took place; the child escaped,
the pig was burned. The child scratched and pottered among the
ashes for its pig, which at last it found. All the provisions
being burnt, the child was very hungry, and not yet having any
artificial aids, such as golden ewers and damask napkins, began to
lick or suck its fingers to free them from the ashes. A piece of
fat adhered to one of his thumbs, which, being very savoury alike
in taste and odour, he rightly judged to belong to the pig. Liking
it much, he took it to his mother, just then appearing, who also
tasted it, and both agreed that it was better than fruit or
vegetables.

They rebuilt the house, and the woman, after the fashion of good
wives, who, says the chronicle, are now very scarce, put a pig
into it, and was about to set it on fire, when an old man, one
whom observation and reflection had made a philosopher, suggested
that a pile of wood would do as well. (This must have been the
father of economists.) The next pig was killed before it was
roasted, and thus

"From low beginnings,
We date our winnings."

Manning, by the way, contributed articles on Chinese jests to the _New
Monthly Magazine_ in 1826.

A preliminary sketch of the second portion of this essay will be found
in the letter to Coleridge dated March 9, 1822. See also the letters
to Mr. and Mrs. Bruton, January 6, 1823, to Mrs. Collier, November 2,
1824, and to H. Dodwell, October 7, 1827, all in acknowledgment of
pigs sent to Lamb probably from an impulse found in this essay.

Later, Lamb abandoned the extreme position here taken. In the little
essay entitled "Thoughts on Presents of Game," 1833 (see Vol. I.), he
says: "Time was, when Elia ... preferred to all a roasted pig. But he
disclaims all such green-sickness appetites in future."

Page 141, verse. "Ere sin could blight ..." From Coleridge's "Epitaph
on an Infant."

Page 142, line 7 from foot. _My good old aunt_. Probably Aunt Hetty.
See the essay on "Christ's Hospital," for another story of her. The
phrase, "Over London Bridge," unless an invention, suggests that
before this aunt went to live with the Lambs--probably not until they
left the Temple in 1792--she was living on the Surrey side. But it was
possibly an Elian mystification. Lamb had another aunt, but of her we
know nothing.

Page 143, line 11 from foot. _St. Omer's_. The French Jesuit College.
Lamb, it is