PART XVI.

"Have I not in my time heard lions roar?

Have I not heard the sea, puft up with wind,

Rage like an angry boar chafed with sweat?

Have I not heard great ordnance in the field,

And Heaven's artillery thunder in the skies?

Have I not in the pitched battle heard

Loud 'larums, neighing steeds, and trumpets clang?"

SHAKSPEARE.

The insurrection had broken out; there could now be no scepticism on the

subject. Some hundreds of armed men were already crowding the grounds in

front of the mansion; and from the shouts which rose in every quarter, and

still more from the fires which blazed on every hill round the horizon,

the numbers of the insurgents must have amounted to thousands. It was

evident that we were in a pitfall, and that resistance was only the

protraction of a fate which was now inevitable. The shrieks of the females

and the despondency of the men, who naturally thought that their last hour

was come, were enough to dishearten all resolution. For a few minutes, the

only orders which I could give were to bar the doors and close the

windows. The multitude, new to hostile enterprises, had till now kept at

some distance, warned by their losses in the skirmish with the yeomanry,

and probably expecting the arrival of troops. But the sight of our

precautions, few and feeble as they were, gave them new courage; and

discharges of musketry began to drop their bullets into the midst of our

startled assemblage. It is only justice to the national intrepidity to

say, that every measure which I proposed for defence was unhesitatingly

adopted; and that one of my chief difficulties was to prevent rash

sallies, which must have only terminated in loss of life. The short

interval now allowed to us was employed in barricading the mansion, which

was built almost with the strength of a fortress, and posting every man

who could handle a musket or pistol, at the windows. Still I knew that

this species of defence could not last long; and my only hope for our

lives was, that the firing might bring some of the troops who patrolled

the country to our assistance. But the discharges became closer and

heavier, and still no sound of succour was to be heard. My situation

became more anxious every moment; all looked up to me for their guidance;

and though my garrison were brave and obedient, as became the

high-spirited sons of Ireland, there seemed the strongest probability that

the night would end in a general massacre. Yet there was no

faint-heartedness under the roof; our fire was stoutly kept up whenever

the assailants came within range; and as I hurried from chamber to chamber

to ascertain the condition of our defence and give directions, I found all

firm. Still the terrors of the females--the sight of the first women of

the province flying for refuge to every corner where they might escape the

balls, which now poured into every window; the actual wounds of some,

visible by the blood streaming down their splendid dresses; the

horror-stricken looks of the groups clinging to each other for hopeless

protection; and the actual semblance of death in others fainting on the

sofas and floors, and all this under an incessant roar of musketry--made

me often wish that I could give way to the gallant impatience of my

friends within the mansion, and take the desperate hazard of plunging into

the midst of the multitude.

But a new danger awaited us; a succession of shrieks from one of the upper

apartments caught my ear, and on rushing to the spot, and forcing my way

through a crowd of women half frantic with alarm, I saw some of the

outbuildings, immediately connected with the mansion, wrapped in a sheet

of fire. The insurgents had at last found out the true way to subdue our

resistance; and we obviously had no alternative but to throw ourselves on

their mercy, or die with arms in our hands. Yet, to surrender was perhaps

only to suffer a more protracted death, degraded by shame; and when I

looked round me on the helplessness of the noble and beautiful women

around me, and thought of the agony which must be felt by us on seeing

them thrown into the power of the assassins who were now roaring with

triumph and vengeance, I dismissed all thoughts of submission at once, and

determined to take the chances of resistance while any man among us had

the power to draw a trigger. In rushing through the mansion, to make its

defenders in the front aware of the new misfortune which threatened us, I

happened to pass through the ball-room, where the corpse of its noble and

brave master was. One figure was standing there, with his back to me, and

evidently gazing on the body. All else was solitary. Of all the friends,

guests, and domestics, not one had remained. Loud as were the shouts

outside, and constant as was the crashing of the musketry, I could hear a

groan, which seemed to come from the very heart of that lonely bystander.

