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glens of Ayr, and the kenns10 of Galloway, as ever the Highlandmen did in 1677. And now they are gripping to the bow and to the spear, when they suld be mourning for a sinfu' land and a broken covenant.'

my span of life may be abridged in youth, he had over-estimated the period of his own pilgrimage on earth. It is now some years since he has been missed in all his usual haunts, while moss, lichen, and deer-hair, are fast covering "Soothing the old man by letting his pecu- those stones, to cleanse which had been the busiliar opinions pass without contradiction, and ness of his life. About the beginning of this anxious to prolong conversation with so singu-century he closed his mortal toils, being found lar a character, I prevailed upon him to accept on the highway near Lockerby, in Dumfriesthat hospitality, which Mr. Cleishbotham is shire, exhausted and just expiring. The old always willing to extend to those who need it. white pony, the companion of all his wanderIn our way to the schoolmaster's house, we ings, was standing by the side of his dying called at the Wallace Inn, where I was pretty master. There was found about his person a certain I should find my patron about that hour sum of money sufficient for his decent interof the evening. After a courteous interchange ment, which serves to show that his death was of civilities, Old Mortality was, with difficulty, in no ways hastened by violence or by want. prevailed upon to join his host in a single glass The common people still regard his memory of liquor, and that on condition that he should with great respect; and many are of opinion. be permitted to name the pledge, which he that the stones which he repaired will not again prefaced with a grace of about five minutes. require the assistance of the chisel. They even and then, with bonnet doffed and eyes uplifted, assert that on the tombs where the manner of drank to the memory of those heroes of the the martyrs' murder is recorded, their names Kirk11 who had first uplifted her banner upon have remained indelibly legible since the death the mountains. As no persuasion could prevail of Old Mortality, while those of the persecutors. on him to extend his conviviality to a second sculptured on the same monuments, have been cup, my patron accompanied him home, and entirely defaced. It is hardly necessary to say accommodated him in the Prophet's Chamber, that this is a fond imagination, and that, since as it is his pleasure to call the closet which the time of the pious pilgrim, the monuments holds a spare bed, and which is frequently a which were the objects of his care are hastening, place of retreat for the poor traveller. like all earthly memorials, into ruin or decay.''

CHARLES LAMB (1775-1834)

FROM ELIA*

DREAM-CHILDREN: A REVERIE

Children love to listen to stories about their

"The next day I took leave of Old Mortality, who seemed affected by the unusual attention with which I had cultivated his acquaintance and listened to his conversation. After he had mounted, not without difficulty, the old white pony, he took me by the hand and said, 'The blessing of our Master be with you, young man! My hours are like the ears of the latter harvest, and your days are yet in the spring; and yet you may be gathered into the garner of mor- elders, when they were children; to stretch their tality before me, for the sickle of death cuts imagination to the conception of a traditionary down the green as oft as the ripe, and there is great-uncle, or grandame, whom they never saw. a colour in your cheek, that, like the bud of the It was in this spirit that my little ones crept rose, serveth oft to hide the worm of corruption.about me the other evening to hear about their Wherefore labour as one who knoweth not when his master calleth. And if it be my lot to return to this village after ye are gane hame to your ain place, these auld withered hands will frame a stane of memorial, that your name may not perish from among the people.'

"I thanked Old Mortality for his kind intentions in my behalf, and heaved a sigh, not, I think, of regret so much as of resignation, to think of the chance that I might soon require his good offices. But though, in all human probability, he did not err in supposing that

10 From Gaelic ceann, head, headland, mountain. 11 The Scotch, or Presbyterian Church.

great-grandmother Field, who lived in a great house in Norfolk (a hundred times bigger than

"Elia." the signature under which Lamb published his essays in the London Magazine, was the name of an Italian clerk at the South-Sea House where Lamb had been employed nearly thirty years before. The essay entitled DreamChildren was written some time after the death of his brother John. late in the year 1821. when he and his sister Mary ("Bridget Elia") were left alone. "Alice W--n or "Alice Winterton" may have stood. in part at least, for one Ann Simmons (later Mrs. Bartrum) for whom Lamb seems to have felt some attachment. The "great house in Norfolk" was a manor-house in Hertfordshire where his grandmother. Mary Field, had for many years been housekeeper.

