Review: Anecdotes of the Learned Pig

 Anecdotes of the Learned Pig is an anonymous work published in On the 12th May 1786 by T Hookham on New Bond Street. 

What caught my eye was that the listed authors were James Boswell and Hester Thrale Piozzi, two people who’d never collaborate together on anything, especially at this time and especially on a book about a learned pig. 

Tony was the original learned pig, and a big deal at the time this book was published. He’d wowed the country by being seemingly able to spell, tell the time and read the minds of women. The year this book came out, his original trainer had been killed and had been passed on to a new owner who had showed him in London and around Europe.

This is not a biography of Toby.

This pig was born in Moorfields, the area famous for both being near Grub St and Bedlam asylum. His mother, a rather learned sow herself, had taken to eating the political and religious pamphlets that were commonly tied to them for people to read. She’s even eaten a copy of Sacheverell’s sermons, after which she was observed to “grunt more and louder”.

One of the pigs born from this litter shared her voracious appetite, and on one raid on Milton’s garden, he ate all the white roses and was severely whipped for it. This gave him a lifelong hatred for Milton. The pig was also almost barbecued during a 5th of November celebration and so had some sympathy for Catholics and the Pope. When he reached maturity, he came close to human speech, saying;

“Gruntledum, gruntledum, gruntledum squeak

I hope very soon to be able to speak

Through my gristly proboscis I find that I can

Already cry ‘ay’ like a parliament man.”

Then came the footnotes. One by Bozzy and one by Piozzi. Both were descriptions of Samuel Johnson but attributed as if they were describing the pig. Then it struck me; references to Sacheverell (who the three year old Sam apparently insisted on seeing), a dislike of Milton, a perceived Jacobiteism… not to mention the bizarre bit where the pig is touched for scrofula.

The learned pig is Samuel Johnson.

The pig is then let loose “idling and rambling”, in reference to Samuel Johnson’s magazines The Idler and The Rambler. There’s a passing reference to the whole Cock Lane Ghost saga, where Johnson was on a panel of experts charged to decide whether a ghost really did visit the girls in their bedroom. The book describes the pig’s “too sonorous gruntulations” and “that big concatenation of bubbles which usually flecked his mouth” - criticisms of his writing and laughing at his physical difficulties.

Any pretence that the book is hiding, or being coy with Samuel Johnson as the target are dropped quickly in the footnotes and even the text itself becomes pretty explicit. The pig has the letters “LLD” branded on it’s rump, the letters of the qualification that Johnson received making him Dr Johnson (a title he didn’t actually like using). His dictionary is described as a manure, where the pig has rummaged around roots and other goodies and created “from his behind, certain rich but crude and ill-digested morsels”.

There are attacks on Johnsons later political works like Taxation No Tyranny by a claim that he had no politics until he was awarded a pension. There’s also the idea that Johnson recognised that, had he been born earlier, he’d have been immortalised by Pope as one of the dunces of The Dunciad like Theobald and Dennis.

After a long career of rootling and manuring, the pig “retired to a brewery in the Borough” where “he was fed with the freshest grains by the fair hand of a fair lady who condescended to be the priestess of our pig”. After that the pig “journeyed into Scotland in the guise of a travelling bear, with a monkey on his back.” These two strange characters, the monkey and the fair maid stayed with the pig and as “he grunted forth, as was his custom, many strange things” they put them “faithfully on record”. That’s Bozzy and Piozzi dealt with.

Throughout his life, the pig is “pretending to cure mental diseases by the medicinal qualities of his tongue”. As someone who has been amused, calmed and often encouraged by Johnson’s writing, I’d vouch for its efficacy.

The book ends on a weird note. After characterisation Johnson as a pig throughout, something dirty and bulky and messy, it concludes “he had virtues and merits enough to make us heartily wish he were still in being”. Even a book written to mock Johnson has to admit the world is poorer without him.