By my shoul and St. Patrick,' cries one of them, it is but five miles a-piece."" Here, notwithstanding the promise of a jest held forth by the words, "By my shoul and St. Patrick," we are ultimately cheated of our hopes. To the ignorant, indeed, the word of promise is kept to the mind as well as to the ear; but others perceive that, instead of a bull, they have only a piece of sentimental arithmetic, founded upon the elegant theorem, that friendship doubles all our pleasures, and divides all our pains. We must not, from false delicacy to our countrymen, here omit a piece of advice to English retailers or inventors of Irish blunders. Let them beware of such prefatory exclamations as-" By my shoul and St. Patrick! By Jasus! Arrah, honey! My dear joy!" &c., because all such phrases, beside being absolutely out of date and fashion in Ireland, raise too high an expectation in the minds of a British audience, operating as much to the disadvantage of the story-teller as the dangerous exordium of—" I'll tell you an excellent story;" an exordium ever to be avoided by all prudent wits. Another caution should be given to well-meaning ignorance. Never produce that as an Irish bull for which any person of common literature can immediately supply a precedent from our best authors. Never be at the pains, for instance, of telling, from Joe Miller, a good story of an Irish sailor, who travelled with Captain Cook round the world, and afterwards swore to his companions that it was as flat as a table. This anecdote, however excellent, immediately finds a parallel in Pope : "Mad Mathesis alone was unconfined, Too mad for mere material chains to bind ; Pope was led into the blunder of representing mad Mathesis running round the circle, and finding it square by a confused notion that mathematicians had considered the circle as composed of straight lines. His mathematical friends could have told him, that though it was talked of as a polygon, it was not supposed to be a square; but polygon would not have rhymed to stare; and poets, when they launch into the ocean of words, must have an eye to the helm ; at all events a poet, who is not supposed to be a student of the exact sciences, may be forgiven for a mathematical blunder. This affair of squaring the circle seems to be peculiarly liable to error; for even an accurate mathematican cannot speak of it without committing something very like a bull. Dr. Hutton, in his Treatise on Mensuration, p. 119, says, "As the famous quadrature of the late Mr. John Machin, professor of astronomy in Gresham College, is extremely expeditious and but little known, I shall take this opportunity of explaining it." It is to be presumed, that the doctor here uses the word famous in that acceptation in which it is daily and hourly employed by our Bond-street loungers, by city apprentices, and men of the ton. "That was a famous good joke;" "He is a famous whip;" "We had a famous hop," &c. Now it cannot be supposed that any of these things are in themselves entitled to fame; but they may, indeed, by the courtesy of England, be at once famous, and but little known. It is unnecessary to enter into the defence either of Dr. Hutton or of Pope, for they were not born in Ireland, therefore they cannot make bulls ; and assuredly their mistakes will not, in the opinion of any person of common sense or candour, derogate from their reputation. "Never strike till you are sure to wound," is a maxim well known to the polite and politic part of the world, "Never laugh when the laugh can be turned against you," should be the maxim of those who find their chief pleasure in making others ridiculous. This principle, if applied to our subject, would lead, however, to a very extensive and troublesome system of mutual forbearance; troublesome in proportion to the good or ill humour of the parties. concerned, extensive in proportion to their knowledge and acquirements. A man of cultivated parts will foresee the possibility of the retort courteous, where an ignorant man will enjoy the fearless bliss of ignoFor example, an illiterate person may enjoy a hearty laugh at the common story of an old Irish rance. * Lord Chesterfield. beggar-man, who, pretending to be dumb, was thrown off his guard by the question, "How many years have been dumb?" and answered, "Five years last St. John's Eve, please your honour." you But our triumph over the Irishman abates, when we recollect in the History of England, and in Shakspeare, the case of Saunder Simcox, who pretended to be miraculously and instantaneously cured of blindness at St. Alban's shrine. Since we have bestowed so much criticism on the blunder of a beggar-man, a word or two must be permitted on the blunder of a thief. It is natural for ignorant people to laugh at the Hibernian who said that he had stolen a pound of chocolate to make tea of. But philosophers are disposed to abstain from the laugh of superiority when they recollect that the Irishman could probably make as good tea from chocolate as the chemist could make butter, sugar, and cream, from antimony, sulphur, and tartar. The absurdities in the ancient chemical nomenclature could not be surpassed by any in the Hibernian catalogue. If the reader should think this a rash and unwarrantable assertion, we refer him to an essay, * in which the flagrant abuses of speech in the old language of chemistry are admirably exposed and ridiculed. Could an Irishman confer a more appropriate appellation upon a white powder than that of beautiful black? Essay on Chemical Nomenclature, by S. Dickson, M.D.; in which are comprised observations on the same subject, by R. Kirwan, Pres. R I.A.-Vide pages 21, 22, 23, &c. It is really provoking to perceive, that as our knowledge of science or literature extends, we are in more danger of finding, in our own and foreign languages, parallels and precedents for Irish blunders; so that a very well informed man can scarcely with any grace or conscience smile, where a booby squire might enjoy a long and loud horse-laugh of contempt. What crowds were collected to see the Irish bottle conjuror* get in a quart bottle; but Dr. Desaguliers had prepared the English to think such a condensation of animal particles not impossible. He says, vol. i. p. 5, of his Lectures on Natural Philosophy, "that the nature of things should last, and their natural course continue the same; all the changes made in bodies must arise only from the various separations, new conjunctions, and motions, of these original particles. These must be imagined of an unconceivable smallness, but by the union of them there are made bigger lumps," &c. Indeed things are now come to such a lamentable pass, that without either literary or scientific acquirements, mere local knowledge, such as can be obtained from a finger-post, may sometimes prevent us from the full enjoyment of the Boeotian absurdity of our neighbours. What can, at first view, appear a grosser blunder than that of the Irishman who begged a friend to look over his library, to find for him the * This conjuror, whose name was Broadstreet, was a native of the county of Longford, in Ireland: he by this hit pocketed 200%, and proved himself to be more knave than fool. |