cause she was so good and religious. Then I told how she was used to sleep by herself in a lone chamber of the great lone house; and how she believed that an apparition of two infants was to be seen at midnight gliding up and down the great staircase near where she slept, but she said, "those innocents would do her no harm;" and how frightened I used to be, though in those days I had my maid to sleep with me, because I was never half so good or religious as she-and yet I never saw the infants. Here John expanded all his eyebrows and tried to look courageous. Then I told how good she was to all her grandchildren, having us to the great house in the holidays, where I in particular used to spend many hours by myself, in gazing upon the old busts of the Twelve Cæsars, that had been Emperors of Rome, till the old marble heads would seem to live again, or I to be turned into marble with them; how I never could be tired with roaming about that huge mansion, with its vast empty rooms, with their worn-out hangings, fluttering tapestry, and carved oaken panels, with the gilding almost rubbed out-sometimes in the spacious old-fashioned gardens, which I had almost to myself, unless when now and then a solitary gardening man would cross me-and how the nectarines and peaches hung upon the walls, without my ever offering to pluck them, because they were forbidden fruit, unless now and then,-and because I had more pleasure in strolling about among the old melancholy-look

that in which they and papa lived) which had been the scene (so at least it was generally believed in that part of the country) of the tragic incidents which they had lately become familiar with from the ballad of the Children in the Wood. Certain it is that the whole story of the children and their cruel uncle was to be seen fairly carved out in wood upon the chimney-piece of the great hall, the whole story down to the Robin Redbreasts; till a foolish rich person pulled it down to set up a marble one of modern invention in its stead, with no story upon it. Here Alice put out one of her dear mother's looks, too tender to be called upbraiding. Then I went on to say how religious and how good their great-grandmother Field was, how beloved and respected by everybody, though she was not indeed the mistress of this great house, but had only the charge of it (and yet in some respects she might be said to be the mistress of it too) committed to her by the owner, who preferred living in a newer and more fashionable mansion which he had purchased somewhere in the adjoining county; but still she lived in it in a manner as if it had been her own, and kept up the dignity of the great house in a sort while she lived, which after wards came to decay, and was nearly pulled down, and all its old ornaments stripped and carried away to the owner's other house, where they were set up, and looked as awkward as if some one were to carry away the old tombs they had seen lately at the Abbey, and stick them up in Lady C.'s tawdry gilt drawing-ing yew-trees, or the firs, and picking up the room. Here John smiled, as much as to say, red berries, and the fir-apples, which were good **that would be foolish indeed." And then I for nothing but to look at-or in lying about told how, when she came to die, her funeral upon the fresh grass with all the fine garden was attended by a concourse of all the poor, smells around me-or basking in the orangery, and some of the gentry too, of the neighbour- till I could almost fancy myself ripening too hood for many miles round, to show their re- along with the oranges and the limes in that spect for her memory, because she had been grateful warmth-or in watching the dace that such a good and religious woman; so good in- darted to and fro in the fish-pond, at the bottom deed that she knew all the Psaltery by heart, of the garden, with here and there a great sulky ay, and a great part of the Testament besides. ¦ pike hanging midway down the water in silent Here little Alice spread her hands. Then I told state, as if it mocked at their impertinent friskwhat a tall, upright, graceful person their ings, I had more pleasure in these busy-idle great-grandmother Field once was; and how in diversions than in all the sweet flavours of her youth she was esteemed the best dancer—| peaches, nectarines, oranges, and such-like comhere Alice's little right foot played an invol- mon baits of children. Here John slyly depos untary movement, till, upon my looking grave, ited back upon the plate a bunch of grapes, it desisted-the best dancer, I was saying, in which, not unobserved by Alice, he had medithe county, till a cruel disease, called a cancer, tated dividing with her, and both seemed willing came, and bowed her down with pain; but it to relinquish them for the present as irrelevant. could never bend her good spirits, or make|Then, in somewhat a more heightened tone, I them stoop, but they were still upright, be- told how, though their great-grandmother Field Lamb was fond of visiting Westminster Abbey, loved all her grandchildren, yet in an especial manner she might be said to love their uncle, John L——, because he was so handsome and

and he wrote an essay in protest against the charge for admittance which had lately been imposed.

