"Les vÛËs courtes, je veux dire les esprits bornez et resserrez dans leur petite sphÈre, ne peuvent comprendre cette universalitÉ de talens que l'on remarque quelquefois dans un mÊme sujet."—La Bruyere: Du MÉrite Personnel.

It were ungracious to trace the development of gastronomy further, or to peruse its literature at greater length, without rendering justice to the chief cause of its progress, deprived of which a CarÊme and a GouffÉ were impossible, and cookery, from a fine art, would resolve itself into a perfunctory obligation. The reader who has followed the writer thus far will surely not require to be told that the great evolutionist of the table is neither the cook nor yet the range or the pot-au-feu so much as the quadruped that Rome once selected for its badge and cognisance. A tout seigneur, tout honneur!—let us not be unmindful of the inestimable benefits the hog has conferred upon mankind. Where, indeed, may one find that universality of talents referred to by La BruyÈre so combined in a single individual as in the animal which the "short-sighted and narrow-minded" has so unjustly maligned? To what utilities does he not lend and blend himself, and where among Ungulata or ruminators terrene were his substitute—a piÈce de rÉsistance for the poor, a jouissance and benison for all.

If we accept the testimony of various pagan writers, pork, of which the ancients were so fond, originally came into use about a thousand years after the deluge, when Ceres, having sown a field of wheat, found it invaded one day by a pig. This so incensed the goddess that she forthwith punished the offender with death, and afterwards, having him cooked, discovered his superior virtues—to set the example of utilising him as food. The usual corn-cob placed in the mouth of a freshly killed porker, therefore, not only reflects the delicacy of his tastes, but is also classic in a measure—a symbol of his intimate relationship with mythology and his place amid the Graces.

By the ancient Egyptians the flesh of the swine was held to be impure. So was that of the camel, the cony, and the hare; so also the fat of the ox or of sheep or of goat. "Every beast of the wood or the hedge or the burrow, over and above the beasts of the chase and the warren, according to the ancient writers, is to be called 'rascal.'" The hog is likewise placed under ban by the Hindus and strict Buddhists, and is still generally regarded as unclean by the Mohammedans. But the Mohammedans and Hindus have no cuisine worthy of the name, and what were a cuisine without the resources supplied by his inexhaustible larder! The religious tenet of the Israelites by which the swine is proscribed as an article of diet is honoured more in the breach than in the observance. The Chinese have ever been fond of his savoury flesh, and it may be said that with nearly all nations he forms one of the leading staples of consumption. With the onion and that priceless herb parsley, which stimulates appetite, facilitates digestion, and renders nearly all sauces more attractive, he forms one of the most indispensable adjuncts of alimentation. Deprived of his lardship, the onion tribe, and parsley, cookery would soon decline, if indeed the skilled practitioner would not find it well-nigh impossible to exercise his art.

Despite what slanderous tongues of the East may utter to his discredit, therefore, the weight of evidence as to his utility remains overwhelmingly in his favour. We do not necessarily require him in our parlours; his true place is the kitchen and the dining-room. Think how unendurable life would be without him! Of all beasts he is the one whose empire is most universal, and whose worth is least attested. It is true that a eulogistic but now unprocurable work of forty-eight pages was written in Modena in 1761 by D. Giuseppe Ferrari, with the title "Gli Elogi del Porco." A treatise entitled "Dissertation sur le Cochon," by M. Buc'hoz, published in 1789, is also cited. But as this appeared in a series of monographs relating to coffee, cacao, and various fruits, and has been passed by without comment, it probably treats the quadruped merely from a sordid point of view, and possesses no interest unless to the husbandman and stock-raiser.

Few have sung his praises, and, with the exception of Southey's colloquial poem, no genethliac has been addressed to him in English rhyme. Monselet has apostrophised him in a poem wherein he terms him "cher ange," and M. Pouvoisin, in "La Mort du Goret," has tenderly referred to him as "mon frÈre." His oraison funÈbre is worthy of Bossuet:

Another poet, in a "Hymn to the Truffle," has accorded him a semi-complimentary stanza, referring to him as "a useful animal." A mediocre sonnet has also been addressed to him by Ernest d'Hervilly in a series of seven tributes to the oyster, the pig, the gudgeon, the rabbit, the roebuck, the herring, and the lobster.

