Note 178 — Chapter IV · THE SATIRIC GROUP

J. M. Rigg, in the Dictionary of National Biography, article on “Robert Midgley” (1653–1723). The date, 1723, for Montesquieu’s Lettres Persanes should read 1721. Mr. Rigg cites several volumes of Notes and Queries; but does not give Notes and Queries, 4th Series, VIII., November, 1871, p. 415, in which Arthur Bateman writes: “Who but remembers Elia’s account of the first discovery of roast pig?... In the Turkish Spy (Vol. IV., book 1, letter 5) I read as follows: ‘The historians say that the first inhabitants of the earth, for above two thousand years, lived altogether on the vegetable products, of which they offered the first fruits to God—it being esteemed an inexpiable wickedness to shed the blood of any animal, though it were in sacrifice, much more to eat of their flesh. To this end they relate the first slaughter of a bull to have been made at Athens ... and the bull being flea’d [sic], and fire laid on the altar, they all assisted at the new sacrifice.... 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 clapped them to his mouth to mitigate the pain. But when he had once tasted the sweetness of the fat, he 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.’”