I sprang towards him; he turned at the sound of my step, and, to my

surprise, I saw the face of the man whose share in the insurrection I had

so singularly ascertained. I had a loaded musket in my hand, and my first

impulse, in the indignation of the moment, was to discharge its contents

through his heart. But he looked at me with a countenance of such utter

dejection, that I dropped its muzzle to the ground, and demanded "What had

brought him there at such a time?" "This!" he exclaimed, pointing to the

pallid form on the sofa. "To that man I owed every thing. To his

protection, to his generosity, to his nobleness of heart, I owed my

education, my hopes, all my prospects in life. I should have died a

thousand deaths rather than see a hair of his head touched--and now, there

he lies." He sank upon his knees, took the hand of the dead, and wept over

it in agony.

But I had no leisure to wait upon his remorse; the volleys were pouring

in, and the glare of the burning buildings showed me that the flames were

making fearful progress. "This," said I, "is your work. This murder is but

the first-fruits of your treason; probably every life in this house is

destined to butchery within the hour." He sprang on his feet. "No, no," he

cried, "we are not murderers. This is the frenzy of the populace.

Regeneration must not begin by massacre."

The thought suddenly struck me that I might make his fears, or his

compunctions, at the moment available.

"You are at my mercy," said I. "I might justly put you to death at the

instant, as a rebel, in the fact; or I might deliver you up to the law,

when your fate would be inevitable. I can make no compromise. But, if you

would make such atonement to your own conscience as may be found in

undoing a part of the desperate wrong which you have done, go out to those

robbers and murderers who are now thirsting for our blood, and put a stop

to their atrocities if you can; save the lives of those in the house; or,

if you cannot, die in the only attempt which can retrieve your memory."

He looked at me with a lacklustre eye for a moment, and uttered a few wild

words, as if his mind was wandering. I sternly repeated my demand, and at

length he agreed to try his influence with the multitude. I threw open the

door, and sent him out, adding the words--"I shall have my eye upon you.

If I find you swerve, I shall fire at you, in preference to any other man

in the mob. We shall die together." He went forth, and I heard his

recognition by the rebels, in their loud shouts, and their heavier fire

against our feeble defences. But, after a few moments, the shouting and

the fire ceased together. There was a pause; from its strangeness after

the tumult of the last hour, scarcely less startling than the uproar. They

appeared to be deliberating on his proposition. But while we remained in

this suspense, another change came; loud altercations were heard; and the

pause was interrupted by a renewed rush to the assault. We now looked upon

all as hopeless, and expected only to perish in the flames, which were

rolling in broad sheets over the roof of the mansion. There was no symptom

of faint-heartedness among us; but our ammunition was almost exhausted,

and every countenance was pale with despair; another half hour, and our

fate must be decided. In this extremity, with every sense wound up to its

utmost pitch, I thought that I heard the distant trampling of cavalry. It

came nearer still. There was evident confusion among the rebels. At length

a trumpet sounded the charge, and a squadron of horse rushed into the

lawn, sabring and firing among the multitude. The struggle was fierce, but

brief; and before we could unbar the doors, and burst out to take a part

in the _melee_, all was done; the rebels had fled, the grounds were

cleared, and the dragoons were gathering their prisoners.

All was now congratulation; and I received thanks from gallant lips, and

from bright eyes, which might have flattered one fonder of flattery. All

imputed their safety to the address with which I had employed the feelings

of the rebel leader. But for the pause produced by his presence, all must

have perished. It had given time for the cavalry to come up; they having

been bewildered in crossing the country, and floundering through the

wretched by-roads which then formed the disgrace of Ireland. Life is a

chapter of accidents; and even their arrival had been a matter of

accident. An aide-de-camp of the viceroy had been sent in search of me

with despatches: the officer in command at the next town had persuaded

him, much against his will, to take as his escort one of the night

patroles of horse; and thus were saved a hundred and fifty lives of the

first personages of the province. By morning the mansion, and all within

it, would probably have been embers.

