Bentley, They served as subjects for cartoons by Rowlandson and moral essays in children's books and savage doggerel by Blake, and they illustrated the manners of the English in works by Joseph Strutt and Robert Southey and Thomas Hood.

[2]The original "learned pig" was trained by a Scotsman, Samuel Bisset, who ran a travelling novelty show.

"[2] According to publicity at the time, This entertaining and sagacious animal casts accounts by means of Typographical cards, in the same manner as a Printer composes, and by the same method sets down any capital or Surname, reckons the number of People present, tells by evoking on a Gentleman's Watch in company what is the Hour and Minutes; he likewise tells any Lady's Thoughts in company, and distinguishes all sorts of colours.The show was a great success, and the pig later toured the provincial towns, returning to London later in the year and then moving on to the continent of Europe.

However, a later report claimed that it had just returned from France following the revolution of 1789, and was ready to "discourse on the Feudal System, the Rights of Kings and the Destruction of the Bastille".

Johnson replied that at least it had escaped slaughter: "the pig has no cause to complain; he would have been killed the first year if he had not been educated, and protracted existence is a good recompence for very considerable degrees of torture.

Mrs Trimmer in her children's book The Robin Redbreasts (1788), "designed to teach children the proper treatment of animals", mentions the pig in chapter entitled "The Cruel Boy": aiming to teach that animals are not "mere machines, actuated by the unerring hand of Providence", it says that the sight of the Learned Pig, "which has lately been shown in London, has deranged these ideas, and I know not what think".

He claimed to have toured all the major towns of the Union and introduced the pig to President John Adams, to "universal applause".

The writer Harrison Weir depicts a learned pig called Toby, which he saw a "year ago at Camberwell Fair" for a penny.

A placard states "The Surprising PIG well versed in all Languages, perfect Arethmatician Mathematician & Composer of Musick.

The Theatrical War satirises the actor-impresario John Palmer, dressed in Shakespearean costume, being threatened by other attractions including the pig.

One satirical print showed Pitt with the body of a pig; the caption asserted that among his powers was the ability to explain recent Acts of Parliament, a feat "before never having been even attempted in these our realms!!!"

[4] The concept of the "learned pig" became a common motif in satirical literature by the late 18th century, playing on the implied contrast between gross physicality and intellectual superiority.

The poet William Cowper lamented that his fame had been unfavourably compared to both the pig and a "prostitute" (the notoriously promiscuous actress George Anne Bellamy).

"[13] Thomas Hood's poem The Lament of Toby, The Learned Pig also uses the Bacon pun, adding another on the poet James Hogg.

Mrs Beeton begins her recipe for cooking sucking pig, from her 1861 bestseller Mrs Beeton's Book of Household Management, with the observation that pigs are capable of "education" "and though, like the ass, naturally stubborn and obstinate, that he is equally amenable with other animals to caresses and kindness".

The musical "Toby the Incredible Learned Pig", written by Daniel Freedman, was a finalist in the Wonderland One Act Festival at Theater Works 42nd St. NYC in 2007.

In 2011 there appeared a novel, Pyg: The Memoirs of a Learned Pig, by Russell Potter, based on the career of the original "Toby".