He makes further comments upon their habits and diet, observing that both Burton and Galen especially disapprove of cabbage.
In "Roast Pig" we have one of those homely subjects which were congenial to Lamb.
"There is no flavour comparable, I will contend, to that of the crisp, tawny, well-watched, not over roasted crackling—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 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—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 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....
"His sauce should be considered. Decidedly a few bread crumbs done up with his liver and brains, and a dish 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 sharper than they are—but consider he is a weakling—a flower."
Lamb gives his opinion that you can no more improve sucking pig than you can refine a violet.
Thus he proceeds along his sparkling road—his humour and poetry gleaming one through the other, and often leaving us in pleasant uncertainty whether he is in jest or earnest. Though not gifted with the strength and suppleness of a great humorist, he had an intermingled sweetness and brightness beyond even the alchemy of Addison. We regret to see his old-fashioned figure receding from our view—but he will ever live in remembrance as the most joyous and affectionate of friends.
CHAPTER VIII.
Byron—Vision of Judgment—Lines to Hodgson—Beppo—Humorous Rhyming—Profanity of the Age.