A dissertation upon roast pig

Google

This is a digital copy of a book that was preserved for generations on library shelves before it was carefully scanned by Google as part of a project

to make the world's books discoverable online.

It has survived long enough for the copyright to expire and the book to enter the public domain. A public domain book is one that was never subject

to copyright or whose legal copyright term has expired. Whether a book is in the public domain may vary country to country. Public domain books

are our gateways to the past, representing a wealth of history, culture and knowledge that's often difficult to discover.

Marks, notations and other maiginalia present in the original volume will appear in this file - a reminder of this book's long journey from the

publisher to a library and finally to you.

Usage guidelines

Google is proud to partner with libraries to digitize public domain materials and make them widely accessible. Public domain books belong to the
public and we are merely their custodians. Nevertheless, this work is expensive, so in order to keep providing tliis resource, we liave taken steps to
prevent abuse by commercial parties, including placing technical restrictions on automated querying.
We also ask that you:

+ Make non-commercial use of the files We designed Google Book Search for use by individuals, and we request that you use these files for
personal, non-commercial purposes.

+ Refrain fivm automated querying Do not send automated queries of any sort to Google's system: If you are conducting research on machine
translation, optical character recognition or other areas where access to a large amount of text is helpful, please contact us. We encourage the
use of public domain materials for these purposes and may be able to help.

+ Maintain attributionTht GoogXt "watermark" you see on each file is essential for in forming people about this project and helping them find
additional materials through Google Book Search. Please do not remove it.

+ Keep it legal Whatever your use, remember that you are responsible for ensuring that what you are doing is legal. Do not assume that just
because we believe a book is in the public domain for users in the United States, that the work is also in the public domain for users in other
countries. Whether a book is still in copyright varies from country to country, and we can't offer guidance on whether any specific use of
any specific book is allowed. Please do not assume that a book's appearance in Google Book Search means it can be used in any manner
anywhere in the world. Copyright infringement liabili^ can be quite severe.

About Google Book Search

Google's mission is to organize the world's information and to make it universally accessible and useful. Google Book Search helps readers
discover the world's books while helping authors and publishers reach new audiences. You can search through the full text of this book on the web

at |http: //books .google .com/I

HARVARD

COLLEGE
LIBRARY

A DISSERTATION

UPON

ROAST PIG

BY

CHARLES LAMB

Illustrated by L J BrUgman

BOSTON
D LOTHROP COMPANY

FRANKLIN AND HAWLEY STREETS

^- f

Copyright, 1888

BY

D. LOTHROP Company.

UPON ROAST PIG

Mankind, says a Chinese manuscript, which
my friend M. was obliging enough to read and
explain to me, for tlie first seventy thousand
ages ate their meat raw, clawing or biting it
from the living animal, just as they do in
Abyssinia to this day. This period is not
obscurely hinted at by their great Confucius
in the second chapter of his Mundane Muta-
tions, where he designates a kind of golden
age by the term Cho-fang, literally the Cooks'
holiday. The manuscript goes on to say,
that the art of roasting, or rather broiling

UPON JWAS2' PIG.

(which I take to be the elder brother) was acci-
dentally discovered in the manner following:
The swineherd, Ho-ti, having gone out in the
woods one morning, as his manner was, to col-
lect masts for his hogs, left his cottage in the
care of his eldest son Bo-bo, a great lubberly
boy, who being fond of playing with fire, as
younkers of his age commonly are, let some
sparks escape into a bundle of straw, which
kindling quickly, spread the conflagration over
every part of their poor mansion, till it was
reduced to ashes. Together with the cottage,
(a sorry antediluvian makeshift of a building,
you may think it), what was ojf much more
importance, a fine litter of new-farrowed pigs,
no less than nine in number, perished. China
pigs had been esteemed a luxury all over the

UPON ROAST FIG,

East, from the remotest periods that we read
of. Bo-bo was m the utmost ceft^^ternatTorr, as
you may think, not so much for the sake of
the t encm cht, which his father and he could
easily build up again with a few dry branches,
and the labour of an hour or two, at any time,
as for the loss of the pigs. While he was
thinking what he should say to his father, and
wringing his hands over the smoking rem-
nants of one of those untimely sufferers, an
odour assailed his nostrils, unlike any scent
which he had before experienced. What
could it proceed from 1 — not from the burnt
cottas^e — he had smelt that smell before — in-
deed this was by no means the first accident of
the kind which had occured through the negli-
gence of this unlucky young firebrand. Much

