WITH regard to a John-dory, which you desire to be particularly informed about, I honour the fish, but it is rather on account of Quin who patronised it, and whose taste (of a dead man) I had as lieve go by as anybody’s (Apicius and Heliogabalus excepted—this latter started nightingales’ tongues and peacocks’ brains as a garnish).
Else in itself, and trusting to my
own poor single judgment, it hath not that moist mellow oleaginous gliding
smooth descent from the tongue to the palate, thence to the stomach, &c.,
that your Brighton Turbot hath, which I take to be the most friendly and
| 1825 | THE JOHN DORY | 681 |
Nor has it on the other hand that fine falling off flakiness, that oleaginous peeling off (as it were, like a sea onion), which endears your cod’s head & shoulders to some appetites; that manly firmness, combined with a sort of womanish coming-in-pieces, which the same cod’s head & shoulders hath, where the whole is easily separable, pliant to a knife or a spoon, but each individual flake presents a pleasing resistance to the opposed tooth. You understand me—these delicate subjects are necessarily obscure.
But it has a third flavor of its own, perfectly distinct from Cod or Turbot, which it must be owned may to some not injudicious palates render it acceptable—but to my unpractised tooth it presented rather a crude river-fish-flavor, like your Pike or Carp, and perhaps like them should have been tamed & corrected by some laborious & well chosen sauce. Still I always suspect a fish which requires so much of artificial settings-off. Your choicest relishes (like nature’s loveliness) need not the foreign aid of ornament, but are when unadorned (that is, with nothing but a little plain anchovy & a squeeze of lemon) then adorned the most. However, I shall go to Brighton again next Summer, and shall have an opportunity of correcting my judgment, if it is not sufficiently informed. I can only say that when Nature was pleased to make the John Dory so notoriously deficient in outward graces (as to be sure he is the very Rhinoceros of fishes, the ugliest dog that swims, except perhaps the Sea Satyr, which I never saw, but which they say is terrible), when she formed him with so few external advantages, she might have bestowed a more elaborate finish in his parts internal, & have given him a relish, a sapor, to recommend him, as she made Pope a Poet to make up for making him crooked.
I am sorry to find that you have got a knack of saying
things which are not true to shew your wit. If I had no wit but what I must
shew at the expence of my virtue or my modesty, I had as lieve be as stupid as
* * * at the Tea Warehouse. Depend upon it, my dear Chambers, that an ounce of integrity at our death-bed will
stand us in more avail than all the wit of Congreve or . . . For instance, you tell me a fine story about
Truss, and his playing at Leamington, which I know to
be false, because I have advice from Derby that he was whipt through the Town
on that very day you say he appeared in some character or other, for robbing an
old woman at church of a seal ring. And Dr.
Parr has been two months dead. So it won’t do to scatter
these untrue stories about among people that know any thing. Besides, your
forte is not invention. It is judgment, particularly shown in your choice of
dishes. We seem in that instance born under one star. I like you for
| 682 | LETTERS OF C. AND M. LAMB | May |
