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served for him, who, being buried, carries about his own sepulchre.

"To live a life half dead, a living death,
And buried; but oh, yet more miserable!
Myself, my sepulchre, a moving grave!"

No person, if he heard this passage for the first time from the lips of an Irishman, could hesitate to call it a series of bulls; yet these lines are part of the beautiful complaint of Samson Agonistes on his blindness. Such are the hyperboles sanctioned by the genius, or, what with some judges may have more influence, the name of Milton. The bounds which separate sublimity from bombast, and absurdity from wit, are as fugitive as the boundaries of taste. Only those, who are accustomed to examine and appraise literary goods, are sensible of the prodigious change that can be made in their apparent value, by a slight change in the manufacture. The absurdity of a man's swearing he was killed, or declaring, that

he is now dead in a ditch, is revolting to common sense; yet the living death of Dapperwit in the "Rape of the Lock" is not absurd, but witty; and representing men as dying many times before their death is in Shakspeare sublime.

"Cowards die many times before their death; The brave can never taste of death but once."

The most direct contradictions in words do not (in english writers) destroy the ef fect of irony, wit, pathos, or sublimity. In the classic ode on Eton college, the poet exclaims,

"To each their sufferings, all are men

Condemn'd alike to groan;

The tender for another's pain,

Th' unfeeling for their own."

Who but a half witted dunce would ask, how those that are unfeeling can have sufferings? When Milton in melodious verse inquires,

"Who shall tempt with wandering feet
The dark unbottomed infinite abyss,

And through the palpable obscure find out
His uncouth way?".

What Zoilus shall dare interrupt this flow of poetry, to object to the palpable obscure, or to ask how feet can wander upon that which has no bottom?

It is easy, as Tully has long ago observed, to fix the brand of ridicule upon the verbum ardens of orators and poetsthe "Thoughts that breathe, and words that burn."

HOD

99

CHAPTER VII.

Practical Bulls.

As we have not hitherto been successful in finding original irish bulls in language, we must now look for them in conduct. A person may be guilty of a solecism, without uttering a single syllable" That man has been guilty of a solecism with his hand," an ancient critic said of an actor, who had pointed his hand upwards when invoking the infernal gods." You may act a lie as well as speak one," says Wollaston. Upon the same the same principle, the Irish may be said to act as well as utter bulls. We shall give some instances of their practical bulls, which we hope to find unmatched by the blunders of all other nations. Most people, whether they be savage or civilized, can contrive

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to revenge themselves upon their enemies without blundering, but the Irish are exceptions. They cannot even do this without a bull. During the late irish rebellion there was a banker to whom they had a peculiar dislike, and on whom they had vowed vengeance: accordingly they got possession of as many of his bank notes as they could, and made a bonfire of them! this might have been called a feu de joie, perhaps, but certainly not un feu d'artifice; for nothing could show less art than burning a banker's notes, in order to destroy his credit. How much better do the English understand the arts of vengeance! Captain Drinkwater* informs us, that during the siege of Gibraltar the English, being half famished, were most violently enraged against the Jews, who withheld their stores of provision, and made money of the public

See his account of the siege of Gibraltar.

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