The aide-de-camp's despatches were sufficiently alarming. The

lord-lieutenant had received from England details of the intended

insurrection. The privy council had been summoned, and the usual commands

issued to keep the troops throughout the country on the alert; but the

information was still so imperfect, the skill of the conspirators was so

adroitly exerted in keeping their secret, and the outcry of the powerful

parliamentary Opposition was so indignant and contemptuous at the remotest

hint of popular disaffection, that the Government was virtually paralysed.

But the question was now decided; the scene which I had just witnessed

unhappily left no room for doubt, and I determined to set off for the

metropolis without delay. I had no sooner expressed my intention, than I

was assailed on all hands with advice, and even with entreaties, to

postpone my journey until the flight of the rebels was fully ascertained,

or at least till daylight gave me a better chance of personal safety. But

every moment now seemed to me more precious than the last; and, breaking

through a circle of the noble and the fair, I threw myself on my horse,

and with the aide-de-camp and a couple of dragoons for my escort, soon

left the whole scene of entreaty and terror, sorrow and triumph, behind.

We rode hard through the night, observing frequent signs of the extended

insurrection, in fires on the mountains, and the gatherings of peasantry

on the roads--sometimes compelled to turn out of our way, by the evidence

of their being armed and in military organization; and at others dashing

through the groups, and taking them by surprise. A few shots fired at

random, or the rage and roar of the crowd as we scattered them right and

left in our gallop, were all that belonged to personal adventure; and when

the dawn showed us from one of the hills round the capital the quiet city

glittering in the first sunshine, all looked so lovely and so tranquil,

that it required the desperate recollections of the night to believe in

the existence of a vast and powerful combination, prepared to cover the

land with burning and blood.

Within a few hours after my arrival, the privy council assembled; my

intelligence was received as it deserved; it decided the wavering, and

gave increased determination to the bold. Still, our sitting was long and

anxious. The peril was now undeniable, but the extent, the object, and

the remedy, were alike obscure. It is not, of course, within my purpose to

reveal the secrets of councils, in which all is transacted under the

deepest bond of confidence; but it may be fairly told, that our

deliberations often completely reversed the proverb, that "In the

multitude of councillors there is safety," if by safety is meant either

promptitude or penetration.

But there was one man among them, who would have distinguished himself in

any council upon earth. He was a lawyer, and holding the highest office of

his profession. But his ambition was still higher than his office, and his

ability was equal to his ambition. Bold by nature, and rendered bolder by

the constant success of his career, he would have been a matchless

minister in a despotic government. Living under the old regime of France,

the laurels of a Richelieu or a Mazarin might have found a formidable

competitor in this man of daring and decision. He wanted but their scale

of action, to have exhibited all their virtues, and perhaps all their

vices.

At the bar, his career had been one of unexampled rapidity. He had

scarcely appeared, when he burst through the crowd, and took the stand to

which all the dignities of the profession seem the natural inheritance. He

had scarcely set his foot on the floor, before he overtopped the bench.

But the courts of justice were too narrow for him. It was in Parliament

that he found the true atmosphere for his loftiness of flight, and

keenness of vision. At that time the study of public speaking had become a

fashion, and the genius of the country, singularly excitable, always

ardent, and always making its noblest efforts under the spell of public

display, exhibited the most brilliant proofs of its title to popularity.

