Essays of Elia

3 ideas

1. Bo-bo burns houses for roast pig

   In 'A Dissertation upon Roast Pig,' Lamb retells a mock-Chinese legend in which the swineherd's son Bo-bo accidentally burns down a cottage, discovers the taste of crackling from the scorched piglets, and a whole society then burns down house after house to cook pork until a sage realizes a fire can be lit without destroying a building. The tale shows how a discovery gets locked to the accidental circumstances of its first occurrence, and how people pay enormous costs repeating the incidental conditions instead of isolating the actual mechanism.

2. The dream children who were never born

   In 'Dream-Children: A Reverie,' Lamb tells his two children, Alice and John, stories about their great-grandmother and their late uncle, then watches them fade as they tell him they are 'only what might have been' and that Alice's mother is not theirs. He wakes alone in his armchair beside Bridget. The essay stages grief for the unlived life, a bachelor mourning the family his circumstances foreclosed, by letting the fantasy fully form before it dissolves.

3. Imperfect sympathies: prejudice below reason

   In 'Imperfect Sympathies,' Lamb admits antipathies toward whole kinds of people, such as Scotsmen, Quakers and Jews, that he cannot justify and that clash with his stated tolerance. He treats these as temperamental mismatches of manner and mind rather than reasoned judgments. His point is that liking and disliking often operate beneath argument, so honesty begins with confessing the bias rather than rationalizing it.

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