ABSTRACT
Charles Lamb, the Romantic familiar essayist and occasional poet, was also a congenial host, avid reader, and prolific reviewer. William Hazlitt's epigraphic line pokes at the marrow of this chapter: the relationship between Lamb, his friends, and his creatures. Lamb's creatures turn out to be proverbial wolves wearing woolen disguises; refusing to be eaten, animals populate his writings as figures for living together and death, themes that underlie animal representations throughout the Romantic period, and expose the difficulties inherent in all relationships, human and animal alike. The animal rogue, the figure outside law, especially as one who ignores social customs, is characteristic of Lamb's transgressive creatures. After telling Bo-bo's proverb, Lamb's narrator takes over the tale to discuss the merits of eating roast piglet. The shared vulnerability and interdependence does indeed remind humans of responsibility, which in large part requires thoughtful community. Lamb uses burned pigs, violent dogs, starving rooks, caged lions, and talkative birds as boundary-transgressing animals and monsters.