But in the very blaze of those triumphs, the Attorney-general showed that

there were other weapons of public warfare, not less original and not less

triumphant. No orator, and even no rhetorician, he seemed to despise alike

the lustre of imagination and the graces of language. But he substituted a

force, that often obtained the victory over both. Abrupt, bold, and

scornful, his words struck home. He had all the power of plain things. He

brought down no lightning from the heaven of invention, he summoned no

flame from below; but the torch in his hand burned with withering power,

and he wielded it without fear of man. By constitution haughty, his pride

actually gave him power in debate. Men, and those able men too, often

shrank from the conflict with one whose very look seemed to warn them of

their temerity. But to this natural faculty of overthrow he added

remarkable knowledge of public life, high legal repute, and the

incomparable advantage of his early training in a profession which opens

out the recesses of the soul, habitually forces imposture into light, and

cross-examines the villain into reluctant veracity. There never was in

Parliament a more remorseless or more effectual hand, in stripping off the

tinsel of political pretension. His logic was contemptuous, and his

contempt was logical. His blows were all straightforward. He wasted no

time in the flourish of the sword; he struck with the point. Even to the

most powerful of his opponents this assault was formidable. But with the

inferior ranks of Opposition, he threw aside the sword and assumed the

axe. Obviously regarding them as criminals against common sense and

national polity, he treated them as the executioner might treat culprits

already bound to the wheel, measuring the place for his blows with the

professional eye, and crushing limb after limb at his leisure. The

imperfect reports of debating in his day, have deprived parliamentary

recollection of the most memorable of those great displays. But their

evidence is given in the fact, that with the most numerous, powerful, and

able Opposition of Ireland in his front, and the feeblest Ministerial

strength behind him, the Attorney-general governed the parliament until

the hour when its gates were closed for ever--when its substance was

dissipated into thin air, and all but its memories sank into the

returnless grave.

In the House of Lords, as chancellor, he instantly became the virtual

viceroy. It is true, that a succession of opulent and accomplished

noblemen, every two or three years, were transmitted from Whitehall to the

Castle, to pillow themselves upon a splendid sinecure, rehearse an annual

King's speech, exhibit the acknowledged elegance of noble English life,

and, having given the destined number of balls and suppers, await the

warrant of a secretary's letter to terminate their political existence.

But the chancellor was made of "sterner stuff." His material was not

soluble by a blast of ministerial breath. Not even the giant grasp of Pitt

would have dared to pluck the sceptre from his hand. If struck, he might

have answered the blow as the flint answers, by fire. But the premier had

higher reasons for leaving him in the possession of power; he was pure. In

all the uproar of public calumny, no voice was ever heard impeaching his

integrity; with the ten thousand arrows of party flying round him from

every quarter, none ever found a chink in his ministerial mail. He loved

power, as all men do who are worthy of it. He disdained wealth, as all men

do who are fitted to use it. He scorned the popularity of the day, as all

men do who know the essential baseness of its purchase; and aspiring after

a name in the annals of his country, like all men to whom it is due--like

them, he proudly left the debt to be discharged by posterity.

The chancellor was not without his faults. His scorn was too palpable. He

despised too many, and the many too much. His haughtiness converted the

perishable and purchasable malice of party, into the "study of revenge,

immortal hate." When he struck down an opponent in the fair strife of

Parliament, his scorn was like poison in the wound, and the blow was never

forgotten but in the grave. But as a statesman, his chief and

unconquerable misfortune was the narrowness of his scene of action. He was

but the ruler of a province, while his faculties were fitted for the

administration of an empire. His errors were the offspring of his

position. He was the strong man within four walls; by the very length of

his stride striking against them at every step, and bruised by the very

energy of his impulse against his hopeless boundaries.

