In process of time a certain priest, in the midst of his bloody sacrifice, taking up a piece of the broiled flesh which had fallen from the altar on the ground, and burning his fingers therewith, suddenly clapt them to his mouth to mitigate the pain.  But, when he had once tasted the sweetness of the fat, not only longed for more of it, but gave a piece to his assistant; and he to others; who, all pleased with the new-found dainties, fell to eating of flesh greedily.  And hence this species of gluttony was taught to other mortals.

“Este,” a contributor to Notes and Queries, June 21, 1884, wrote:—­

A quarto volume of forty-six pages, once in “Charles Lamb’s library” (according to a pencilled note in the volume) is before me, entitled:  Gli Elogi del Porco, Capitoli Berneschi di Tigrinto Bistonio P.A., E. Accademico Ducale de’ Dissonanti di Modena.  In Modena per gli Eredi di Bartolmeo Soliani Stampatori Ducali MDCCLXI.  Con Licenza de’ Superiori, [wherein] some former owner of the volume has copied out Lamb’s prose with many exact verbal resemblances from the poem.

It has also been suggested that Porphyry’s tract on Abstinence from Animal Food, translated by William Taylor, bears a likeness to the passage.  Taylor’s translation, however, was not published till 1823, some time after Lamb’s essay.

These parallels merely go to show that the idea was a commonplace; at the same time it is not Lamb, but Manning, who told him the story, that must declare its origin.  Not only in the essay, but in a letter to Barton in March, 1823, does Lamb express his indebtedness to his traveller friend.  Allsop, indeed, in his Letters of Coleridge, claims to give the Chinese story which Manning lent to Lamb and which produced the “Dissertation.”  It runs thus:—­

A child, in the early ages, was left alone by its mother in a house in which was a pig.  A fire 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.”