BOLTON ASS.  This creature is said to have chewed tobacco and taken snuff.—­Dr. Doran.

BOMBA (King), a nickname given to Ferdinand II. of Naples, in consequence of his cruel bombardment of Messi’na in 1848.  His son, who bombarded Palermo in 1860, is called Bombali’no ("Little Bomba").

A young Sicilian, too, was there... [Who] being rebellious to his liege, After Palermo’s fatal siege, Across the western seas he fled In good king Bomba’s happy reign.

  Longfellow, The Wayside Inn (prelude).

BOMBARDIN’IAN, general of the forces of king Chrononhotonthologos.  He invites the king to his tent, and gives him hashed pork.  The king strikes him, and calls him traitor.  “Traitor, in thy teeth,” replies the general.  They fight, and the king is killed.—­H.  Carey, Chrononhotonthologos (a burlesque).

BOMBASTES FURIOSO, general of Artaxam’inous (king of Utopia).  He is plighted to Distaffi’na, but Artaxaminous promises her “half-a-crown” if she will forsake the general for himself.  “This bright reward of ever-daring minds” is irresistible.  When Bombastes sees himself flouted, he goes mad, and hangs his boots on a tree, with this label duly displayed: 

  Who dares this pair of boots displace,
  Must meet Bombastes face to face.

The king, coming up, cuts down the boots, and Bombastes “kills him.”  Fusbos, seeing the king fallen, “kills” the general; but at the close of the farce the dead men rise one by one, and join the dance, promising, if the audience likes, “to die again to-morrow.”—­W.  B. Rhodes, Bombastes Furioso. [Illustration] This farce is a travesty of Orlando Furioso, and “Distaffina” is Angelica, beloved by Orlando, whom she flouted for Medoro, a young Moor.  On this Orlando went mad, and hung up his armor on a tree, with this distich attached thereto: 

  Orlando’s arms let none displace,
  But such who’ll meet him face to face.

In the Rehearsal, by the duke of Buckingham, Bayes’ troops are killed, every man of them, by Drawcansir, but revive, and “go off on their legs.”

See the translation of Don Quixote, by C. H. Wilmot, Esq., ii. 363 (1764).

Bombastes Furioso (The French), capitaine Fracasse.—­Theophile Gautier.

BOMBAS’TUS, the family name of Paracelsus.  He is said to have kept a small devil prisoner in the pommel of his sword.

  Bombastus kept a devil’s bird
  Shut in the pommel of his sword,
  That taught him all the cunning pranks
  Of past and future mountebanks.

  S. Butler, Hudibras, ii. 3.

BONAS’SUS, an imaginary wild beast, which the Ettrick shepherd encountered. (The Ettrick shepherd was James Hogg, the Scotch poet.)—­Noctes Ambrosianae (No. xlviii., April, 1830).

BONAVENTU’RE (Father), a disguise assumed for the nonce by the chevalier Charles Edward, the pretender.—­Sir W. Scott, Redgauntlet (time, George III.).