"Revenge is a dish best served cold"

[George Thompson]

Being an old-fashioned guy, as many of you have long suspected, I have
checked this in books.

Mencken has: "English proverb, not recorded before the XIX century",
under "revenge".  (I had forgotten what a fascinating book this is,
though I have owned a copy since I was in high school.  Among his other
quotations under this head are
   Revenge is the poor delight of little minds.  Juvenal.
   A man that studieth revenge keeps his own wounds green.  Bacon.
   Delay in vengeance gives a heavier blow.  John Ford.
   Who'll sleep in safety that has done me wrong?  Thomas Otway.
   In taking revenge a man is but even with his enemy, but in passing
it over he is superior.  Thomas Fuller.
The quotations from Ford and Otway undoubtedly come from plays --
Mencken doesn't specify -- and need to be evaluated according to the
character who speaks them.  The others need to be evaluated also, but
are at least offered as the writer's own view.)

But I digress.

I didn't find this in the historical dictionaries of English proverbs
by Tilley or Whiting.  Other than the classics and the bible, Mencken's
sources are largely English and American.  But it's not in W. Meider's
recent Prentice-Hall Dictionary of World Proverbs.

The Oxford Dictionary of English Proverbs, 3rd ed., 1970, has the
following:
   Revenge is a dish that should be eaten cold.  1620. Shelton,
[transl. of Don] Quix. . . .  Revenge is not good in cold blood.
1885.  C. Lowe, Bismarck. . . .  [Bismarck] had defended Olmutz, it is
true, but . . . with a secret resolution to "eat the dish of revenge
cold instead of hot".  1895.  J. Payn In Mark. Ov. . . . Invective can
be used at any time; like vengeance, it is a dish that can be eaten
cold.

I notice that none of these quotations actually illustrate the heading,
and indeed the first contradicts it.  This is perhaps evidence that F.
P Wilson or his predecessor was familiar with a European proverb in
that form?

I hope that this message has not been sent twice.

GAT

George A. Thompson
Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern
Univ. Pr., 1998.