“I am one of those,” continueth Elia, “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 interest in my friend’s pleasures, his relishes, and proper satisfactions, as in mine own. ‘Presents,’ I often say, ‘endear absents.’ Hares, pheasants, partridges, snipes, barn-door chickens (those ‘tame villatic fowl’), capons, plovers, brawn, barrels of oysters, I dispense as freely as I receive them. I love to taste them, as it were, upon the tongue of my friend. But a stop must be put somewhere. One would not, like Lear, ‘give every thing.’ I make my stand upon pig. * * *
“I remember an hypothesis, argued upon by the young students, when I was at St. Omer’s, 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 flagellationem extremam) superadded a pleasure upon the palate of a man more intense than any possible suffering we can conceive in the animal, is man justified in using that method of putting the animal to death?’ I forget the decision.
“His sauce should be considered. 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. Barbacue your whole hogs to your palate, steep them in shallots, stuff them out with plantations of the rank and guilty garlic; you cannot poison them, or make them stronger than they are—but consider, he is a weakling—a flower.”
Part of Bartholomew Fair, 1721.
The [two] [engravings] whereon the reader now looks, are from a very curious scenic print of this Fair, as represented on an old fan, recently published by Mr. Setchel, of King-street, Covent-garden. The letter-press account subjoined to Mr. Setchel’s print says, that “about the year 1721, when the present interesting view of this popular Fair was taken, the drama was considered of some importance, and a series of minor, although regular, pieces, were acted in its various booths. At Lee and Harper’s, the ‘Siege of Berthulia’ is performing, in which is introduced the tragedy of ‘Holophernes.’”
Mr. Setchel’s account further represents, that “Persons of rank were also its occasional visitors, and the figure [on the right] (with the star) is also supposed to be that of sir Robert Walpole, then prime minister. Fawkes, the famous conjuror, forms a conspicuous feature, and is the only portrait of him known to exist.”
