ve you for
your noble attachment to the fat unctuous juices of deer's flesh & the
green unspeakable of turtle. I honour you for your endeavours to esteem
and approve of my favorite, which I ventured to recommend to you as a
substitute for hare, bullock's heart, and I am not offended that you
cannot taste it with _my_ palate. A true son of Epicurus should reserve
one taste peculiar to himself. For a long time I kept the secret about
the exceeding deliciousness of the marrow of boiled knuckle of veal,
till my tongue weakly ran riot in its praises, and now it is prostitute
& common.--But I have made one discovery which I will not impart till my
dying scene is over, perhaps it will be my last mouthful in this world:
delicious thought, enough to sweeten (or rather make savoury) the hour
of death. It is a little square bit about this size in or near the
knuckle bone of a fried joint of... fat I can't call it nor lean

[Illustration: Handrawn sketch]

neither altogether, it is that beautiful compound, which Nature must
have made in Paradise Park venison, before she separated the two
substances, the dry & the oleaginous, to punish sinful mankind; Adam ate
them entire & inseparate, and this little taste of Eden in the knuckle
bone of a fried... seems the only relique of a Paradisaical state. When
I die, an exact description of its topography shall be left in a
cupboard with a key, inscribed on which these words, "C. Lamb dying
imparts this to C. Chambers as the only worthy depository of such a
secret." You'll drop a tear....

[Charles Chambers was the brother of John Chambers (see above). He had
been at Christ's Hospital with Lamb and subsequently became a surgeon in
the Navy. He retired to Leamington and practised there until his death,
somewhen about 1857, says Mr. Hazlitt. He seems to have inherited some
of the epicure's tastes of his father, the "sensible clergyman in
Warwickshire" who, Lamb tells us in "Thoughts on Presents of Game,"
"used to allow a pound of Epping to every hare."

This letter adds one more to the list of Lamb's gustatory raptures, and
it is remarkable as being his only eulogy of fish. Mr. Hazlitt says that
the date September 1, 1817, has been added by another hand; but if the
remark about Dr. Parr is true (he died March 6, 1825) the time is as I
have stated. Fortunately the date in this particular case is
unimportant. Mr. Hazlitt suggests that the stupid person in the Tea
Warehouse was Bye, whom we