112 EXTINCT BRITISH ANIMALS. 
youth, who, however, very courageously and with a 
happy presence of mind, is said to have “rammed in 
the volume and cried Gracuin est,” fairly choking the 
savage with the sage.* 
We can scarcely dip into the history of the Wild 
Boar in days gone by without being reminded of the 
“ Boar’s Head,” in Kastcheap, so happily referred to 
by Shakespeare, and so pleasantly descanted on by 
Goldsmith in his “Reverie at the Boar's Head 
Tavern ;” and we are tempted to give an illus- 
tration of this famous sign, in reduced facsimile 
from the engraving in Pennant’s ‘‘ London.” That 
author thus alludes to it:—‘ A little higher up on 
the left hand is Eastcheap, immortalized by Shake- 
speare as the place of rendezvous of Sir John 
Falstaff and his merry companions. Here stood 
the Boar’s Head tavern; the site is now covered 
with modern houses, but in the front one is still 
preserved the memory of the sign, the Loar’s Head 
cut in stone. Notwithstanding the house is gone, 
we shall laugh at the humour of the jovial knight, 
his hostess, Bardolph, and Pistol, as long as the 
descriptive pages of our great dramatic writer exist 
in our entertained imagination.” 
Hone, in his ‘‘ Year Book,” gives a brief account 
of a visit which he paid to this memorable hostelry. 
“T could not,” he says, “omit a sight of this remark- 
able place ; but upon my approach to Eastcheap, the 
inhabitants were fled, the house shut up, and instead 
of an half timber building, with one story projecting 
* Wade’s “ Walks in Oxford,” 1817, vol. i. p. 167. 