At length a time of desperate trial arose. The Rebellion of 1798 burst

out. He had foreseen it. But the men of the Castle, lolling on their

couches, would not believe in its possibility. The men of the populace,

stirring up the rabble with the point of the dagger, derided him as a

libeller of the people; and even the Government of England--too anxiously

engaged in watching the movements of the French legions from the heights

of Dover, to have time for a glance at disturbers behind the Irish

Channel--for a time left him to his fate. But he was equal to the

emergency. He had been scoffingly called "the Cassandra of the

aristocracy;" but he had neither the fortunes nor the failures of a

Cassandra; he had not forfeited his virtues for his gift, and his prophecy

was too soon and too terribly realized to be disbelieved. Of such times it

is painful to speak, but of the men by whom such times are met, it is

dishonourable not to speak with homage. Almost abandoned by authority,

assailed almost by a nation, with the ground shaking under his feet, and

the whole frame of Government quivering at every roar of the multitude in

arms, he stood the shock, and finally restored the country. Language like

this has not been the first tribute to the memory of this ardent,

vigorous, and unshrinking statesman. But its chief use, and the noblest

use of all tributes to the tomb of civil heroism, is, to tell others by

what strength of principle, and by what perseverance of purpose, the

rescue of nations is alone to be achieved. In the midst of alarm excited

by the extent of the revolt, of ignorance from the novelty of the crisis,

and of indecision from the dread of responsibility, he stood firm. The

original intrepidity of his nature was even strengthened by the perils of

the time; and with the whole storm of unpopularity roaring round him, he

sternly pursued his course, and combated the surge, until it sank, and the

state vessel neared, if it did not yet enter, the harbour.

It is the natural fate of such men, in such times, to be misunderstood,

and to be maligned. The libel which cast every stone within its reach at

his living name, long continued to heap them on his grave. But all this

has passed away, and the manlier portion of his countrymen now appeal to

the administration of the "Great Chancellor," in proof of the national

capacity for the highest trusts of empire.

Why has not the history of this man, and of his day, been written? Why has

not some generous spirit, impelled alike by a sense of justice and a sense

of patriotism, adopted this argument for the intellectual opulence and

moral energy which may still exist in the Irish mind? Is there no

descendant to claim the performance of a duty, which would reflect a

lustre on himself from the light which his filial piety planted on the

sepulchre? Or why are the recollections of rebels to be taken down from

the gibbet, and embalmed in history, while the name of him who smote the

rebellion is suffered to moulder away?

I am not writing a panegyric. He had his infirmities; his temper was too

excitable, and his measures were too prompt for prudence. But his heart

was sound, and his spirit was made for the guidance of a state in the hour

of its danger. If a feebler mind had then presided in the public councils,

Ireland, within a twelvemonth, would have been a republic; and in every

hour since, would have been agonizing under the daggers of rival factions,

or paying the fearful price of her frenzy in indissoluble chains.

If this were the single act of his life, it was sufficient for fame. It is

enough to inscribe on the mausoleum of any man, that "he rescued his

country from a DEMOCRACY!"

The first news of the revolt which reached England, produced a formidable

effect on the legislature. Even the sagacity of the premier had been

deceived, and his cabinet evidently staggered on the effect of the

surprise. Opposition had been equally startled, and were still more

perplexed in their decision. Dealing for years in all the high-sounding

topics of national wrong and national difficulty, they were astonished at

the first actual realization of popular revenge. The Englishman had heard

of wars as the child hears of spectres--none had seen them, and the

narratives served only to excite the imagination. But the tremendous

novelty of revolt was now at their doors. Whether the Irish revolters

acted in concert with the undying hostility of France, or with the

factions reform of England; the danger in either case assumed a shape of

the most appalling magnitude. Opposition, in the very prospect of power,

shrank from possession; as the stormers of a fortress might start back

when they saw the walls rolling down before them in some sudden convulsion

of nature. They had predicted every casualty which could befall a country,

ruled by a cabinet inexorably closed against themselves. But when their

predictions had changed their character from the fantastic and remote into

the substantial and immediate--when the clouds which they so often

predicted to be advancing over the prosperity of the land, seemed to have

suddenly rushed forward, and condensed and darkened with the full freight

of national havoc; they as suddenly flew to shelter in utter inaction, and

left the minister to meet the storm. Pitt was soon equal to the crisis.

The orders which he dispatched to Ireland were stamped with all the

considerate vigour of his matchless ability. I had sent him all the

information which could be obtained of the progress and purposes of the

revolt, with the suggestions arising from the contingency. His remarks on

my communication were brief, but incomparably clear, direct, and decided.