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spirited a youth, and a king to the rest of us; and, instead of moping about in solitary corners, like some of us, he would mount the most mettlesome horse he could get, when but an imp no bigger than themselves, and make it carry him half over the county in a morning, and join the hunters when there were any out -and yet he loved the old great house and gardens too, but had too much spirit to be always pent up within their boundaries-and how their uncle grew up to man's estate as brave as he was handsome, to the admiration of every body, but of their great-grandmother Field most especially; and how he used to carry me upon his back when I was a lame-footed boyfor he was a good bit older than me-many a mile when I could not walk for pain;-and how in after life he became lame-footed too, and I did not always (I fear) make allowances enough for him when he was impatient, and in pain, nor remember sufficiently how considerate he had been to me when I was lame-footed; and how when he died, though he had not been dead an hour, it seemed as if he had died a great while ago, such a distance there is betwixt life and death; and how I bore his death as I thought pretty well at first, but afterwards it haunted and haunted me; and though I did not cry or take it to heart as some do, and as I think he would have done if I had died, yet I missed him all day long, and knew not till then how much I had loved him. I missed his kindness, and I missed his crossness, and wished him to be alive again, to be quarrelling with him (for we quarrelled sometimes) rather than not have him again, and was as uneasy with out him as he their poor uncle must have been when the doctor took off his limb. Here the children fell a crying, and asked if their little mourning which they had on was not for uncle John, and they looked up, and prayed me not to go on about their uncle, but to tell them some stories about their pretty dead mother. Then I told how for seven long years, in hope sometimes, sometimes in despair, yet persisting ever, I courted the fair Alice W-n; and, as much as children could understand, I explained to them what coyness, and difficulty, and denial, meant in maidens-when suddenly, turning to Alice, the soul of the first Alice looked out at her eyes with such a reality of re-presentment, that I became in doubt which of them stood there before me, or whose that bright hair was; and while I stood gazing, both the children gradually grew fainter to my view, receding, and still receding, till nothing at last but two mournful features were seen in the uttermost distance, which, without speech,

strangely impressed upon me the effects of speech: "We are not of Alice, nor of thee, nor are we children at all. The children of Alice call Bartrum father. We are nothing; less than nothing, and dreams. We are only what might have been, and must wait upon the tedious shores of Lethe millions of ages before we have existence and a name''-and immediately awaking, I found myself quietly seated in my bachelor arm-chair, where I had fallen asleep, with the faithful Bridget unchanged by my side-but John L. (or James Elia) was gone forever.

A DISSERTATION UPON ROAST PIG

Mankind, says a Chinese manuscript,* which my friend M. was obliging enough to read and explain to me, for the first seventy thousand ages ate their meat raw, clawing or biting it from the living animal, just as they do in Abys sinia to this day. This period is not obscurely hinted at by their great Confucius in the second chapter of his Mundane Mutations, where he designates a kind of golden age by the term Chofang, literally the Cooks' Holiday. The manuscript goes on to say, that the art of roasting, or rather broiling (which I take to be the elder-brother), was accidentally discovered in the manner following. The swineherd, Ho-ti, having gone out into the woods one morning, as his manner was, to collect mast for his hogs, left his cottage in the care of his eldest son, Bo-bo, a great lubberly boy, who being fond of playing with fire, as younkers of his age commonly are, let some sparks escape into a bundle of straw, which kindling quickly, spread the conflagration over every part of their poor mansion, till it was reduced to ashes. Together with the cottage (a sorry antediluvian makeshift of a building, you may think it), what was of much more importance, a fine litter of new-farrowed pigs, no less than nine in number, perished. China pigs have been esteemed a luxury all over the East, from the remotest periods that we read of. Bo-bo was in the utmost consternation, as you may think, not so much for the sake of the tenement, which his father and he could easily build up again with a few dry branches, and the labour of an hour or two, at any time, as for the loss of the pigs. While he was thinking what he should say to his father, and wringing his hands over the smoking remnants of one of those untimely

The manuscript, and the Chinese names (except that of Confucius the great philosopher), are fictitious, but the tradition itself, which Lamb obtained from the traveller Thomas Manning, is an ancient one.