"Man's ingratitude toward him," as Grimod de la ReyniÈre remarks in the "Almanach," "has basely reviled the name of the animal that is the most useful to the human race when he is no more. He is treated as the AbbÉ Geoffroy treats Voltaire; his memory is defamed whilst his flesh is being savoured, and he is repaid with ironical contempt for the ineffable pleasures he procures for us."

His classic Porcosity! sacred to Thor, patron of St. Anthony, the device of Richard III, the favourite animal of Morland and Jacque, how ungenerously he has been treated!

"All his habits are gross, all his appetites are impure; his stomach is unbounded and his gluttony unparalleled," say his calumniators. Yet, in fact, he is no more unclean than most domestic beasts, any lapses in this respect being due to man and to the evil communications to which he has been subjected under domestication. The wild hog is proverbially cleanly, and is almost exclusively a vegetarian. In his natural state his courage is undaunted. The peccary will challenge the jaguar, while the wild boar is not unfrequently victorious in his combats with the tiger himself.

"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:

But is he a glutton? and has he not been outrageously reviled by Spenser as well as by the poets in general? Is it fair to accept the dogmas and predications concerning his status, his vulgarity, and his voracity that have been bequeathed him from time immemorial? Is he not a gourmet rather than a gourmand? Does he not infinitely prefer the smallest truffle of PÉrigord to the hugest pumpkin of the fat prairies of the West? Not only inordinately fond of the truffle, without which a pÂtÉ de foie gras were a flower without perfume, he is the great hunter of this highly prized esculent, recognising with Autolycus that a good nose is requisite to smell out work for the other senses. Yet even then he is thanklessly treated by man, who, instead of remunerating him with an occasional tuber, grudgingly tosses him a few kernels of corn. The despised razorback of the South, in like manner, steadfastly performs his mission of waging war upon the rattlesnake without ever having been chosen as the emblem of a State.

To the epicure he must ever bring to mind the perfumed product of the sunny provinces of Guienne and DauphinÉ, the artists of Alsace, and the Wurstmachereis of Germany. His fondness for the truffle, as instanced in the wild boar, far exceeds that of the hare, the squirrel, and the deer; and although the basset-hound and sheep-dog are also of service in locating the tuber, the pig not only points it, but deftly uproots it for the greedy hand of man. The pig seeks it by instinct; the dog, through long and patient training. The pig's education is accomplished in a few lessons by obtaining his confidence and appealing to his epicurean taste. A boiled potato accompanied with a few truffle peelings is placed in a mound of sand, after finding which the animal is rewarded by a few chestnuts, acorns, or kernels of maize—and the rest is left to his infallible memory. In fact, the discovery of the truffle is due to the animal under consideration. "His long snout," says La ReyniÈre, "perceived the odour of this treasure at a depth of several metres. Up to this time, without a doubt, it had been reserved for the table of some evil genius jealous of the happiness of man; by his cunning he concealed it from the researches of the scientist, and some fairy, a friend of the human race, charged the pig, whose keen scent the goblin had forgotten to forefend, to mine the buried marvel and bring it to the light of day. However this may be, the first pig that discovered the truffle had excellent taste; there is no bel esprit to-day who is not eager to imitate him."[31]

The boar's head, likewise, how suggestive of good cheer! It at once takes one back to the great baronial dining-halls, the Knights of the Round Table, and the feasts and wassails of eld. It suggests the joyous festivals of harvest-home and Yule, with the chief table on the dais and the tables for retainers and servants, when the family and attendants assembled amid the blaze of the great hearth-fire and the music of the harpers and minstrels.

