quence and wit crowd upon our recollection, but we forbear-The examples we have cited are taken from real life, and given without alteration or embellishment.

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CHAPTER XI.

The Brogue.

HAVING proved by a perfect syllogism, that the Irish must blunder, we might rest satisfied with our labours, but there are minds of so perverse a sort, that they will not yield their understandings to the torturing power of syllogism.

It may be waste of time to address ourselves to persons of such a cast, we shall therefore change our ground, and adapt our arguments to the level of vulgar capacities. Much of the comic effect of irish bulls, or of such speeches as are mistaken for bulls, has depended upon the tone, or brogue, as it is called, with which they are uttered. The first irish blunders that we hear are made or repeated in this peculiar tone, and afterward, from the

power of association, whenever we hear the tone, we expect the blunder. Now there is little danger, that the Irish should be cured of their brogue; and consequently there is no great reason to apprehend, that we should cease to think or call them blunderers.

Of the powerful effect of any peculiarity of pronunciation to prepossess the mind against the speaker, nay even to excite dislike amounting to antipathy, we have an instance attested by an eye witness, or rather an ear witness.

"In the year 1755," says the rev. James Adams, "I attended a public disputation in a foreign university, when at least 400 Frenchmen literally hissed a grave and learned english doctor, not by way of insult, but irresistibly provoked by the quaintness of the repetition of sh. The thesis was the concurrence of God in actionibus viciosis: the whole hall resounded with the hissing cry of sh, and it's con

tinual occurrence in actio, actione, vi

ciosa, &c."

It is curious, that Shiboleth should so long continue a criterion among nations! What must have been the degree of irritation, that could so far get the better of the politeness of 400 Frenchmen, as to make them hiss in the days of l'ancien regime! The dread of being the object of that species of antipathy or ridicule, which is excited by unfashionable peculiarity of accent, has induced many of the misguided natives of Ireland to affect, what they imagine to be the english pronunciation. They are seldom successful in this attempt, for they generally overdo the business. We are told by Theophrastus, that a barbarian, who had taken some pains to attain the true attic dialect, was discovered to be a foreigner by his speaking the attic dialect with a greater degree of precision and purity, than

selves. To avoid the imputation of committing barbarisms, people sometimes run into solecisms, which are yet more ridiculous. Affectation is always more ridiculous than ignorance.

*

There are irish ladies who, ashamed of their country, betray themselves, by mincing out their abjuration, by calling tables teebles, and chairs cheers! To such renegadoes we prefer the honest quixotism of a modern champion for the scottish accent, who, boldly asserting, that "the broad dia lect rises above reproach, scorn, and laughter," enters the lists, as he says of himself, in Tartan dress and armour, and throws down the gauntlet to the most preju diced antagonist" How weak is pre

* James Adams, S. R. E. S., suthor of a book entitled "The Pronunciation of the English Language vindicated from imputed Anomaly and Caprice, with an Appendix on the Dialects of human Speech in all Countries, and an analytical Discussion and Vindication of the Dialect of Scotland."