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The Cook's Confrère: Shakespeare

Consider him likewise in his ferine state as most closely related to nature, moving majestically through the fastnesses of his native stronghold, toothed and tushed for war, indigenous and mighty as the oaks which yield him their mast or the trees of the jungles through which he treads. "The jungle path is his as much as the tiger's," writes the Indian sportsman and naturalist, Shakespeare; "the native shikarries affirm that the wild boar will quench his thirst at the river between two tigers, and I believe this to be strictly the truth. The tiger and the boar have been heard fighting in the jungle at night, and both have been found dead alongside of one another in the morning." It was a wild boar that slew Adonis; and by none, not even by Baryé, has the animal been more vividly depicted than by Shakespeare in the warning of Venus: "Thou hadst been gone,' quoth she, 'sweet boy, ere this But that thou told'st me thou wouldst hunt the boar. O be advised! thou know'st not what it is With javelin's point a churlish swine to gore, Whose tushes, never sheathed, he whetteth still, Like to a mortal butcher, bent to kill. ""On his bow-back he hath a battle set Of bristly pikes, that ever threat his foes; His eyes, like glow-worms, shine when he doth fret, His snout digs sepulchres where'er he goes; Being moved he strikes whate'er is in his way, And whom he strikes his cruel tushes slay. "His brawny sides, with hairy bristles arm'd, Are better proof than thy spear's point can enter; His short thick neck cannot be easily harm'd; Being ireful, on the lion he will venture:

The thorny brambles and embracing bushes, As fearful of him, part; through whom he rushes."

As for his domesticated brother, to come back to our cochons, let him be aspersed as he may-we have seen the manifold benefits he has procured for us and the plane he rightly occupies in the evolution of mankind. Without him the kitchen were well-nigh impracticable, and, deprived of his services, gastronomy were an obsolete word.