"Valiant I know they be, but I appeal to those who were witnesses
to the exploits of Eliot's famous troop whether in their fiercest
charges they betrayed anything of that thoughtless oblivion to
death with which a Frenchman jigs into battle, or, whether they did
not show more of the melancholy valour of the Spaniard upon whom
they charged that deliberate courage which contemplation and
sedentary habits breathe."
Lamb accounts for this melancholy of tailors in several ingenious ways.
"May it not be that the custom of wearing apparel, being derived to
us from the fall, and one of the most mortifying products of that
unhappy event, a certain seriousness (to say no more of it) may in
the order of things have been intended to have been impressed upon
the minds of that race of men to whom in all ages the care of
contriving the human apparel has been entrusted."
He makes further comments upon their habits and diet, observing that
both Burton and Galen especially disapprove of cabbage.
In "Roast Pig" we have one of those homely subjects which were congenial
to Lamb.
"There is no flavour comparable, I will contend, to that of the
crisp, tawny, well-watched, not over roasted crackling--as it is
well called--the very teeth are invited to their share of the
pleasure at this banquet in overcoming the coy, brittle
resistance--with the adhesive oleaginous--O 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
innocence--the cream and quintessence of the child pig's yet pure
food--the lean--no lean, but a kind of animal manna--or rather fat
and lean (if it must be so) so blended and running into each other,
that both together make but one ambrosian result, or common
substance.
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