Note 122 — CANTO IV. GRAND ATTACK!

From where the head to where the tail is.

Or more correctly where the tail was. Lord Monboddo tells us that men, as well as monkies, were formerly dignified with long tails protruding from the place where (according to Butler) honor is lodged. Philosophers and antiquaries had never been able to discover how man became divested of this ornament, till my friend, Dr Anderson, furnished a clue to the mystery. From this discovery I am led to suppose that your antediluvian bucks began the practice of CUR-tail-ing these excrescences for gentility’s sake, and what was at first artificial became in due time natural, till, at length, your right tippies, as in modern times, were entirely disencumbered of that monkey-like appendage; but our Bond-street loungers, although divested of that exterior mark of the monkey, with a laudable desire to prevent the intentions of Nature from being defeated, have adopted all the ourang-outang-ical airs which she originally designed should discriminate that species of animals from man.