the march proving so fatiguing to his charges that they shrank in flesh and had to be disposed of at a sacrifice on finally arriving at their destination. When asked on his return how much he had realised from the transaction, he replied he had made nothing out of his charges themselves—"he had had the pleasure of their company, though." This point, through a singular oversight,—the idea is the same and equally charming everywhere,—Leigh Hunt has not touched upon in his essay "On the Graces and Anxieties of Pig-Driving." It may be of interest to those whose manuscripts have been rejected to know that Hunt's exquisite conceit was refused by the magazine to which it was addressed, but fortunately it was not on this account consigned to the waste-basket, but lives and is embalmed with Lamb's dissertation.
"I could never understand to this day," writes Hunt in his autobiography, "what it is that made the editor of a magazine reject an article which I wrote, with the mock-heroic title of 'The Graces and Anxieties of Pig-Driving.' I used to think he found something vulgar in the title. He declared it was not he who rejected it, but the proprietor of the magazine. The proprietor, on the other hand, declared that it was not he who rejected it, but the editor. I published it in a magazine of my own, 'The Companion,' and found it hailed as one of my best pieces of writing."
This reference of Hunt's recalls a piquant épigramme of lamb that is not down in the cook-books. It was when the writer was taking his departure from an old Paris bookstall, a number of years ago, that, as he turned to leave, the proprietor remarked:
"Monsieur perhaps might like to glance at an English work, 'sur l'Agneau,' which came in with some other volumes recently."
The volume in question referred, indeed, to "lamb," and proved to be the excessively rare first edition of "The Essays of Elia" (London, 1823). It was slightly foxed, but otherwise in excellent condition, and contained some marginal annotations in manuscript. On carefully examining the handwriting, we became convinced it was that of Charles Lamb—there could be no possible doubt of it. The only writing on the fly-leaf was, "To W. W., from C. L."—the "W. W." presumably being William Wordsworth. In the volume, since attired by the binder as it deserves, are several slight alterations in "The South Sea House," and some addenda to "Valentine's Day."
But by far the most important annotation occurs in "A Dissertation on Roast Pig." It is apparent at a glance that this was a serious afterthought ere the volume left the author's hands and the types confronted him with any lapses he had made—an apology, in fact, on the part of the author for whatever reference might be considered disparaging or in any wise inconsiderate as regards the worth of the elder animal. For, in consistency, a jewel that sparkles throughout the pages of "Elia," the parents might not be reviled without reflecting upon the children. Moreover, however "mild and dulcet" a nursling pigling, roasted secundum artem, may be to those of educated tastes, it is a dish that cloys from its very mellifluence if repeated too often, whereas in pork matured it is invariably a case of cut and come again.
From the volume and chapter in question we transcribe the annotation, verbatim et literatim, where it follows, as a postscript, the concluding line, "he is a weakling—a flower":
"Methinks my mind (animadverted by the infant pearl) hath been too evasive. There is he who, having shed the downy robes of childhood, is clad in the toga virilis of a glorious chief. Hast thou ever on occasion savoured his matured nether extremities, if haply thou wert blessed with an appetite and appreciation commensurate with their unctuous worth? Regard those feet—those parsley-garnished feet! See the pearly whiteness of the ankles, the coral pink of the petitoes! Meseems a man might arise in the small hours of a winter morning to savour such a dish. It should summon the shade of Lucullus. It should not only reconcile man to his lot, but it should render him thankful for it. Imagine the passion of a stricken youth (stricken by the pedal glories and faultless poise of a Taglioni), and then note by comparison the exalted rapture which should be engendered by such feet as these!
"In wandering through Covent Garden market, and passing from floral dreams to the vegetables, I often pause before the peas. Do I yearn for them in their adolescence? do I associate them with the duckling and the lamb? Nay; I await a time when they shall have folded and creased within themselves their perfected saccharine excellence, to be released in the kitchen of the winter.
"I can see a pig—a pig of one hundred and eighty pounds—classical in all the tints of its marble freshness. It sheds its internal graces in an excellent and cleanly market. With deft execution the white-aproned purveyor removes a spare-rib from a side. Then in front of the site of the spare-rib there remains an area of unequalled promise—a tract of the most delightsome possibilities. Let a piece be cut about fourteen inches long and eight wide, when after it has hung two or three days, I counsel thee to submerge it in sweet pickle for a week. Then boil it with a quart of the garden peas, with a shred, a hint, a sigh of onion. Allow it to cool, and when freed of every vestige of vegetable matter, place it in a garnished dish.
"No poem ever stirred the human heart, no slab of tessellated pavement ever fired the archæologist, with respectful interest akin to that evoked by this entrancing esculent. It is a fresh wave in the sea of sapors—an approximation, a convolution of two entities divinely transfused, which to conceive, it must be tasted. It elevates the sense of taste to the highest pinnacle of human aspiration. It is a memory to inspire gentle thoughts and tranquillize the mind; a presence that is a beatitude, and that looms in the visions of the future as a thing to live for."