Pyg (27 page)

(208) ‘A Pair of Italians’. This story is given in
Cassell
’
s Old and New Edinburgh
(1882), Vol. II, in terms so similar to those used by
T
OBY
that it seems very likely that it drew upon T
OBY
’s narrative for its source. Despite considerable exertions in that direction, the present
Editor has been unable to ascertain the identity of these nameless Italians.

(210)
Jamie
. Alas, T
OBY
does not give his friend’s family name, and my exertions in the records of the University from this period have
produced far too many candidates, the name or its variants (it was commonly used as a diminutive of ‘James’) being quite common.

(214) Robert
Burns
. Robert
Burns
(25 January 1759–21 July 1796), also known as Rabbie Burns, the Ploughman Poet, and the Bard of Ayrshire, was a Scottish
poet and lyricist. During his lifetime, much was made of his humble origins, and there can be little doubt of the shock felt in 1786 when the first volume of his verse appeared; as Chambers’s
Cyclopedia
noted in 1851, ‘Its influence was immediately felt, and is still operating on the whole imaginative literature of the kingdom.’ The poet found his sudden rise to fame
difficult, yet nearly all contemporary accounts testify, as does T
OBY
here, to his great personal humility and charm.

(216) The Countess’s Invitation. This anecdote is related by many biographers of Burns, among them John Lockhart (
Life of Robert Burns
, 1830) and Alan Cunningham
(
Life of Burns
, 1820). The name of the woman who issued the invitation is not given; she is sometimes identified as a ‘Countess’ and elsewhere simply as ‘a certain stately
Peeress’.

(216) Sir James
Stirling
, Lord Provost of Edinburgh.
Cassell
’
s Old and New Edinburgh
(Vol. IV, p. 282) describes him thus: ‘Sir James
Stirling
, Bart., elected Lord Provost, afterwards Elder of Forneth, had a stormy time when in office. He was the son of a fishmonger at the head of Marlin’s Wynd, where his sign was a
wooden Black Bull, now in the Antiquarian Museum. Stirling, after being secretary to Sir Charles Dalling, Governor of Jamaica, became a partner in the bank of Mansfield, Ramsay, and Co. in
Cantore’s Close, Luckenbooths, and married the daughter of the head of the firm.’ It may be noted here that, at this time, the Lord Provost of Edinburgh was also the nominal head of the
University, it having not yet separated from municipal control.

(217) Dr
Monro.
Alexander Monro
secundus
(22 May 1733–2 October 1817) was the son of the eminent anatomist Alexander Munro, known as
primus
. He was
particularly well known for his
Observations on the Structure and Functions of the Nervous System
(1783).

(217) John
Home.
John
Home
(22 September 1722–5 September 1808) was a Scottish poet and dramatist. He was born at Leith, near Edinburgh, where his father,
Alexander Home, a distant relation of the earls of Home, was town clerk. John was educated at the Leith Grammar School, and at the University of Edinburgh, where he graduated MA in 1742. His first
play,
Agis: a tragedy
, founded on Plutarch’s narrative, was finished in 1747. He took it to London, and submitted it to David Garrick for representation at Drury Lane, but it was
rejected as unsuitable for the stage. Never the less, a great number of his plays were produced in Edinburgh with success. Home died at Merchiston Bank, near Edinburgh, in his eighty-sixth year. He
is buried in South Leith Parish Church.
The Works of John Home
were collected and published by Henry Mackenzie in 1822.

Curiously, the poem attributed to him by T
OBY
does not appear among Home’s published verse, although there is a very similar (but not identical) stanza in Philip
Frenau’s ‘Address to a Learned Pig’, published in his collected works in 1809:

It is the opinion of the present Editor that T
OBY
’s version is a far better one, and that Mr Freneau—whose verse is sadly deficient in
numbers—must have had it in hand, and used it as the source for his far more ‘doggerel’ version.

(220) Mr Joseph
Black.
Joseph
Black
, FRSE FRCS (16 April 1728–6 December 1799), was a Scottish physician, known for his work with James Watt on early
steam-driven engines, as well as his experiments with carbon dioxide, which he called ‘fixed air’. He began his studies at Edinburgh in 1750, taking his medical degree in 1755. After a
period spent teaching in Glasgow, he returned to Edinburgh in 1766 to take up the post of Professor of Chemistry, which he held until his death. He is buried in Greyfriars Kirkyard.