Again, consider his lovely appetite, exquisite digestion, and imperturbable slumbers that many a millionaire would gladly part with half his riches to obtain. The papillÆ of his tongue are never furred by dyspepsia, flatulence, gout, or the spleen. Proverbially on the best of terms with his stomach, he needs no podophyllin, bicarbonates, or Hunyadi. Sudden variations of temperature affect him not, while all latitudes are equally conducive to his longevity. Ennui is to him unknown, and life is never a burden, unless it be the trifling burden of the weight he carries. He sleeps and eats and digests, and in his own way solves the problem of content that is still unsolved by man.

His blithesome Porkship! his graces steal into the heart insensibly if one be a minute philosopher. No cock-crowing or turkey-gobbling, no lowing of kine or bleating of flocks, no screaming of hawks or cawing of crows may vie as an expression of the rural landscape with his complacent grunt of satisfaction and "high-piping Pehlevi" of triumph. A vibrant chord of melody when snouted and bristled disputants crowd and jostle around the trough or squeal and scramble within the pen, it yet requires a more potent mediumship to draw forth in its fullest measure the piercing treble of the porcine lyre. Rather let us hear it, arrectis auribus, rising sonorously along the highway or drifting adown some reverberant lane, with the dog as the plectrum of the ham-strings. Thomson, less gracious but more observant than Lamb, recognised his accomplishments as a lyrist, and in a stanza in "The Castle of Indolence," a complement to the stanza cited from "The Faerie Queene," thus apostrophises his power of song:

Like Spenser, Thomson has grossly traduced him, except so far as his musical gifts are concerned, though in this respect he might have been more discriminating in the use of his adjectives. Why "troublous" and "unmelodious," in place of expressing his thrilling arpeggio of song?

But it is for qualities more sterling than those of a vocal nature that the confrÈre of the cook deserves recognition. He has his trifling faults, to be sure—who is without them? He is obstinate in being driven to market, perhaps, knowing the fate which awaits him, and possibly his assurance may be somewhat obnoxious at public gatherings. It is admitted also that his savoir faire at table, while distinguished for aplomb, is not entirely without alloy. But although the ill-mannered among his tribe occasionally thrust their feet not under but upon the mahogany, and are sometimes guilty of elbowing one another at mealtime, yet it must be conceded that they are never late at their engagements to dine; neither do they ever commit that unpardonable breach of etiquette—eating with a knife. It is a belle fourchette rather than a fine blade they ply.

The late Horace Greeley, to repeat a well-known story, tells of a farmer who drove a herd of Yorkshires to market,—

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."

Less secretive than communicative in most of his ways, the hog is nevertheless an enigma as regards his natural term of life. Not that for a moment his native modesty forbids his announcing his age, or that his lease of life equals that of Epimenides, but that, owing to circumstances over which he has no control,—the greed and voracity of man,—he is handicapped from proclaiming the full extent of his longevity. "The natural age of a hog's life is little known," observes the learned Hampshire rector-naturalist; "and the reason is plain—because it is neither profitable nor convenient to keep that turbulent animal to the full extent of its time." The man were a dolt who would take exceptions to White's natural-history observations, so lucidly and delightfully set forth in the pages of "Selborne." And yet, so great was his sympathy for all animals and dumb creatures, may not the term "turbulent" have been possibly a slip of the pen or fault of the types for "buoyant" or "complacent," with no malice prepense, as in the case of Spenser and the generality of the poets?

His bonhomie and engaging nature are seldom considered, unless by a few humanitarians or interested trainers of animals. Yet what possibilities does he not present as a companion to man, were man not so eager for his slaughter, and were he to receive the same encouragements as the cat and the dog! A case is cited by Frank Buckland of a hog at Guildford that followed its master daily on his walks, and whose instinct, agility, and affection could be equalled only by the canine species. Hamerton also mentions a wild boar in France which became domesticated and regularly accompanied his master to the village church and would not be excluded, but came at last, by the toleration of the curÉ, to hear mass like a Christian, till finally he grew to an alarming size and was sold to a travelling menagerie. The hog has been known in numerous instances to set and retrieve various kinds of game with an intelligence equal to that of the most blue-blooded pointer or setter, and even to exceed the canine species in acuteness of scent and staunchness. A wager was once made in England that with a hog trained on game the owner could kill more grouse on the moors than either of his two competitors with their dogs, the result being considerably in favour of the challenging party.