UPON ROAST PIG.

less did it resemble that of any known herb,
weed, or flower. A premoni t ory moistening
at the same time overflowed his nether - hp.
He knew not what to think. He next stooped
down to feel the pig, if there were any signs
of life in it. He burnt his fingers, and to cool
them he applied them in his booby fashion to
his mouth. Some of the crumbs of the
scorched skin had come away with his fingers,
and for the first time in his life (in the world's
life indeed, for before him no man had known
it) he tasted — cracklmg ! Again he felt and
fumbled at the pig. It did not burn him so
much now, still he licked his finger from a
sort of habit. The truth at length broke into
his slow understandmg, that it was the pig
that smelt so, and the pig that tasted so deli-

. -aj

UPON ROAST PJG.

cious ; and surrendering himself up to the new-
born pleasure, he fell to tearing up whole
handfuls of the scorched skin with the flesh
next it, and was cramming it down his throat
in his beastly rashion, when his SH=e entered
amid the smokinQ^ rafters, armed with retribu-
tory 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 than if they had been
flies. The tickling pleasure which he experi-
enced 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,
whjn, becoming a little more sensible of his

UPON ROAST FIG,

situation, something like the following dia-^
logue ensued :

" You graceless whelp, what have you got
there devouring ? Is it not enough that you
have burnt me down three houses with your
dogs 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 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 sharp
ened since morning, soon raked out another
pig, and fairly^-^nding it a^iVdter, thrust the
lesser half by flftain force into the fists of Ho-ti.

UPON ROASl' PIG.

still shouting out, " Eat, eat, eat the burnt pig,
father, only taste — Ofc&rd^' — with such-like
barbarous ejaculations, cramming all the while
as if he would choke.

Ho-ti trembled/ievery joint while he grasped

r ■,^c u - ' ' ' ' * .

the abominable things^ waverings 'whether he
should not put his son to death for'an unnatu-
ral young monster, when the crackling scorch-
ing- his fingers, as it had done his son's, and
applying the same remedy to them, he in his
turn tasted some of its flavour, which, make
what sour mouths he would for a pretence,
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 des-
patched all that remained of the h'tter.

UPON ROAST PIG.

Bo-bo was strictly €4i}oi»€«- not to let the
secret escape, for the neighbors would cer-
tainly have stoned them for a couple of abom-
inable 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 burnt
down now more frequently than ever. Noth-
ing but fires from this time forward. Some
would break out in broad day, others in the
night-time. 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 ter-
rible mystery discovered, and father and son

UPON ROAST PIG,

summoned to take their trial at Pekin, than 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.
He handled it, and they all handled it, and
burning 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 present — without leaving the box, or any
manner of consultation whatever, they brought
in a simultaneous verdict of Not Guilty.

UPON ROAST FIG,

The judge, who was a shrewd fellow, winked
at the mam£esLmK|WHt)cof the decision ; and,
when the court was dismissed, went privily,
and bought up all the pigs that could be had
for love or money. In a few days his Lord-
ship'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 district. The insurance offices one and
all shut up shop. People built slighter and
slighter every day, 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

UPON ROAST PIG.

flesh of swine, or indeed of any other animal,
might be cooked {burnty as they call it) with-
out the necessity of 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, con-
cludes the manuscript, do the most useful, and
seemingly the most obvious arts, make their
way among mankind.

Without placing too implicit faith 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 J n these
days) could be assigned in favour of any culi-
nary object, that pretext and excuse might be
found in roast pig.

UPON ROAST FIG,

Of all the delicacies in the whole mundus
edibilis, I will mantain it to be the most deli-
cate — princeps obsoniorum.

I speak not of your grown porkers — things
between pig and pork — those hobbydehoys —
but a young and tender suckling — under a
moon old — guiltless as yet of the sty — with
no original speck of the amor immunditice, the
hereditary failing of the first parent, yet mani-
fest — his voice as yet not broken, but some-
thing between a childish treble, and a grumble
— the mild forerunner, or prcsludium, 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 flavour comparable, I will con-

UFON ROAST PIG,

tend, to that of the crisp, tawny, well-watched,
not over-roa.'^ted, cracklings as it is well called
— the very teeth are invited to their share of
the pleasure at this banquet in overcoming
the coy, brittle resistance — with the adhesive
oleaginous — O call it not fat — but an indefi-
able 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 — 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, then a scorching

UPON ROAST FIG.

heat, that he is so passive to. How equably
he twirleth round the string! — Now he is
just done. To see the extreme sensibility of
that tender age, he hath wept out his pretty
eyes — radiant jellies — shooting stars —

See him in the dish, his second cradle, how
meek he lieth ! — wouldst thou have had this
innocent grow up to the grossness and indo-
cility which too often accompany maturer
swinehood? Ten to one he would have
proved a glutton, a sloven, an obstinate, disa-
greeable animal — wallowing in all manner of
filthy conversation — from these sins he is
happily snatched away —

Ere sin could blight, or sorrow fade,
Death came with timely care —

J

^%

1^

^fciPf/^Hfeff"^

E JUDGE SPECULATKTH.