(221) Mr
Walker.
John
Walker
(1731–31 December 1803) was Professor of Natural History at the University of Edinburgh from 1779 to 1803. He was born in
Edinburgh, his father the rector of the Canongate School, at which John received an excellent education; he attended the University of Edinburgh from 1746 to 1749 and took a degree in Divinity.
Over the next decade, with the encouragement of Dr Cullen, he pursued a variety of chemical experiments, as well as studying natural history, including fieldwork in remote areas of the Highlands
and Hebrides. After his appointment at the University, he set about reforming and updating the previous course of study, expanding the course of lectures to an entire year. The high estimate
T
OBY
gives of Professor
Walker
, along with his willingness to alter or even set aside the system of
Linnaeus
, is corroborated by numerous other accounts.

(221) Mr William
Greenfield
. William Greenfield (2 February 1755–28 April 1827) was, as T
OBY
states, Hugh Blair’s assistant and
successor as Professor of Rhetoric and
Belles Lettres
. He enjoyed quite a brilliant career until he was abruptly dismissed for ‘an offence unnamed though known to be immoral
conduct’. The unfortunate Greenfield was excommunicated from the Church of Scotland and retired into obscurity, with Blair resuming his former seat.

(221) Dugald
Stewart.
Dugald
Stewart
(22 November 1753–11 June 1828), an influential Scottish philosopher, was born in Edinburgh. He was the son of Matthew
Stewart, Professor of Mathematics at the University of Edinburgh; when the elder Stewart became ill in 1772, he asked Dugald, then only nineteen, to serve as his substitute. Three years later,
following his father’s death, he was elected to replace him. In 1792 he published the first volume of the
Elements of the Philosophy of the Human Mind
; the second volume appeared in
1814, the third in 1827. The opinions as to the state and educability of animals that T
OBY
ascribes to him are accurate quotations from Stewart’s
Elements
,
where they appear in section 106.

(227) ‘
Musco lapis volutus haud obvolvitur
’: attributed, as T
OBY
notes, to Publilius Syrus, this is more familiar in its English
version: ‘Moss grows not on a rolling stone.’

(228) The False Autobiography. This was
The Life and Adventures of Toby the S
APIENT
P
IG
,
with his Opinions on Men and
Manners. Embellished with an elegant frontispiece, descriptive of a literary pig sty, with the author in deep study
(London:
c
. 1805).

As we know he had a standing order with his bookseller, it is tempting to imagine that T
OBY
must have got hold of this book when it was new. This would date his death to
some time after 1806 (but see note below). Some authorities, however, assign this volume to a later date, 1817, in connection with the flurry of appearances by its purported author, Mr Nicholas
Hoare, in that year. It is possible that Hoare simply plagiarised an earlier volume; the language on his handbills (many of which advertise the book as well) is quite similar. This
‘pamphlet’—at twenty-four pages, T
OBY
is correct in so calling it—was apparently written with tongue firmly in cheek, but our hero was unable to
overcome the irritation that any other narrative, serious or facetious, might take the place of his own. A copy survives in the John Johnson collection of printed ephemera at the Bodleian Library,
Oxford.

(229) Laurie and Whittle’s
New and Improved English Atlas
,
Divided into Counties
. This book, which appears to have been first issued in 1807, was one of
the more compendious guides of its day, and was provided with numerous fold-out maps drawn by the eminent cartographer Benjamin Hoare. As the only specific book, other than the specious
autobiography, that T
OBY
mentions by name, it has a certain pride of place. Its date, set alongside that of the porcine pamphlet, strongly suggests that T
OBY
could not have died
before
1807 or thereabouts. His quotation from Goethe’s
Faust
, which was first published in 1808, also points to his having survived at least
to this period.

(231) The ending of our narrative. Of the later years of our Hero, the historical record contains very little. Apparently, he continued to live in the rooms given him by Dr
Cullen in Edinburgh; as noted above, there seems good circumstantial evidence for his having lived at least until 1809, which would put his age at twenty-eight. In the wild, pigs are said to have a
life-span of roughly twenty-five years, and if that of the domestic pig is much shorter, it is usually because of causes of death other than those attributable to nature.

T
OBY’S
Memoir
was first published in 1809, and by his own account, it was very warmly received. Of the numerous later editions, many of them rife with all
manner of spurious additions and emendations, the less said the better, although their number certainly attests to the book’s widespread popularity. But perhaps the most fitting epitaph is
that penned by Thomas Hood, and published in his
Comic Annual
for 1830. Although it was almost certainly inspired by a different learned pig (and there were by that time many latterday
imitators), it never the less captures something of the feeling of T
OBY’S
passing, and serves (I think) as a fitting conclusion to this volume. I give it here in its
entirety: