In fact, the usual
consequences of good feeding were almost inverted in their case; and
although I might assert that they became leaner in proportion to what
they received, yet I must confine myself to truth, by stating
candidly that this was not the fact; that there was a certain state
of fleshlessness to which they arrived, but from which they neither
advanced nor receded by good feeding or bad. At this point, despite of
all human ingenuity, they remained stationary for life, received
the bounty afforded them with a greatness of appetite resembling
the fortitude of a brave man, which rises in energy according to the
magnitude of that which it has to encounter. The truth is, they were
scandalous hypocrites; for with the most prodigious capacity for food,
they were spare as philosophers, and fitted evidently more for the chase
than the sty; rather to run down a buck or a hare for the larder, than
to have a place in it themselves. If you starved them, they defied you
to diminish their flesh; and if you stuffed them like aldermen, they
took all they got, but disdained to carry a single ounce more than
if you gave them whey thickened with water. In short, they gloried in
maceration and liberty; were good Irish scholars, sometimes acquainted
with Latin; and their flesh, after the trouble of separating it from a
superfluity of tough skin, was excellent venison so far as it went.
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