of the scorched skin with the flesh next it, and was cramming it down his throat in his beastly fashion when his sire entered amid the smoking rafters, armed with retributory cudgel, and finding how affairs stood, began to rain blows upon the young rogue's shoulders, as thick as hailstones, which Bo-bo heeded not any more 10 than if they had been flies. The tickling pleasure, which he experienced in his lower regions, had rendered him quite callous to any inconveniences he might feel in those remote quarters. His father might lay on, but he could not beat him. from his pig, till he had fairly made an end of it, when, becoming a little more sensible of his situation, some20 thing like the following dialogue ensued:

"You graceless whelp, what have you got there devouring? Is it not enough that you have burned me down three houses with your dog's tricks, and be hanged to you, but you must be eating fire, and I know not what-what have you got there, I say?"

"O father, the pig, the pig, do come 30 and taste how nice the burnt pig eats."

The ears of Ho-ti tingled with horror. He cursed his son, and he cursed himself that ever he should beget a son that should eat burnt pig.

Bo-bo, whose scent was wonderfully sharpened since morning, soon raked out another pig, and fairly rending it asunder, thrust the lesser half by main force into the fists of 40 Ho-ti, still shouting out, "Eat, eat, eat the burnt pig, father, only tasteO Lord" with such-like barbarous ejaculations, cramming all the while as if he would choke.

Ho-ti trembled in every joint while he grasped the abominable thing, wavering whether he should not put his son to death for an unnatural young monster, when the crackling

scorching his fingers, as it had done 50 his son's, and applying the same remedy to them, he in his turn tasted some of its flavor, which, make what sour mouths he would for a pretense, proved not altogether displeasing to him. In conclusion (for the manuscript here is a little tedious) both father and son fairly sat down to the mess, and never left off till they had dispatched all that remained of the 60 litter.

Bo-bo was strictly enjoined not to let the secret escape, for the neighbors would certainly have stoned them for a couple of abominable wretches, who could think of improving upon the good meat which God had sent them. Nevertheless, strange stories got about. It was observed that Ho-ti's cottage was burned down now more frequently 70 than ever. Nothing but fires from this time forward. Some would break out in broad day, others in the nighttime. As often as the sow farrowed, so sure was the house of Ho-ti to be in a blaze; and Ho-ti himself, which was the more remarkable, instead of chastising his son, seemed to grow more indulgent to him than ever. At length they were watched, the so terrible mystery discovered, and father and son summoned to take their trial at Pekin, then an inconsiderable assize town. Evidence was given, the obnoxious food itself produced in court, and verdict about to be pronounced, when the foreman of the jury begged that some of the burnt pig, of which the culprits stood accused, might be handed into the box. 90 He handled it, and they all handled it, and burned their fingers, as Bo-bo and his father had done before them, and nature prompting to each of them the same remedy, against the face of all the facts, and the clearest charge which judge had ever given to the surprise of the whole court, townsfolk,

strangers, reporters, and all presentwithout leaving the box, or any manner of consultation whatever, they brought in a simultaneous verdict of Not Guilty.

The judge, who was a shrewd fellow, winked at the manifest iniquity of the decision, and, when the court was dismissed, went privily and bought 10 up all the pigs that could be had for love or money. In a few days his Lordship's town house was observed to be on fire. The thing took wing, and now there was nothing to be seen but fires in every direction. Fuel and pigs grew enormously dear all over the districts. The insurance offices one and all shut up shop. People built slighter and slighter every day, 20 until it was feared that the very science of architecture would in no long time be lost to the world. Thus this custom of firing houses continued, till in process of time, says my manuscript, a sage arose, like our Locke, who made a discovery, that the flesh of swine, or indeed of any other animal, might be cooked (burnt, as they called it) without the necessity of 30 consuming a whole house to dress it. Then first began the rude form of a gridiron. Roasting by the string, or spit, came in a century or two later, I forget in whose dynasty. By such slow degrees, concludes the manuscript, do the most useful, and seemingly the most obvious arts, make their way among mankind.

Without placing too implicit faith 40 in the account above given, it must be agreed that if a worthy pretext for so dangerous an experiment as setting houses on fire (especially in these days) could be assigned in favor of any culinary object, that pretext and excuse might be found in ROAST

PIG.

25. Locke, John Locke (1632-1704), a celebrated English philosopher.

Of all the delicacies in the whole mundus edibilis, I will maintain it to be the most delicate princeps ob- 50 soniorum.

I speak not of your grown porkers— things between pig and pork-those hobbledehoys-but a young and tender suckling-under a moon oldguiltless as yet of the sty-with no original speck of the amor immunditiae, the hereditary failing of the first parent, yet manifest-his voice as yet not broken, but something between a 60 childish treble and a grumble-the mild forerunner, or praeludium, of a grunt.