"If the pig had wings and could soar above the hedges," says an appreciative writer in the old German "Kreuterbuch," "he would be regarded as the best and most magnificent of fowls!" Is he not, moreover, with his boon companion the domestic goose (likewise a douceur of the table when served with applesauce), one of the most reliable of weather prophets, becoming restless and uttering loud cries at the approach of a storm?

In any event, whatever deprivation the non-development of his social qualities may have occasioned, he still shines supreme as a utilitarian, a stimulus to gastronomy, and a promoter of the polite arts. Some there are, perchance, who have cursorily regarded the obligations we owe him as a purveyor of our comforts so far as relates to the hair-brushes, tooth-brushes, and nail-brushes he has kindly provided. The saddler and trunk-maker no doubt appreciate him after a fashion, as did the conscientious bookbinder of old, with whom he figured indirectly as a confrÈre in belles-lettres. But who among the recipients of his many bounties has paused to consider the inestimable influence he has exercised upon one of the greatest of the romantic or fine arts, without which the most celebrated canvases of the world had never existed, and the art of painting, if not utterly abandoned, must languish of necessity for lack of his bristles to lay on the pigments? For, with the exception of the minute brushes made from the soft fur of the red sable for detail work, he contributes, if not the artist's genius itself, at least the chief vehicle with which it is possible to render it enduring.

One by one he has felt the pictures of Raphael, Titian, Correggio, and Guido pulsate beneath the artist's brush; while later, in another land, he was instrumental in fixing the harmonics of Velasquez's and Murillo's marvellous colouring. He has witnessed the growing fame of Turner and surveyed the miles of glowing flesh that Rubens has painted. With Watteau and Boucher, he has gazed on many a fair shepherdess and pastoral scene, and, with Jacque and Mauve, helped the shepherd drive his fleecy flock. He has basked in the sunny atmosphere of Cuyp, Wynants, and Van der Neer, and watched the radiant face of woman assume a heightened charm through the genius of Lely and Reynolds. He has viewed the frail beauties of the harem with GÉrÔme, and marked the roseate twilight deepen over Venice with Ziem. A silent spectator of the great pageant of Art, he has beheld Le Brun and Vernet depict the carnage of the battle-field, and Poussin, Claude, and Constable open enchanting vistas of landscape. Contemplating the progress of modern art, he sees Diaz and Daubigny, Bouguereau and Meissonier, Vibert and Verestchagin, Corot and Inness, and how many others! seated upon the throne of undying fame and wielding the sceptre which he himself has supplied.

His illustrious Bristleousness! Were it not for man's ingratitude and his overpowering worth upon the shambles, he would long since have been canonised and figure as the joint symbol of the useful and the romantic arts.

Consider him likewise in his ferine state as most closely related to nature, moving majestically through the fastnesses of his native stronghold, toothed and tushed for war, indigenous and mighty as the oaks which yield him their mast or the trees of the jungles through which he treads. "The jungle path is his as much as the tiger's," writes the Indian sportsman and naturalist, Shakespeare; "the native shikarries affirm that the wild boar will quench his thirst at the river between two tigers, and I believe this to be strictly the truth. The tiger and the boar have been heard fighting in the jungle at night, and both have been found dead alongside of one another in the morning." It was a wild boar that slew Adonis; and by none, not even by BaryÉ, has the animal been more vividly depicted than by Shakespeare in the warning of Venus:

As for his domesticated brother, to come back to our cochons, let him be aspersed as he may—we have seen the manifold benefits he has procured for us and the plane he rightly occupies in the evolution of mankind. Without him the kitchen were well-nigh impracticable, and, deprived of his services, gastronomy were an obsolete word.