EEP0KT8. 67 



tim of circumstances, an involuntary scoundrel and "more sinned 

 against than sinning." 



It is difficult to assign any cause of the neglect which this valuable 

 and interesting animal has so long experienced. Whether it be 

 Jewish prejudice, or Mahometan superstition, or something else, to 

 which the hog owes his depressed condition, it has certainly not al- 

 ways been so. In other periods of history, the swine has not been 

 without honor. 



There is extant, a Latin poem of some hundred lines, in regular 

 heroic verse, every word of which in honor of this animal, commences 

 with the letter P the initial of his Latin name, Porcus. It is entitled 

 " Pugno Porcorum per Publium Porcium Poetam." We quote a few 

 lines containing a part of the speech of the Porconsul Porcorum, in 

 which he tries to win over the younger pigs to peace. 



Propterea properans Proconsul, poplite prono, 

 Pra?cipitem Plebem pro Patrum pace poposcit, 

 Persta paulisper, pubes preciosa, precamiu'. 



So in Virgil, old Father Tiber takes pains to appear to ^^neas with 

 this important message, " Thou shall find reclining under the oaks 

 upon the shore, a huge snow white sow, and around her a litter of 

 thirty pigs. This shall be the site for your city, and in remembrance 

 of the circumstance it shall be called '■'■ AJha,''' (white.) Pious -35neas 

 found the sow and pigs as predicted, and very cruelly as we 

 think ordered them all to be sacrificed to Juno. Not a pig of them 

 hoAvever, did Juno ever see. They 'Avere all transferred to the private 

 larder of ^neas, whom it is impossible to justify for thus cheating 

 the gods, even though assailed by so sore a temptation as roast pig. 

 Roast pig ! Who but Charles Lamb has fitly sung thy praise ! 



" Of all the delicacies in the whole munbus edibilis, I will main- 

 tain it to be the most delicate — princeps obsoniorum. I speak not of 

 your grown porkers, but a young and tender suckling, guiltless as yet 

 of the sty, his voice as yet not broken, but something between a 

 childish treble and a grumble, the mild fore-runner of a grunt. There 

 is no flavor comparable, I will contend, to that of the crisp, tawny, 

 not over-roasted crackling, as it is well called — the very teeth are in- 

 vited to their share of pleasure at this banquet in overcoming the coy, 

 brittle resistance — with the adhesive oleaginous, call it not fat ! 

 but an indefinable sweetness growing up to it, the tender blossoming 

 of fat — fat cropped in the bud, taken in the shoot, in the first inno- 

 cence, the cream and quintessence of the child-pig's yet pure food — 

 the le^n no-lean, but a kind of animal manna — or rather, fat and 

 lean (if it must be so) so blended and rnnning into each other that 

 both together make but one ambrosian result, or common substance." 



Mahomet commanded his followers to abstain from pork, declaring 

 there was a particular joint in every swine, which no good musselman 



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