Some Beasts of Reproach. 99 



At other times, again, it is the placid emblem of fatness, 

 an honourable obesity. For it is only in modern civilisa- 

 tion that fatness has been laughed at. In more than half 

 the world it commands respect, for beyond the energetic 

 limits of Europe, physical exercise after manhood is con- 

 sidered one of the disagreeable accidents of poverty, the 

 fate of the necessitous, just as leanness of limb is the livery 

 of the underfed. And the Oriental, therefore, receiving as 

 he does the deference of his neighbours on account of the 

 portliness of his person, prefers to move about in the 

 adipose discomfort of a well-to-do appearance rather than 

 to be seen in the pauper's uniform of bones. 



I do not go so far as to say that I would join the super- 

 stitious in their vigils in pig-styes on Christmas eve — at 

 least not with becoming alacrity — or would join in the train 

 of suitors for the wealthy pig-faced lady, or " hog-faced 

 gentlewoman," as the chap-book of the period styles her. 

 But, on the other hand, I have no propensity to faint, as that 

 stout marshal of France used to do at the sight of one, 

 nor to object to being taxed, as the country folk thereabouts 

 do, w^ith being born at Hogg's Norton. I do not share 

 Isaiah's prodigious objections to pork. 



Indeed, between an excessive enthusiasm and a bigoted 

 detestation there is the more becoming medium of sobriety, 

 and I am content, therefore, to commit myself no further 

 than to say I had rather hear the cheery horn of the swine- 

 herd calling his charges to their banquet under the Cam- 

 panian oaks, than the last squeals of the hog on the altars 

 of Bacchus. 



The poets, therefore, are not romping on such safe 

 grounds as they think when they frolic over the fatness of 

 swine. Nor should they have forgotten to allow pig-legends 

 to temper their severity. It is only by giving all evidence 

 its due weight that judges arrive at the cold neutrality of 

 impartiality. Now, was not the hog sacred to Thor, and is 



