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MANKIND, says a ese 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 hi by their great fucius in the sed chapter of his Muations, 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 actally discovered in the manner following. The swine-herd, Ho-ti, having go into the woods one m, 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 only are, let some sparks escape into a bundle of straw, which kindling quickly, spread the flagration over every part of their poor mansion, till it was reduced to ashes. Together with the cottage (a sorry antediluvian make-shift of a building, you may think it), what was of much more importance, a fiter of new-farrowed pigs, han nine in number, perished. a pigs have beeeemed a luxury all over the east from the remotest periods that we read of. Bo-bo was imost sternation, as you may think, not so much for the sake of the te, 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 remnants of one of those untimely sufferers, an odour assailed his nostrils, unlike any st whic<cite>藏书网</cite>h he had before experienced. What could it proceed from ? -- not from the burnt cottage -- he had smelt that smell before -- ihis was by no means the first act of the kind which had occurred through the negligence of this unlucky young fire-brand. Much less did it resemble that of any known herb, weed, or flower. A premonitory moistening at the same time overflowed his her lip. He knew not what to think. He 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 crums of the scorched skin had e away with his fingers, and for the first time in his life (in the worlds life indeed, for before him no man had known it) he tasted -- crag! Again he felt and fumbled at the pig. It did not burn him so muow, still he licked his fingers from a sort of habit. The truth at length broke into his slow uanding, 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 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 rogues shoulders, as thick as hail-stones, which Bo-bo heeded not any more than if they had been flies. The tig pleasure, which he experienced in his lions, had rendered him quite callous to any inveniences 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, being a little more sensible of his situation, something like the following dialogue ensued."You graceless whelp, what have you got there dev? Is it not enough that you have burnt me down three houses with ys tricks, and be hao 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 e and taste how he 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 st was wonderfully sharpened since m, soon raked out an, and fbbr>?９９ｌiｂ?</abbr>airly rending it asuhrust the lesser half by main forto the fists of Ho-ti, still shouting out "Eat, eat, eat the burnt pig, father, only taste -- O Lord," -- with such-like barbarous ejaculations, cramming all the while as if he would choke.
Ho-ti trembled every joint while he grasped the abomihing, wavering whether he should not put his son to death for an unnatural young monster, when the crag scorg his fingers, as it had done his sons, 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 clusion (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 despatched all that remained of the litter.
Bo-bo was strictly enjoined not to let the secret escape, for the neighbours would certainly have stohem for a couple of abominable wretches, who could think of improving upon the good meat which God had sent them. heless, straories got about. It was observed that Ho-tis cottage was burnt down now more frequently than ever. Nothing 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 terrible mystery discovered, and father and son summoo take their trial at Pekin, then an insiderable 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 ha, and they all ha, 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, towns- folk, strangers, reporters, and all present -- without leaving the box, or any manner of sul<samp></samp>tation whatever, they brought in a simultaneous verdict of Not Guilty.
The judge, who was a shrewd fellow, wi the ma iniquity of 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 Lordships town house was observed to be on fire. The thing took wing, and now there was nothing to be seen but fires in every dire. 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 sce of architecture would in no long time be lost to the world. Thus this of firing houses tiill 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 y of ing a whole house to dress it. Then first began the rude form of a gridiron. Roasting by the string, or spit, came in a tury or two later, I fet in whose dynasty. By such slow degrees, cludes the manuscript, do the most useful, and seemingly the most obvious arts, make their way among man-kind.
Without plag too implicit faith in the at 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 favour of any ary object, that pretext and excuse might be found in ROAST PIG.
Of all the delicacies in the whole mundus edibilis, I will maintain it to be the most delicate -- princeps obsoniorum.
I speak not of yrown porkers -- things between pig and pork -- those hobbydehoys -- but a young and tender sug -- under a moon old -- guiltless as yet of the sty -- with ninal speck of the amor immunditiae, the hereditary failing of the first parent, yet ma -- his voice as yet not broken, but somethiween a childish treble, and a grumble -- the mild forerunner, or praeludium, of a grunt.
He must be roasted. I am not ignorant that our aors ate them seethed, or boiled -- but what a sacrifice of the exteriument!
