nt and to sing a song by Webster, one of his old
dramatists. Mr. Bertram Dobell conjectures that Wainewright may have
written this squib.

* * * * *

Page 137. A DISSERTATION UPON ROAST PIG.

_London Magazine_, September, 1822.

There has been some discussion as to the origin of the central idea of
this essay. A resemblance is found in a passage in _The Turkish Spy_,
where, after describing the annual burnt-offering of a bull by the
Athenians, _The Spy_ continues:--

In process of time a certain priest, in the midst of his bloody
sacrifice, taking up a piece of the broiled flesh which had fallen
from the altar on the ground, and burning his fingers therewith,
suddenly clapt them to his mouth to mitigate the pain. But, when
he had once tasted the sweetness of the fat, not only longed for
more of it, but gave a piece to his assistant; and he to others;
who, all pleased with the new-found dainties, fell to eating of
flesh greedily. And hence this species of gluttony was taught to
other mortals.

"Este," a contributor to _Notes and Queries_, June 21, 1884, wrote:--

A quarto volume of forty-six pages, once in "Charles Lamb's
library" (according to a pencilled note in the volume) is before
me, entitled: _Gli Elogi del Porco, Capitoli Berneschi di Tigrinto
Bistonio P.A., E. Accademico Ducale de' Dissonanti di Modena.
In Modena per gli Eredi di Bartolmeo Soliani Stampatori Ducali
MDCCLXI. Con Licenza de' Superiori_, [wherein] some former owner
of the volume has copied out Lamb's prose with many exact verbal
resemblances from the poem.

It has also been suggested that Porphyry's tract on _Abstinence from
Animal Food_, translated by William Taylor, bears a likeness to the
passage. Taylor's translation, however, was not published till 1823,
some time after Lamb's essay.

These parallels merely go to show that the idea was a commonplace; at
the same time it is not Lamb, but Manning, who told him the story,
that must declare its origin. Not only in the essay, but in a letter
to Barton in March, 1823, does Lamb express his indebtedness to his
traveller friend. Allsop, indeed, in his _Letters of Coleridge_,
claims to give the Chinese story which Manning lent to Lamb and which
produced the "Dissertation." It runs thus:--

A child, in the early ages, was left alone by its mother in a
house in which was a pig. A fire