He must be roasted. I am not ignorant that our ancestors ate them seethed, or boiled-but what a sacrifice of the exterior tegument!

There is no flavor comparable, I will contend, to that of the crisp, tawny, well-watched, not over-roasted, crackling, as it is well called-the very 70 teeth are invited to their share of the pleasure at this banquet in overcoming the coy, brittle resistancewith the adhesive oleaginous-O call it not fat-but an indefinable sweetness growing up to it-the tender blossoming of fat-fat cropped in the bud-taken in the shoot-in the first innocence the cream and quintessence of the child-pig's yet pure food- 80 the lean, no lean, but a kind of animal manna-or, rather, fat and lean (if it must be so) so blended and running into each other that both together make but one ambrosian result, or common substance.

Behold him, while he is "doing"it seemeth rather a refreshing warmth, than a scorching heat, that he is so passive to. How equably he twirleth 90 round the string! Now he is just done. To see the extreme sensibility of that. tender age, he hath wept out his

49. mundus edibilis, edible world. 50. princeps obsoniorum, chief of delicacies. 57. amor immunditiae. love of filth. 62. praeludium, prelude.

pretty eyes-radiant jellies-shooting

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See him in the dish, his second cradle, how meek he lieth! Wouldst thou have had this innocent grow up to the grossness and indocility which too often accompany maturer swinehood? Ten to one he would have proved a glutton, a sloven, an obsti10 nate, disagreeable animal-wallowing in all manner of filthy conversationfrom these sins he is happily snatched away

Ere sin could blight, or sorrow fade, Death came with timely carehis memory is odoriferous-no clown curseth, while his stomach half rejecteth, the rank bacon-no coalheaver bolteth him in reeking sausages 20 he hath a fair sepulcher in the grateful stomach of the judicious epicure and for such a tomb might be content to die.

He is the best of Sapors. Pineapple is great. She is indeed almost too transcendent-a delight, if not sinful, yet so like to sinning, that really a tender-conscienced person would do well to pause-too ravishing 30 for mortal taste, she woundeth and excoriateth the lips that approach her -like lovers' kisses, she biteth-she is a pleasure bordering on pain from the fierceness and insanity of her relish-but she stoppeth at the palate --she meddleth not with the appetite --and the coarsest hunger might barter her consistently for a mutton chop.

Pig-let me speak his praise-is no 40 less provocative of the appetite than he is satisfactory to the criticalness of the censorious palate. The strong man may batten on him, and the weakling refuseth not his mild juices.

Unlike to mankind's mixed characters, a bundle of virtues and vices,

24. Sapors, delicacies or savory foods.

inexplicably intertwisted, and not to be unraveled without hazard, he is— good throughout. No part of him is better or worse than another. He 50 helpeth, as far as his little means extend, all around. He is the least envious of banquets. He is all neighbors' fare.

I am one of those who freely and ungrudgingly impart a share of the good things of this life which fall to their lot (few as mine are in this kind) to a friend. I protest I take as great an interest in my friend's pleasures, his 60 relishes, and proper satisfactions, as in mine own. "Presents," I often say, "endear Absents." Hares, pheasants, partridges, snipes, barn-door chickens (those "tame villatic fowl"), capons, plovers, brawn, barrels of oysters, I dispense as freely as I receive them. I love to taste them, as it were, upon the tongue of my friend. But a stop must be put somewhere. 70 One would not, like Lear, “give everything." I make my stand upon pig. Methinks it is an ingratitude to the Giver of all good favors, to extradomiciliate, or send out of the house, slightingly (under pretext of friendship, or I know not what), a blessing so particularly adapted, predestined, I may say, to my individual palate. It argues an insensibility.

I remember a touch of conscience in this kind at school. My good old aunt, who never parted from me at the end of a holiday without stuffing a sweetmeat, or some nice thing, into my pocket, had dismissed me one evening with a smoking plum-cake, fresh from the oven. In my way to school (it

was

over London Bridge) a grayheaded old beggar saluted me (I have no doubt at this time of day that he was a counterfeit). I had no pence to console him with, and in the vanity

80

90

self-denial, and the very coxbry of charity, schoolboy-like, I de him a present of-the whole e! I walked on a little, buoyed as one is on such occasions, with sweet soothing of self-satisfaction; t before I had got to the end of the dge, my better feelings returned, d I burst into tears, thinking how grateful I had been to my good nt, to go and give her good gift ay to a stranger, that I had never en before, and who might be a bad an for aught I knew; and then I ought of the pleasure my aunt ould be taking in thinking that I— myself, and not another-would eat er nice cake—and what should I say her the next time I saw her-how aughty I was to part with her pretty resent-and the odor of that spicy ake came back upon my recollection, ad the pleasure and the curiosity had taken in seeing her make it, and er joy when she sent it to the oven, nd how disappointed she would feel hat I had never had a bit of it in my outh at last-and I blamed my mpertinent spirit of almsgiving, and ut-of-place hypocrisy of goodness, nd above all I wished never to see he face again of that insidious, good-or-nothing, old gray impostor.

