Page images
PDF
EPUB

CHARLES LAMB

A DISSERTATION UPON ROAST PIG

Charles Lamb (1775-1834) has been called the best loved of English writers. He was the son of a poor London clerk, and attended as a charity scholar the famous boys' school Christ's Hospital. Here he learned the Latin which he is fond of introducing in his essays; here he met Coleridge, and they became lifelong friends. When school-days ended, Coleridge went to the university, and Lamb became a bookkeeper in a London office. His work in this place is described in two essays, The South Sea House, and The Superannuated Man. He lived with his sister Mary, who appears in the essays as Bridget Elia. With her he wrote the Tales from Shakespeare, which have introduced the plays to many young readers. His chief work is the Essays of Elia. These were contributed to the London Magazine, over the signature of James Elia, a fellow-clerk in the office. Lamb's style is unique. He was a great reader of Elizabethan literature, especially plays, and frequently uses quaint old words from these books. He is fond of giving an unexpected turn to his sentences, and humor, a quiet, sly humor, peeps out everywhere.

In connection with the essay on Roast Pig, it is interesting to read this letter of Lamb's, addressed to a farmer and his wife:

Twelfth Day, '23.

The pig was above my feeble praise. It was a dear pigmy. There was some contention as to who should have the ears; but in spite of his obstinacy, (deaf as these little creatures are to advice) I contrived to get at one of them.

[ocr errors]

He must have been the least of his race. His little foots would have gone into the silver slipper. I take him to have been a Chinese, and a female.

He crackled delicately.

I left a blank at the top of the page, not being determined which to address it to: so farmer and farmer's wife will please to divide our thanks. May your granaries be full, and your rats empty, and your chickens plump, and your envious neighbors lean, and your laborers busy, and you as idle and as happy as the day is long. Yours truly,

C. LAMB.

CHARLES LAMB

A DISSERTATION UPON ROAST PIG

(From the Essays of Elia, First Series)

Mankind, says a Chinese manuscript, which my friend M. was obliging enough to read and explain to me, for the 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 Mutations, 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 (which I take to be the elder brother) was accidentally discovered in the manner following. The swine-herd, Ho-ti, having gone out into the woods one morning, as his manner was, to collect mast 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 of much more importance, a fine litter of new-farrowed pigs, no less than nine in number, perished. China pigs have been esteemed a luxury all over the East, from the remotest periods that we read of. Bo-bo was in the utmost consternation, as you may think, not so much for the sake of the tenement, which his father and he could easily build up again with

a few dry branches, and the labor 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 remnants of one of those untimely sufferers, an odor assailed his nostrils, unlike any scent which he had before experienced. What could it proceed from?-not from the burnt cottage he had smelt that smell before-indeed, this was by no means the first accident of the kind which had occurred through the negligence of this unlucky young firebrand. Much less did it resemble that of any known herb, weed, or flower. A premonitory moistening at the same time overflowed his nether lip. 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-crackling! Again he felt and fumbled at the pig. It did not burn him so much now, still he licked his fingers from a sort of habit. The truth at length broke into his slow understanding, that it was the pig that smelt so, and the pig that tasted so delicious; 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 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 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

« PreviousContinue »