Will choose a pheasant still before a hen;
Yet hens of Guinea full as good I hold,
Except you eat the feathers green and gold.
Of carps and mullets why prefer the great,
Though cut in pieces as my lord can eat;
Yet for small turbots such esteem profess,
Because God made these large, the other less.
Oldfield, with more than harpy throat endued,
Cries, send me, gods! a whole hog barbecued!”
The hog barbacued is a West India term of gluttony. It was a hog roasted whole, stuffed with spice and basted with Madeira wine. Allusion is made to this dish in Foote’s “Patron,” where Sir Peter Pepperpot says, “I am invited to dinner on a barbacue, and the villains have forgot my bottle of chian.”