Their tenor was, that I should distinguish accurately between the deluded

and the deluders--that I should assure the loyal of the unhesitating

support of England--and that, in all instances, I should cultivate the

national loyalty, reward the generous obedience, and sympathize with all

the gallant and generous qualities of a people with whom every thing was

to be done, by taking an interest in their feelings. These principles were

so entirely my own, that I acted upon them with double zeal, and with

complete success. The loyalty of Ireland rapidly exhibited itself in the

most willing sacrifices; all ranks of opinion coincided in the necessity

of bold and instant action; and from day to day, party, absorbed in the

sense of the national exigency, disappeared, and patriotism rose. The

leading men of both sides of the House ranged themselves in the ranks of

the voluntary corps which came forward to assist in the public defence,

and the fine metaphor which had once made the senate thunder with

applause--"The serpent's teeth, sown in the ground, sprang up armed

men,"--was now amply, but more fortunately, realized. The bitternesses and

schisms of public opinion were hidden in the earth, and the harvest was a

brave and spontaneous armament of men prepared to undergo all hazards for

the sake of their country.

"Happy," says the French wit, "the land which has nothing for history."

This happiness has never belonged to Ireland. Her annals are a romance.

But the period of which I speak exhibited her senatorial strength with an

energy, almost compensating for her popular misfortunes. While Parliament

in England languished, parliament in Ireland started into sudden power. It

was aroused by the visible presence of the public peril. Ireland was the

outpost, while England was the camp; there the skirmish was at its height,

while the great English brigade moved up slowly from the rear. The ardour

and activity of the national temperament were exercised in perpetual

conflict, and every conflict produced some new champion.

The actual construction of the senate house stimulated the national

propensity for display. The House of Commons was an immense circular hall,

surmounted with a lofty dome. A gallery supported by columns was formed

round the base of the dome, with seats for seven hundred persons, but on

crowded occasions capable of containing more; the whole highly ornamented,

and constituting a rotunda, uniting grandeur with remarkable architectural

elegance. Thus every member acted in the sight of a large audience,

however thin might be the assemblage below; for the curiosity attached to

the debates was so powerful, that the spacious gallery was generally full.

But the nature of that audience excited the still stronger temptation to

the bold extravagances of the Irish temperament. The chief portion of this

auditory were females, and those the most distinguished of Ireland; women

of wit, beauty, and title, the leaders of fashion, and often the most

vivid and zealous partizans in politics--of all audiences, the most

hazardous to the soberness of public deliberation. As if with the express

purpose of including every element adverse to the calmness of council, the

students of the neighbouring university possessed the privilege of

_entree_ to the gallery; and there, with the heated imaginations of youth,

and every feeling trained by the theories of Greek and Roman

Republicanism, they sat, night after night, watching the ministerial

movements of a harassed monarchy.

What must be the condition of a minister, rising before such an audience,

to pronounce the grave doctrines of public prudence; to oppose argument to

brilliant declamation; to proclaim regulated obedience, in the midst of

spirits fantastic as the winds; and to lay restraints, essential to the

public peace, on a population proud of their past defiances, and ready to

welcome even civil war? I was not conscious of any natural timidity; nor

have I ever found occasion to distrust my nerve on any great demand; but I

must acknowledge, that when in some of the leading debates of that most

absorbing and most perilous period, I rose to take the initiative, the

sight of the vast audience to whom I raised my eyes, was one of the

severest trials of my philosophy. The members round me excited no alarm;

with them I was prepared to grapple; it was a contest of argument; I had

facts for their facts, answers for their captiousness, and a fearless

tongue for their declamation. But the gallery thus filled was beyond my

reach; its passions and prejudices were inaccessible by any logic of mine;

and I stood before them, less as in the presence of a casual auditory than

of a tribunal, and at that tribunal, less as an advocate than as a culprit

on the point of being arraigned.

