Note ‡ — ANECDOTES OF THE LEARNED PIG *.

Cant words are uſually begot in a cellar by fun upon folly: but the word bore and boar has another origin; it was begot on a ſofa by Madamoiſelle Ennui upon herſelf, and brought forth into the world in the midſt of the ton. The roar and fury of the river Severn the people of the country call the boar. A female ſaint was reported miraculouſly to have ſhed tears: the fact was denied by a Madrid carpenter who had made the ſaint, “becauſe (ſays he) ſhe is not only compoſed of heart of oak, but if ſhe had been at all diſpoſed to weep, ſhe muſt have wept when I bored an aperture with my largeſt augre in her rump.” And thus teazing and vexation of every kind may be called a bore. A dun is a bore, and a ſermon is a bore, and ſo forth; but the greateſt of all poſſible bores, in whatever ſpelling, is a huſband, a bore at night, a bore in the morning, and, in ſhort, one general univerſal bore. Our author has uſed this faſhionable word with the moſt perfect propriety, in a ſenſe ſatisfying the very letter, as well as ſpirit of the word.