Notes.—­What make you from Wittenberg? i.e., what are you doing away from
Wittenberg?

Wittenberg is a university town in Saxony, where Hamlet and Horatio had been schoolfellows.

Elsinore is a fortified town on one of the Danish islands, and was formerly the seat of one of the royal castles.  It is the scene of Shakespeare’s “Hamlet.”

Hard upon; i.e., soon after.

Funeral baked meats.  This has reference to the ancient custom of funeral feasts.

My dearest foe; i.e., my greatest foe.  A common use of the word “dearest” in Shakespeare’s time.

Or ever, i.e., before.

Season your admiration; i.e., restrain your wonder.

The dead vast; i.e., the dead void.

Armed at point; i.e., armed at all points.

Did address itself to motion; i.e., made a motion.

Give it an understanding, etc.; i.e., understand, but do not speak of it.

I will requite your loves, or, as we should say, I will repay your friendship.

CX.  DISSERTATION ON ROAST PIG.

Charles Lamb (b. 1775, d. 1834) was born in London.  He was educated at Christ’s Hospital, where he was a schoolfellow and intimate friend of Coleridge.  In 1792 he became a clerk in the India House, London, and in 1825 he retired from his clerkship on a pension of 441 Pounds.  Lamb never married, but devoted his life to the care of his sister Mary, who was at times insane.  He wrote “Tales founded on the Plays of Shakespeare,” and several other works of rare merit; but his literary fame rests principally on the inimitable “Essays of Elia” (published originally in the “London Magazine"), from one of which the following selection is adapted.

1.  Mankind, says a Chinese manuscript, which my friend M. was obliging enough to read and explain to me, for the first seventy thousand ages ate their meat raw, clawing or biting it from the living animal, just as they do in Abyssinia to this day.

2.  This period is not obscurely hinted at by their great Confucius in the second chapter of his “Mundane Mutations,” where he designates a kind of golden age by the term Cho-fang, literally the Cooks’ Holiday.  The manuscript goes on to say that the art of roasting, or rather broiling (which I take to be the elder brother), was accidentally discovered in the manner following: 

3.  The swineherd, Ho-ti, having gone out into the woods one morning, as his manner was, to collect mast for his hogs, left his cottage in the care of his eldest son, Bo-bo, a great lubberly boy, who, being fond of playing with fire, as younkers of his age commonly are, let some sparks escape into a bundle of straw, which, kindling quickly, spread the conflagration over every part of their poor mansion till it was reduced to ashes.

4.  Together with the cottage,—­a sorry, antediluvian makeshift of a building, you may think it,—­what was of much more importance, a fine litter of newborn pigs, no less than nine in number, perished.  China pigs have been esteemed a luxury all over the East from the remotest periods we read of.