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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, I will maintain it to be the most delicate–princeps obsoniorum.

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 immunditiae, 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 praeludium, 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!

There is no flavour comparable, I will contend, to that of the crisp, tawny, well-watched, 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, 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–

See him in the dish, his second cradle, how meek he lieth!–wouldst thou have had this innocent grow up to the grossness and indocility which too often accompany maturer swinehood? Ten to one he would have proved a glutton, a sloven, an obstinate, disagreeable animal–wallowing in all manner of filthy conversation–from these sins he is happily snatched away–

Ere sin could blight, or sorrow fade,
Death came with timely care–

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 biteth–she 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 weakling refuseth not his mild juices.

Unlike to mankind’s mixed characters, a bundle of virtues and vices, inexplicably intertwisted, and not to be unravelled without hazard, he is–good throughout. No part of him is better 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’ fare.

I am one of those, 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 chicken (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. Methinks it is an ingratitude to the Giver of all good flavours, to extra-domiciliate, or send out of the house, slightingly, (under pretext of friendship, or I know not what) a blessing so particularly adapted, predestined, I may say, to my individual palate–It argues an insensibility.