MEATS. 469 
chops for luncheon, seasoned with affectionate regard, and 
respect.” In the Art of Cookery long before, we read that a 
certain 
** Old Cross condemns all persons to be Fops 
That can’t regale themselves on Mutton Chops : 
Sometimes ‘ Poor Jack ’ and onions are his dish, 
And then he saints all those that smell of fish.” 
George Eliot, writing to Charles Bray from Broadstairs (July, 
1852), told him: “I am profiting, body and mind, from quiet 
walks, and talks with nature, picking up shells (not in the 
Newtonian sense, but literally), reading Aristotle, to find out 
what is the chief good, and eating Mutton-chops that I may have 
the strength to pursue it.” 
Lamb, or young sheep, when sold as “ Easter grass lamb,” 
is, as says Dr. Kitchener, “ young, tough, stringy Mutton, which 
had better be called ‘hay Mutton.’ House lamb might be in 
season from Christmas to Ladyday, grass lamb from Easter to 
Michaelmas, but sham lamb is independent of the season. A 
quarter of a porkling is sometimes skinned, cut, and dressed, 
lamb-fashion, and being thus lambified is sold as a substitute. 
“Lamb, like all other young meat, ought to be thoroughly done ; 
therefore do not take either lamb, or veal, from the spit or jack, 
till you see it drop white gravy ; this rule is of great importance 
for the preservation of health.” Crabbe, in The Borough, has 
written with apt alliteration about thyme-fed Mutton grazing 
among 
“The sandy sheep-walk’s slender grass, 
Where fragrant flowers among the gorse are spread, 
And the lamb browses by the linnet’s bed.” 
The sweetbread of the lamb, smaller than that of the calf, is 
often substituted for the latter. Charles Lamb has told in 
Rosamund Gray, that “ ‘green peas, and a sweetbread’ were a 
favourite dish with him in his childhood, he was allowed 
to have it on his birth-days.” Compared with other foods 
as to its digestibility by the gastric juice, lambs’ flesh ranks 
below mutton, and veal, or salmon, but higher than poultry, 
whilst containing double as much fat as that of the calf. Horace, 
the Roman poet, invited Phyllis, the last of his loves, to “a 
banquet of lamb, flanked by old wine, parsley from the garden 
for the weaving of festive chaplets, and ivy to bind her hair.” 
“ Lamb-tail pie” is “a dainty dish to set before a king.” 