There is no flavour parable, I will tend, to that of the crisp, tawny, well-watched, not over-roasted, crag, as it is well called -- the very teeth are io their share of the pleasure at this ba in overing the coy, brittle resistance -- with 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 innoce -- the cream and quintessence of the child-pigs 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 ambrosia, or on substance.
Behold him, while he is doing -- it seemeth rather a refreshing warmth, than a scorg heat, that he is so passive to. How equably he twirleth round the string! -- Now he is just doo see the extreme sensibility of that tender age, he hath wept out his pretty eyes -- radia? jellies -- shooting stars -
See him in the dish, his sed cradle, how meek he lieth wouldst thou have had this i grow up to the grossness and indocility which too often apany maturer swinehood? Ten to one he would have proved a glutton, a sloven, an obstinate, disagreeable animal -- wallowing in all manner of filthy versation -- from these sins he is happily snatched away -
Ere sin could blight, or sorrow fade,
Death came with timely care -
his memory is odoriferous -- no curseth, while his stomach half rejecteth, the rank ba -- 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 tent to die.
He is the best of Sapors. Pine-apple is great. She is indeed almost too transdent -- a delight, if not sinful, yet so like to sinning, that really a tender-sced person would do well to pause -- too ravishing for mortal taste, she wouh and excoriateth the lips that approach her -- like lovers kisses, she biteth she is a pleasure b on pain from the fieress and insanity of her relish -- but she stoppeth at the palate -- she meddleth not with the appetite -- and the coarsest hunger might barter her sistently for a mutton chop.
Pig -- let me speak his praise -- Is no less provocative of the appetite, than he is satisfactory to the critiess of the palate. The strong man may batten on him, and the weakling refuseth not his mild juices.
Uo mankinds mixed characters, a bundle of virtues and vices, inexplicably iwisted, and not to be unravelled without hazard, he is good throughout. No part of him is better or worse than another. He helpeth, as far as his little meaend, all around. He is the least envious of bas. He is all neighbours 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 i in my friends pleasures, his relishes, and proper satisfas, as in mine own. "Presents," I often say, "endear Absents." Hares, pheasants, partridges, snipes, barn-door chi (those "tame villatic fowl"), s, plovers, brawn, barrels of oysters, I dispense as freely as I receive them. I love to taste them, as it were, upoongue of my friend. But a stop must be put somewhere. One would not, like Lear," give every thing." 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 adapted, predestined, I may say, to my individual palate -- It argues an insensibility.
I remember a touch of s this kind at sy good old aunt, who never parted from me at the end of a holiday without stuffing a sweet-meat, or some hing, 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 Londe) a grey-headed old beggar saluted me (I have no doubt at this time of day that he was a terfeit). I had no peo sole him with, and in the vanity of self-denial, and the very bry of charity, school-boy-like, I m<tt>?t>ade 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 self-satisfa; 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 strahat I had never seen before, and who might be a bad man fht I knew; and then I thought of the pleasure my aunt would be taking in thinking that I -- I myself, and not another -- would eat her nice cake -- and what should I say to her the ime I saw her -- how naughty I was to part with her pretty present -- and the odour of that spicy cake came back upon my recolle, 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 disappointed she would feel that I had never had a bit of it in my mouth at last -- and I blamed my imperti spirit of aims-giving, and out-of-place hypocrisy of goodness, and above all I wished o see the face again of that insidious, good-for-nothing, old grey impostor.
Our aors were ni their method of sacrifig these tender victims. We read of pigs whipt to death with something of a shock, as we hear of any other obsolete . 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 iing and dulcifying a substanaturally so mild and dulcet as the flesh of young pigs. It looks like refining a violet. Yet we should be cautious while we n the inhumanity, how we sure the wisdom of the practice. It might impart a gusto -
I remember an hypothesis, argued upon by the young students, when I was at St. Omers, and maintained with much learning and pleasantry on both sides, "Whether, supposing that the flavour of a pig who obtained his death by whipping (per flagellatioremam) superadded a pleasure upon the palate of a man more intehan any possible suffering we ceive in the animal, is man justified in using that method of putting the animal to death ?" I fet the decision.
His sauce should be sidered. Decidedly, a few bread crums, 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 ot poison them, or make them strohan they are -- but sider, he is a weakling -- a flower.
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