“As we had none of us been apprised of his peculiarities with respect to food, the embarrassment of our host [Samuel Rogers] was not little, on discovering that there was nothing upon the table which his noble guest could eat or drink. Neither [flesh] meat, fish, nor wine would Lord Byron touch; and of biscuits and soda water, which he asked for, there had been, unluckily, no provision. He professed, however, to be equally well pleased with potatoes and vinegar; and of these meagre materials contrived to make rather a hearty meal....
“We frequently, during the first months of our acquaintance dined together alone.... Though at times he would drink freely enough of claret, he still adhered to his system of abstinence in food. He appeared, indeed, to have conceived a notion that animal food has some peculiar influence on the character;[317] and I remember one day, as I sat opposite to him, employed, I suppose, rather earnestly over a ‘beef-steak,’ after watching me for a few seconds, he said in a grave tone of inquiry,—‘Moore, don’t you find eating beef-steak makes you ferocious?’”—Life, Letters, and Journals of Lord Byron, by Thomas Moore. New Edition. Murray, 1860.
In these Memorials of Byron, reference to his aversion from all “butcher’s meat” is frequent; and for the greater part of his life, he seems to have observed, in fact, an extreme abstinence as regards eating; although he had by no means the same repugnance for fish as for flesh-eating. That this abstinence from flesh-meats was founded upon physical or mental, rather than upon moral, reasons, has already been pointed out. Nor, unhappily, was he as abstinent in drinking as in eating; to which fact, in great measure, must be attributed the failure of his purer eating to effect all the good which, otherwise, it would have produced.
THE observations of the author of a book entitled Philozoa, published in 1839, and noticed with approval by Schopenhauer, are sufficiently worthy of note, and may fitly conclude this work:—
“Many very intelligent men have, at different times of their lives, abstained wholly from flesh; and this, too, with very considerable advantage to their health. Mr. Lawrence, whose eminence as a surgeon is well known, lived for many years on a vegetable diet. Byron, the poet, did the same, as did P. B. Shelley, and many other distinguished literati whom I could name. Dr. Lambe and Mr. F. Newton have published very able works in defence of a diet of herbs, and have condemned the use of flesh as tending to undermine the constitution by a sort of slow poisoning. Sir R. Phillips has published Sixteen Reasons for Abstaining from the Flesh of Animals, and a large society exists in England of persons who eat nothing which has had life.
“The most attentive researches, which I have been able to make into the health of all these persons, induce me to believe that vegetable food is the natural diet of man. I tried it once with very considerable advantage. My strength became greater, my intellect clearer, my power of continued exertion protracted, and my spirits much higher than they were when I lived on a mixed diet. I am inclined to think that the ‘inconvenience’ which some persons profess to experience from vegetable food is only temporary. A few repeated trials would soon render it not only safe but agreeable, and a disgust for the taste of flesh, under any disguise, would be the result of the experiment. The Carmelites, and other religious orders, who subsist only on the productions of the vegetable world, live to a greater age than those who feed on flesh; and, in general, frugivorous persons are milder in their disposition than other people. The same quantity of ground has been proved to be capable of sustaining a larger[318] and stronger population on a vegetable than on a flesh-meat diet; and experience has shown that the juices of the body are more pure, and the viscera much more free from disease, in those who live in this simple way.
“All these facts, taken collectively, point to a period in the history of civilisation when men will cease to slay their fellow-mortals for food, and will tend to realise the fictions of Antiquity, and of the Sybilline oracles respecting a ‘Golden Age.’”[319]