UPON ROAST FIG.

his memory is odoriferous — no clown curseth,
while his stomach half rejecteth, the rank
bacon — no coalheaver bolteth him in reeking
sausages — he hath a fair sepulchre 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 sin-
ning, that really a tender-conscienced person
would do well to pause — too ravishing for
mortal taste, she woundeth and excoriateth the
lips that approach her — like lover's 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 med-
dleth not with the appetite — and the coarsest

UPON ROAST PIG,

hunger might barter her consistently for a
mutton chop.

Pig — let me speak his praise — is no less
provocative of the appetite, than he is satisfac-
tory 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, inexplicably inter-
twisted, and not to be unravelled without haz-
ard, he is — good throughput. No part of
him is better or worse than another. He help-
eth, 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 ungrudg-
ingly impart a share of the good things of this

UPON ROAST FIG.

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 Ab-
sents." Hares, pheasants, partridges, snipes,
barn-door chickens (those " tame villatic fowl ''),
capons, plovers, brawn, barrels of oysters, I dis-
pense 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 flavours, to
extra-domiciliate, or send out of the house,
slightingly (under pretext of friendship, or I
know not what), a blessing so particularly

UPON ROAST PIG.

adapted, predestined, I may say, to my individ-
ual 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 with-
out 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 Lon-
don Bridge) a gray-headed old beggar saluted
me (I have no doubt at this time of day that
he was a counterfeit). I had no pence to con-
sole him with, and in the vanity of self-denial,
and the very coxcombry of charity, schoolboy-
like, I made him a present of — the whole
cake ! I walked on a little, buoyed up, as one
is on such occasions, with a sweet soothing of

UPON ROAST PIG,

self-satisfaction ; but before I had got to the
end of the bridge, my better feelings returned,
and I burst into tears, thinking how ungrateful
I had been to my good aunt, to go and give
her good gift away to a stranger, that I had
never seen before, and who might be a bad
man for aught I knew ; and then I thought of
the pleasure my aunt would be taking in think-
ing that I — I myself, and not another — would
eat her nice cake — and what should I say to
her the next time I saw her — how naughty I
was to part with her pretty present — and the
odour of that spicy cake came back upon my
recollection, and the pleasure and the curiosity
I had taken in seeing her make it, and her joy
when she sent it to the oven, and how disap-
pointed she would feel that I had never had a

UPON ROAST PIG.

bit of it in my mouth at last — and I blamed
my impertinent spirit of almsgiving, and out-
of-place hypocrisy of goodness, and above all
I wished never to see the face again of that in-
siduous, good-for-nothing, old gray impostor.

Our ancestors were nice in their method of
sacrificing these tender victims. We read of
pigs whipt to death with something of a shock,
as we hear of any other obsolete custom. The
age of discipline is gone by, or it would be
curious to inquire (in a philosophical light
merely) what effect this process might have
towards intenerating and dulcifying a sub-
stance, naturally so mild and dulcet as the
flesh of young pigs. It looks like refining a
violet. Yet we should be cautious, while we
condemn the inhumanity, how we censure the

UrON BOAST PIG.

wisdom of the practice. It might impart a
gusto —

I remember an hypothesis, argued upon by
the young students, when 1 was at St. Omer s,
and maintained with much learning and pleas-
antry on both sides, "Whether, supposing that
the flavor of a pig who obtained his death by
vj\\\Y>^\ng {per Jlagellationem extremam) super-
added a pleasure upon the palate of a man
more intense than any possible suffering 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

UPON ROAST FIG,

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 weakh'ng — a flower.

♦■ ^

This book sbould be returned to
the Library on or before the last date
stamped below.

A fine of Ave cents a day is incurred
by retainiug it beyond the apeoifled
time.

Fleasa retom promptly.

,)HN1B"64H
' OCTIIW