine before Four a Clock in London? For my Part, I think it an ill bred Custom to make my Appetite Pendulum to the Twelfth Hour. Besides, 'tis out of Fashion to Dine by Day light.'[250] And Steele, writing about 'Rakes,' says: 'All the noise towards six in the evening is caused by his mimics and imitators;'[251] thus leading to the inference that, dinner being at four, and wine being plentifully drunk after it, they rose from table half drunk, and went noisily to the coffee-houses.