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Read Ebook: Anecdotes of the Learned Pig With Notes Critical and Explanatory and Illustrations from Bozzy Piozzi &c. &c. by Boswell James Piozzi Hester Lynch
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Transcriber's note:
Text enclosed by equal signs is in bold face .
Small capital letters have been transcribed in upper case.
ANECDOTES OF THE LEARNED PIG.
WITH NOTES, CRITICAL AND EXPLANATORY,
ADVERTISEMENT.
The Editor is indebted to mere accident for his acquaintance with the following sprightly performance; and, as it seemed to have been the Author's intention to have written notes, from several detached papers having reference to the text, the Editor has taken the liberty to introduce them as such, and add some trifling references by way of proof or illustration, which he hopes may not be deemed impertinent.
ANECDOTES
OF THE
LEARNED PIG .
Gruntledum, gruntledum, gruntledum, squeak,
I hope very soon to be able to speak;
Through my gristly proboscis, I find, that I can
Like a maid I squeak, like a lover can whine,
And snort like an Alderman laden with wine.
Gruntledum, gruntledum, gruntledum, squeak,
I hope very soon to be able to speak.
"When in company where he was not free, or when engaged earnestly in conversation, he never gave way to such habits, which proves that they were not involuntary." I still, however, think, that these gestures were involuntary; for surely had not that been the case, he would have restrained them in the public streets.--Boswell's Tour, p. 9.
The pretence of a miraculous power in the cure of the evil was the most extraordinary strain of that King-craft of which James the First so loudly boasted. No manly man, under the circumstances of the case, would have set up this pretence, or have expected any effect from it but that of public derision and contempt; but weak and credulous men take, perhaps, the best measure of human weakness and credulity, and so deep did this fraud strike its roots, that, authenticated as it was by the clergy, and annually certified by the surgeons and physicians of the royal household, it survived the civil war, was restored with Charles the Second, extended beyond the revolution, and was only extinguished by the act of settlement, which, taking the principles of the British government out of the clouds, placed them on the firm basis of the earth. The pretensions of Alexander were of a bolder and more rational sort, and held to be so important, that his successors, who had no kindred interest in the horns of Ammon, yet mingled them in their crowns and tiaras, till at last the Roman Titans tumbled from their seats one after another these fictitious gods. The most deceitful glimmer of divine claim seems to have had more influence on the mind of the person who seems to have been designated in the text, than the most solid principles of political right.
Say, what is a Tory? A Tory is he
Who thinks kicking should pass through every degree;
And that all political motion should go
From the toe to the bum, from the bum to the toe.
Then what is a Whig? A dog full of knavery,
A rascal, a scoundrel impatient of slavery,
A malignant, a thief;--then tell me if Whig
Be any more better than gruntledum pig?
The person here designed is allowed by the courtesy of the times to possess a nervous and elegant stile; but so unhappy is the writer of this note, that he can by no means concur in the general praise. He has a notion of Saxon simplicity, from which all departure, not enforced by necessity, and regulated by taste, assimilating, as much as may be, foreign words to the genius of the Saxon tongue, is to him intolerable. But the writer here spoken of was wholly deficient in taste, and appears to refer his English to some foreign standard chanting forth polysyllables, and tiring the ear with dull returns of the same cadences, for ever advancing like a post horse, two up and two down, and incapable of changing his pace, without throwing both himself and his rider in the dirt. But hack writers, like hack horses, find it for their ease to practise an uniform rate.
The history of this knocking is curious; it forms such a drama of comedy, tragedy, and farce, from its first commencement in Cock Lane, passing through the solemn vaults of Clerkenwell, and then to Westminster Hall, as, I believe, never was exhibited in any other country; a drama wherein childishness and age, gravity, dignities, folly, fraud, superstition, and credulity, were all largely and confusedly thrown in to thicken the plot. That the person here designated should carry out of this scene any respectability of character, is a proof that either he must have possessed great intrinsic worth, who could bear such large deductions, or that public opinion has ceased to be the test of merit, if any base metal can in this manner pass current for gold.
Our biographer should have told us also, that once he joined the train of fancy, and passing the limits of fact, entered by the Shakespearean gate into fairy land. But in an evil hour, "No favouring Sybil marked the devious way." Never was man or pig so astounded! and no wonder. He had stumbled unaccountably on the creations of sensibility, and found no corresponding emotions within; yet, unconscious of defect, he pretended a knowledge of the country, and even offered himself as an unerring guide; but not long; for, tired with the maze, he gave way, at length, to new adventurers, and fled as another Gulliver out of Lilliput, where he had only encumbered the land.
"Sacred to ridicule his whole life long,
"And the sad burden of some merry song."
"At Edial, near Litchfield, in Staffordshire, young gentlemen are boarded and taught the Latin and Greek languages by Samuel Johnson." ADVERTISEMENT IN THE GENT. MAG. 1736, p. 428.
"He seemed to me to have an unaccountable prejudice against Swift; for I once took the liberty to ask him, if Swift had personally offended him; and he told me, he had not."--Boswell's Tour, p. 38.
Most of what can be told concerning his petty peculiarities was communicated by a female domestic of the Earl of Oxford, who knew him, perhaps, after the middle of life.--Johnson's Lives of the Poets, 8vo. vol. 4, p. 141.
And yet certain it is that no pains was spared for this purpose; for "my mother was always telling me that I did not behave myself; that I should endeavour to learn behaviour, and such cant." Indeed his defect in this particular could not be overlooked by his most partial admirer; for "I suppose none who saw his odd manner of gesticulation, much blamed or wondered at the good lady's solicitude concerning her son's behaviour."--Piozzi's Memoirs of Johnson, p. 24 and 25.
When we went into Wales together, and spent some time at Sir Robert Cotton's at Llewenney, one day at dinner I meant to please Mr. Johnson particularly with a dish of very young peas.--"Are not they charming?" said I to him, while he was eating them.--"Perhaps they would be so--to a Pig."--Piozzi, p. 63.
This passage seems inexplicable. We have had resort to Bozz, but in vain: the staff, indeed, he readily acknowledged; but as to the other associate, or who, or what was meant, neither he nor we were able to discover.
Transcriber's note:
Footnotes have been renumbered 1-19 and moved from within paragraphs natural breaks in paragraphs. We would ordinarily have moved the footnotes to the end of the book, we but did not wish to entirely deprive you of the ambience that readers of the original printed book enjoyed.
Original printed spelling and grammar are retained, with one exception:
Page 3. "refeences" changed to "references".
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