Another peculiar evil resulted from the admission of this crowd, and of

its composition. Every casual collision of debate became personal. The

most trivial play of pleasantry was embittered into an insult; the

simplest sting of passing controversy was often to be healed only by a

rencounter in the field. For the whole was acted on a public stage, with

the _elite_ of the nation looking down on the performance. The hundreds

of bright eyes glancing down from the gallery, were critics whose contempt

was not to be resisted; and no public assembly, since the days of the

Polish pospolite, ever settled so many points of debate in the shape of

points of honour.

At length Opposition rallied, and resolved to make a general assault upon

the Administration. Like their English friends, they had been stunned for

a while by the suddenness of the outbreak. But as the Turkish populace, in

a conflagration or the plague, no sooner recover from their first fright

than they discover the cause in the government, and march to demand the

head of the vizier; the popular orators had no sooner found leisure to

look round them, than they marshalled their bands, and demanded the

dismissal of all antagonist authority. _I_ was first to be torn down. _I_

stood in the gate, and while I held the keys, there was no entrance for

expectant ambition. _I_ waved the flag in the breach, and until the banner

was swept away, the storm was ineffectual. Yet this turning the whole

weight of party vindictiveness on my head, gave me a new courage, the

courage of passion, the determination which arises from a sense of injury,

and which magnifies with the magnitude of the trial. In other times, I

might have abandoned the struggle; but, with the eyes of a nation thus

brought upon me, and all the ablest men of the opposite benches making my

overthrow the very prize of their victory, I determined "to stand the

hazard of the die."

The eventful night came at last; for days before, every organ of public

opinion was in the most feverish activity; lampoons, pamphlets, and

letters to the leading journals, the whole machinery of the

paragraph-world was in full work round me; and even the Administration

despaired of my being able to resist the uproar--all but one, and that one

the noblest and the most gifted of them all, my friend the chancellor. I

had sat long past midnight with him on the eve of the coming struggle; and

I received his plaudits for my determination. He talked with all his usual

loftiness, but with more than his usual feeling.

"Within the next twenty-four hours," said he, "your fate will be decided.

But, in public life, the event is not the dishonour; it is the countenance

with which we meet it, that makes all the difference between success and

shame. If you fall, you will fall like a man of character. If you triumph,

your success will be unalloyed by any baseness of purchase." I told him

sincerely, that I saw in the vigour and resolution of his conduct a model

for public men. "However the matter may turn out in the debate," said he,

rising and taking his leave, "there shall be no humiliation in the conduct

of government, even if we should be defeated. Persevere to the last. The

world is all chances, and ten to one of them are in favour of the man who

is resolved not to be frightened out of any thing. Farewell."

Still, the crisis was a trying one, and my occupation during the day was

but little calculated to smooth its anxieties. The intelligence from the

county announced the increased extent of the revolt; and the intercepted

correspondence gave startling proof of an organization altogether superior

to the rude tumults of an angry peasantry. Several sharp encounters had

taken place with the soldiery, and in some of them, the troops, scattered

in small detachments and unprepared, had suffered losses. Insurrectionary

proclamations had been issued, and the revolt was already assuming a

military form; camps were collected on the mountains, and the arming of

the population was become general. My day was occupied in writing hurried

despatches to the magistrates and officers in command of the disturbed

districts; until the moment when the debate was expected to begin. On my

way to the House, every thing round me conspired to give a gloomy

impression to my mind, weary and dark as it was already. Public alarm was

at its height and the city, with the usual exaggerations of undefined

danger, presented the appearance of a place about to be taken by storm.

