The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb — Volume 2: Elia and The Last Essays of EliaLamb, Charles
General
The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb — Volume 2: Elia and The Last Essays of Elia
Lamb, Charles
English essays
There are favours, short of the pecuniary--a thing not
fit to be hinted at among gentlemen--which confer as much grace upon
the acceptor as the offerer: the kind, we confess, which is most to
our palate, is of those little conciliatory missives, which for their
vehicle generally choose a hamper--little odd presents of game, fruit,
perhaps wine--though it is essential to the delicacy of the latter
that it be home-made. We love to have our friend in the country
sitting thus at our table by proxy; to apprehend his presence (though
a hundred miles may be between us) by a turkey, whose goodly aspect
reflects to us his "plump corpusculum;" to taste him in grouse or
woodcock; to feel him gliding down in the toast peculiar to the
latter; to concorporate him in a slice of Canterbury brawn. This is
indeed to have him within ourselves; to know him intimately: such
participation is methinks unitive, as the old theologians phrase it.
For these considerations we should be sorry if certain restrictive
regulations, which are thought to bear hard upon the peasantry of this
country, were entirely done away with. A hare, as the law now stands,
makes many friends. Caius conciliates Titius (knowing his _goût_) with
a leash of partridges. Titius (suspecting his partiality for them)
passes them to Lucius; who in his turn, preferring his friend's relish
to his own, makes them over to Marcius; till in their ever widening
progress, and round of unconscious circum-migration, they distribute
the seeds of harmony over half a parish. We are well disposed to
this kind of sensible remembrances; and are the less apt to be taken
by those little airy tokens--inpalpable to the palate--which, under
the names of rings, lockets, keep-sakes, amuse some people's fancy
mightily. We could never away with these indigestible trifles. They
are the very kickshaws and foppery of friendship.
XII.--THAT HOME IS HOME THOUGH IT IS NEVER SO HOMELY
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