"In this animal," says Beauvilliers, "there is almost nothing to cast aside." Without him there were, in truth, an aching void and an empty cuisine,—no lard, no hams, no bacon; no sausages, no spare-rib, no larded filets and game; no truffles and scientifically blended pâtés; no souse or headcheese; no "Dissertation on Roast Pig"; no chine "with rising bristles roughly spread." His ways are ways of fatness, and all his paths are progressive. He not only seeks to instruct, like Virgil; but seeks to please, like Theocritus. Civilisation radiates from him as light from a prism. With his increase culture advances, wealth accumulates, and cookery improves. And think of the services of his ploughshare to the farmer, whose orchards in many cases would otherwise remain untilled!
His unctuous Lardship! the very fat and marrow of the stock-exchange, the grease of the commercial wheel. Did he not directly furnish the inspiration to Dubufe for one of the grandest paintings the world has produced—the "Return of the Prodigal Son" who shared his husks—to say nothing of Hogarth and the Scottish poet Hogg, whose ode "To a Skylark" is scarcely excelled by Shelley's, and whose "Kilmeny" is enduring among poetic strains? And what were the spirited hunting scenes of Weenix, Sneyders, and Oudry without the great wild boar?
In the fourth canto of "The Faerie Queene" he is pictured as the symbol of gluttony:
"And by his side rode loathsome Gluttony,
Deformèd creature on a filthy swine.
His belly was upblown with luxury,
And eke with fatness swollen was his eyne.
Full of diseases was his carcass blew,
And a dry Dropsie through his flesh did flow,