sufferers, an odour assailed his nostrils, unlike any scent which he had before experienced. What could it proceed from?-not from the burnt cottage he had smelt that smell before -indeed this was by no means the first accident of the kind which had occurred through the negligence of this unlucky young fire-brand. Much less did it resemble that of any known herb, weed, or flower. A premonitory moistening at the same time overflowed his nether lip. He knew not what to think. He next stooped down to feel the pig, if there were any signs of life in it. He burnt his fingers, and to cool them he applied them in his booby fashion to his mouth. Some of the crumbs of the scorched skin had come away with his fingers, and for the first time in his life (in the world's life indeed, for before him no man had known it) he tasted-crackling! Again he felt and fumbled at the pig. It did not burn him so much now; still he licked his fingers from a sort of habit. The truth at length broke into his slow understanding, that it was the pig that smelt so, and the pig that tasted so delicious; and, surrendering himself up to the new-born pleasure, he fell to tearing up whole handfuls of the scorched skin with the flesh next it, and was cramming it down his throat in his beastly fashion, when his sire entered amid the smoking rafters, armed with retributory cudgel, and finding how affairs stood, began to rain blows upon the young rogue's shoulders, as thick as hail-stones, which Bo-bo heeded not any more than if they had been flies. The tickling pleasure, which he experienced in his lower regions, had rendered him quite callous to any inconveniences he might feel in those remote quarters. His father might lay on, but he could not beat him from his pig, till he had fairly made an end of it, when, becoming a little more sensible of his situation, something like the following dialogue ensued.

"You graceless whelp, what have you got there devouring? Is it not enough that you have burnt me down three houses with your dog's tricks, and be hanged to you! but you must be eating fire, and I know not what-what have you got there, I say?" "

half by main force into the fists of Ho-ti, still shouting out, "Eat, eat, eat the burnt pig, father; only taste-O Lord!"-with such-like barbarous ejaculations, cramming all the while as if he would choke.

Ho-ti trembled every joint while he grasped the abominable thing, wavering whether he should not put his son to death for an unnatural young monster, when the crackling scorching his fingers, as it had done his son's, and applying the same remedy to them, he in his turn tasted some of its flavour, which, make what sour mouths he would for a pretense, proved not altogether displeasing to him. In conclusion (for the manuscript here is a little tedious), both father and son fairly sat down to the mess, and never left off till they had despatched all that remained of the litter.

Bo-bo was strictly enjoined not to let the secret escape, for the neighbours would cer tainly have stoned them for a couple of abominable wretches, who could think of improving upon the good meat which God had sent them. Nevertheless, strange stories got about. It was observed that Ho-ti's cottage was burnt down now more frequently than ever. Nothing but fires from this time forward. Some would break out in broad day, others in the nighttime. As often as the sow farrowed, so sure was the house of Ho-ti to be in a blaze; and Ho-ti himself, which was the more remarkable, instead of chastising his son, seemed to grow more indulgent to him than ever. At length they were watched, the terrible mystery discovered, and father and son summoned to take their trial at Pekin, then an inconsiderable assize town. Evidence was given, the obnoxious food itself produced in court, and verdict about to be pronounced, when the foreman of the jury begged that some of the burnt pig, of which the culprits stood accused, might be handed int > the box. He handled it, and they all handled it; and burning their fingers, as Bo-bo and his father had done before them, and nature prompting to each of them the same remedy, against the face of all the facts, and the clearest charge which judge had ever given,-to the surprise of the whole court, townsfolk, strangers,

"O father, the pig, the pig! do come and reporters, and all present-without leaving the taste how nice the burnt pig eats.''

The ears of Ho-ti tingled with horror. He cursed his son, and he cursed himself, that ever he should beget a son that should eat burnt pig. Bo-bo, whose scent was wonderfully sharp ened since morning, soon raked out another pig, and fairly rending it asunder, thrust the lesser

1 The crisp skin of roast pork.

box, or any manner of consultation whatever, they brought in a simultaneous verdict of Not Guilty.