Our ancestors were nice in their method of sacrificing these tender victims. We read of pigs whipped to death, with something of a shock, as we hear of another obsolete custom. The age of discipline is gone by, or it

I remember an hypothesis, argued upon by the young students, when I was at St. Omer's, and maintained with much learning and pleasantry on both sides, "Whether, supposing that the flavor of a pig who obtained his death by whipping (per flagellationem extremam) superadded a pleasure upon the palate of a man more intense than any possible suffering 60 we can conceive in the animal, is man justified in using that method of putting the animal to death?" I forget the decision.

His sauce should be considered. Decidedly, a few bread crumbs, done up with his liver and brains, and a dash of mild sage. But, banish, dear Mrs. Cook, I beseech you, the whole onion tribe. Barbecue your whole hogs to your palate, steep them in shalots, stuff them out with plantations of the rank and guilty garlic; you cannot poison them, or make them stronger than they are-but consider, he is a weakling--a flower.

42. intenerating and dulcifying, making tender and sweet. 53. St. Omer's, a college.

EXPLANATORY NOTES

1. This amusing sketch is from The Essays of Elia (1820), the work on which Lamb's fame rests. Originally these essays were contributed to the London Magazine; they were somewhat similar to the special articles one finds in daily papers and magazines nowadays. They were on a variety of subjects, whimsical, serious, filled

with humor and pathos, and always remarkable for their conversational quality, by which the author seemed to be talking with his reader. Examples, besides the present selection, are “Dream Children,” “On Poor Relations,” “Old China," and the like. They bear little trace of Lamb's occupation, that of a clerk in the East India House.

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See him in the dish, his second cradle, how meek he lieth! Wouldst thou have had this innocent grow up to the grossness and indocility which too often accompany maturer swinehood? Ten to one he would have proved a glutton, a sloven, an obsti10 nate, disagreeable animal-wallowing in all manner of filthy conversationfrom these sins he is happily snatched away

Ere sin could blight, or sorrow fade, Death came with timely carehis memory is odoriferous-no clown curseth, while his stomach half rejecteth, the rank bacon-no coalheaver bolteth him in reeking sausages 20 he hath a fair sepulcher in the grateful stomach of the judicious epicure and for such a tomb might be content to die.

He is the best of Sapors. Pineapple is great. She is indeed almost too transcendent-a delight, if not sinful, yet so like to sinning, that really a tender-conscienced person would do well to pause-too ravishing 30 for mortal taste, she woundeth and excoriateth the lips that approach her -like lovers' kisses, she biteth-she is a pleasure bordering on pain from the fierceness and insanity of her relish-but she stoppeth at the palate --she meddleth not with the appetite --and the coarsest hunger might barter her consistently for a mutton chop.

Pig-let me speak his praise-is no 40 less provocative of the appetite than he is satisfactory to the criticalness of the censorious palate. The strong man may batten on him, and the weakling refuseth not his mild juices.

Unlike to mankind's mixed characters, a bundle of virtues and vices,

24. Sapors, delicacies or savory foods.

be unraveled without hazard, he is

good throughout. good throughout. No part of him is better or worse than another. He s helpeth, as far as his little means

extend, all around. extend, all around. He is the least envious of banquets. He is all neighbors' fare.

I am one of those who freely and ungrudgingly impart a share of the good things of this life which fall to their lot (few as mine are in this kind) to a friend. I protest I take as great an interest in my friend's pleasures, his relishes, and proper satisfactions, as in mine own. "Presents," I often say, "endear Absents." Hares, pheasants, partridges, snipes, barn-door chickens (those "tame villatic fowl"), capons, plovers, brawn, barrels of oysters, I dispense as freely as I receive them. I love to taste them, as it were, upon the tongue of my friend. But a stop must be put somewhere. One would not, like Lear, "give everything." I make my stand upon pig. Methinks it is an ingratitude to the Giver of all good favors, to extradomiciliate, or send out of the house, slightingly (under pretext of friendship, or I know not what), a blessing so particularly adapted, predestined, I may say, to my individual palate. It argues an insensibility.

I remember a touch of conscience in this kind at school. My good old aunt, who never parted from me at the end of a holiday without stuffing a sweetmeat, or some nice thing, into my pocket, had dismissed me one evening with a smoking plum-cake, fresh from the oven. In my way to school (it was over London Bridge) a grayheaded old beggar saluted me (I have 90 no doubt at this time of day that he was a counterfeit). I had no pence to console him with, and in the vanity