who wallow in German
rivulets, while the village swineherd, beneath a shady lime, forgets his
fleas in the melody of a Jew's harp--strange mud-colored creatures, four
feet high and four inches thick, which look as if they had passed their
lives, as a collar of Oxford brawn is said to do, between two tight
boards. Such were then the pigs of Devon: not to be compared with the
true wild descendant of Noah's stock, high-withered, furry, grizzled,
game-flavored little rooklers, whereof many a sownder still grunted
about Swinley down and Braunton woods, Clovelly glens and Bursdon moor.
Not like these, nor like the tame abomination of those barbarous times,
was Jack: but prophetic in face, figure, and complexion, of Fisher Hobbs
and the triumphs of science. A Fisher Hobbs' pig of twelve stone, on
his hind-legs--that was what he was, and nothing else; and if you do not
know, reader, what a Fisher Hobbs is, you know nothing about pigs,
and deserve no bacon for breakfast. But such was Jack. The same plump
mulberry complexion, garnished with a few scattered black bristles; the
same sleek skin, looking always as if it was upon the point of bursting;
the same little toddling legs; the same dapper bend in the small of the
back; the same cracked squeak; the same low upright forehead, and tiny
eyes; the same round self-satisfied jowl; the same charming sensitive
little cocked nose, always on the look-out for a savory smell,--and
yet while watching for the best, contented with the worst; a pig of
self-helpful and serene spirit, as Jack was, and therefore, like him,
fatting fast while other pigs' ribs are staring through their skins.

Such was Jack; and lucky it was for him that such he was; for it was
little that he got to fat him at Oxford, in days when a servitor meant
really a servant-student; and wistfully that day did his eyes, led by
his nose, survey at the end of the Ship Inn passage the preparations
for Amyas's supper. The innkeeper was a friend of his; for, in the first
place, they had lived within three doors of each other all their lives;
and next, Jack was quite pleasant company enough, beside being a
learned man and an Oxford scholar, to be asked in now and then to the
innkeeper's private parlor, when there were no gentlemen there, to
crack his little joke and tell his little story, sip the leavings of the
guests' sack, and sometimes help the host to eat the leavings of their
supper. And it was, perhaps, with some such hope