Est rosa flos, Veneris cujus quo facta laterunt,
Harpocrati matri dona dicavit Amor,
Inde rosam mensis hospes suspendit amicis
Convivii et sub ea dicta tacenda sciat.

Potter’s Ant.  Greece.

“Cant.”  This word, which is now generally applied to fanatical preachers, and hypocritical apprentices in religion, derives its name from two Scotch Presbyterian ministers, in the reign of Charles II.  They were father and son, both called Andrew Cant; and Whitelocke in his “Memoirs,” p. 511, after narrating the defeat at Worcester, in 1651, says, “Divers Scotch ministers were permitted to meet at Edinburgh, to keep a day of humiliation, as they pretended, for their too much compliance with the King,” and in the same month when Lord Argyll had called a parliament, Mr. Andrew Cant, a minister, said in his pulpit, that “God was bound to hold this parliament, for that all other parliaments was called by man, but this was brought about by his own hand.”

“An’t please the Pigs.”  In this phrase there is not only a peculiarity of dialect, but the corruption of a word, and a change of one thing for another.  In the first place, an, in the midland counties, is used for if; and pigs is evidently a corruption of Pyx, the sacred vessel containing the host in Roman Catholic countries.  In the last place, the vessel is substituted for the power itself, by an easy metonymy in the same manner as when we talk of “the sense of the house,” we do not mean to ascribe intelligence to a material building; but to the persons in it assembled for a deliberate purpose; the expression therefore signifies no more than “Deo volente,” or God willing.

“Bumper.”  In many parts of England any thing large is called a bumper.  Hence a bumping lass is a large girl of her age, and a bumpkin is a large-limbed, uncivilized rustic; the idea of grossness of size entering into the idea of a country bumpkin, as well as that of unpolished rudeness.  Dr. Johnson, however, strangely enough deduces the word bumpkin from bump; but what if it should prove to be a corruption of bumbard, or bombard:  in low Latin, bombardus, a great gun, and from thence applied to a large flagon, or full glass.  Thus the Lord Chamberlain says to the porters who had been negligent in keeping out the mob.

“You are lazy knaves: 
And here ye lie, baiting of bombard, when
Ye should do service.”

Shaks.  Hen.  VIII. Act 5, Scene 3.

“Baiting of bombard” is a term for sitting and drinking, which Nash in his “Supplycacyon to the Deuyll,” calls by the like metaphor, “bear baiting.”  So Shakspeare again in the “Tempest,” says,

“Yond same black cloud, yond huge one,
Seems like foul bombard, that would shed his liquor.”

Tempest, Act 2, Scene 2.

Which Theobald rightly explains thus:  “A large vessel for holding drink, as well as the piece of ordinance so called.”