Some of the combinations are exceedingly unique and most interesting in their incongruity.
Dickens has not exaggerated this characteristic; not even done it justice in his hotel scenes.

Things are put together on a hundred tavern signs that were never joined before in the natural or moral world, and put together frequently in most grotesque association.
For instance, there is a large, first-class inn right in the very heart of London, which has for a sign, not painted on a board, but let into the wall of the upper story, in solid statuary, a huge human mouth opened to its utmost capacity, and a bull, round and plump, standing stoutly on its four legs between the two distended jaws.

Now, the leading idea of this device is involved in a tempting obscurity, which leads one, at first sight, into different lines of conjecture.

What did the designer of this group of statuary really intend to represent?
Was it to let the outside world know that, in that inn, the "Roast Beef of Old England" was always to be found par excellence?
If so, would a man's mouth swallowing a bull whole, and apparently alive, with hide and horns, tend to stimulate the appetite of a passing traveller, and to draw him into the establishment?
But leaving these ambiguous symbols to be interpreted by the passing public according to different perceptions of their meaning, how many in a thousand would guess aright the name given to the tavern by these tokens?
Would not ninety-nine in a hundred say, "The Mouth and Bull," to be sure, not only on the principle that the major includes the minor, but also because the human element is entitled to precedence in the picture?
But the ninety-nine would be completely mistaken, if they adopted this natural conclusion.

They would find they had counted without their host, who knows better than they the relative position and value of things.