The judge, who was a shrewd fellow, winked at the manifest iniquity of the decision; and when the court was dismissed, went privily, and bought up all the pigs that could be had for love or money. In a few days his Lordship's

town-house was observed to be on fire. The

fat and lean (if it must be so) so blended and running into each other, that both together make but one ambrosian result, or common substance. Behold him, while he is doing''-it seemeth rather a refreshing warmth, than a scorching heat, that he is so passive to. How equably he twirleth round the string!-Now he is just done. To see the extreme sensibility of that tender age! he hath wept out his pretty eyes-radiant jellies-shooting stars

thing took wing, and now there was nothing to be seen but fires in every direction. Fuel and pigs grew enormously dear all over the district. The insurance-offices one and all shut up shop. People built slighter and slighter every day, until it was feared that the very science of architecture would in no long time be lost to the world. Thus this custom of firing houses continued, till in process of time, says my manuscript, a sage arose, like our Locke,2 who made a discovery, that the flesh of swine, or See him in the dish, his second cradle, how indeed of any other animal, might be cooked meek he lieth!—wouldst thou have had this (burnt, as they called it) without the necessity innocent grow up to the grossness and indoof consuming a whole house to dress it. Then cility which too often accompany maturer swinefirst began the rude form of a gridiron. Roast-hood? Ten to one he would have proved a gluting by the string, or spit, came in a century or ton, a sloven, an obstinate disagreeable animal two later, I forget in whose dynasty. By such-wallowing in all manner of filthy conversation. slow degrees, concludes the manuscript, do the From these sins he is happily snatched awaymost useful, and seemingly the most obvious arts, make their way among mankind.—

Without placing too implicit faith in the account above given, it must be agreed, that if a worthy pretext for so dangerous an experiment as setting houses on fire (especially in these days) could be assigned in favour of any culinary object, that pretext and excuse might be found in ROAST PIG.

Of all the delicacies in the whole mundus edibilis,3 I will maintain it to be the most delicate princeps obsoniorum.4

I speak not of your grown porkers-things between pig and pork-those hobbydehoys but a young and tender suckling-under a moon old-guiltless as yet of the sty-with no original speck of the amor immunditiæ, the hereditary failing of the first parent, yet manifest-his voice as yet not broken, but something between a childish treble and a grumble-the mild forerunner, or præludium, of a grunt.

He must be roasted. I am not ignorant that our ancestors ate them seethed, or boiled-but what a sacrifice of the exterior tegument!

Ere sin could blight or sorrow fade,
Death came with timely cares-

his memory is odoriferous-no clown curseth,
while his stomach half rejecteth, the rank bacon
-no coalheaver bolteth him in reeking sausages

he hath a fair sepulchre in the grateful stomach of the judicious epicure-and for such a tomb might be content to die.

He is the best of sapors. Pine-apple is great. She is indeed almost too transcendent -a delight, if not sinful, yet so like to sinning, that really a tender-conscienced person would do well to pause-too ravishing for mortal taste. she woundeth and excoriateth the lips that approach her-like lovers' kisses, she bitethshe is a pleasure bordering on pain from the fierceness and insanity of her relish-but she stoppeth at the palate-she meddleth not with the appetite-and the coarsest hunger might barter her consistently for a mutton chop.

Pig-let me speak his praise-is no less provocative of the appetite, than he is satisfactory to the criticalness of the censorious palate. The strong man may batten on him, and the weak

There is no flavour comparable, I will contend, to that of the crisp, tawny, well-watched,ling refuseth not his mild juices. not over-roasted, crackling, as it is well called— the very teeth are invited to their share of the pleasure at this banquet in overcoming the coy, brittle resistance-with the adhesive oleaginous -O call it not fat! but an indefinable sweetness growing up to it-the tender blossoming of fat -fat cropped in the bud-taken in the shoot-in the first innocence-the cream and quintessence of the child-pig's yet pure food-the lean, no lean, but a kind of animal manna-or, rather, 2 John Locke, a British 4 chief of tidbits philosopher.

Unlike to mankind's mixed characters, a

bundle of virtues and vices, inexplicably interhe is-good throughout. No part of him is bettwisted and not to be unravelled without hazard, ter or worse than another. He helpeth, as far as his little means extend, all around. He is the least envious of banquets. He is all neighbours'

3 world of edibles

5 youths at the awk-
ward age

6 love of dirt

fare.

I am one of those who freely and ungrudg

7 Ancient superstition regarded certain jelly-like fungi as fallen shooting-stars. Compare. moreover, Cornwall's "Out, vile jelly" (King Lear, III, vii, 83).

8 Coleridge: Epitaph on an Infant.

9 savors

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