The streets were crowded with people hurrying in search of news, or

gathered in groups retailing what they had obtained, and evidently filled

with the most formidable conceptions of the public danger. The armed

yeomanry were hurrying to their stations for the night, patrols of

cavalry were moving out to scour the environs, and the carriages of the

gentry from the adjoining counties were driving to the hotels, crowded

with children and domestics; while waggons loaded with the furniture of

families resident in the metropolis, were making their way for security

into the country. All was confusion, hurry, and consternation. The scene

of a great city in alarm is absolutely inconceivable but by those who have

been on the spot. It singularly harassed and exhausted me; and at length,

for the purpose of escaping the whole sight and sensation together, I

turned from the spacious range of streets which led to the House; and made

my way along one of the narrow and obscure lanes which, by a libel on the

national taste, were still suffered to remain in the vicinity of an

edifice worthy of the days of Imperial Rome.

My choice was an unlucky one, for I had scarcely gone a hundred yards,

when I found my passage obstructed by a crowd evidently waiting with some

sinister purpose. A signal was given, and I was called on to answer. I had

no answer to make, but required that I should be suffered to pass on. "A

spy, a spy! down with him!" was the exclamation of a dozen voices. A rush

was made upon me, and notwithstanding my struggle to break through, I was

overwhelmed, grasped by the arms, and hurried into the entrance of a house

in utter darkness. I expected only a dagger in my heart, and from the

muttered tones and words which escaped my captors, not one of whom could I

discern, I seemed evidently about to encounter the fate of the spy which

they deemed me. But, convinced that nothing was to be gained by

submission, I loudly demanded by what right I was seized, declared myself

a member of Parliament, and threatened them with the especial vengeance of

the law, for obstructing me in the performance of my duty.

This announcement evidently had its effect, at least in changing the

subject of their consultation; and, after another whisper, one of their

number stepped up to me, and said that I must follow him. My refusal

brought the group again round me, and I was forced down the stairs, and

through a succession of airless and ruined vaults, until we reached a

massive door. There a signal was given, and was answered from within; but

the door continued closed.

My emotions during all this period were agonizing. I might not have felt

more than others that fear of death which belongs to human nature; but

death, in darkness, without the power of a struggle, or the chance of my

fate being ever accounted for; death by the hands of assassins, and in a

spot of obscure butchery, was doubly appalling. But an hour before, I had

been the first man in the country, and now what was I? an unhappy object

of ruffian thirst of blood, destined to die in a charnel, and be tossed

among the rubbish of ruffian hands, to moulder unknown. Without

condescending to implore, I now strongly attempted to reason with my

captors on the atrocity of offering violence to a stranger, and on the

certainty that they would gain more by giving me my liberty, than they

could possibly do by burying their knives in my bosom. But all was in

vain. They made no reply. One conception alone was wanting to the torture

of the time; and it came. I heard through the depth of the vaults the

sound of a church clock striking "eight." It was the very hour which had

been agreed on for commencing the debate of the night. What must be

thought of my absence? What answer could be made to any enquiry for my

presence? What conceivable escape could my character as a minister have,

from the charge of scandalous neglect, or more scandalous pusillanimity;

from treachery to my friends, or from an utter insensibility to personal

name and official honour in myself? The thought had nearly deprived me of

my senses. The perspiration of mental torment ran down my face. I stamped

the ground, and would have dashed my forehead against the wall, had not

the whole group instantly clung round me. A few moments more of this

wretchedness, and I must have died; but the door at length was cautiously

opened, and I bounded in.

At a long narrow table, on which were a few lights, and several books and

rolls of paper, sat about twenty men, evidently of the lower order, though

one or two exhibited a marked superiority to the rest. A case of pistols

lay on the table, which had probably been brought out on the signal of my

arrival; and in the corners of the room, or rather vault, were several

muskets and other weapons piled against the wall. From the obvious

disturbance of the meeting, I was clearly an unwelcome guest; and, after a

general sweep of the papers off the table, and a whisper which

communicated to the chairman the circumstances of my capture, I was asked

my name, and "why I had intruded on their meeting?" To the latter question

my reply was an indignant demand, "why my liberty had been infringed on?"

To the former, I gave my name and office at full length, and in a tone of

authority. No announcement could have been more startling. The president

actually bounded from his chair; others plucked out knives and pistols;

all looked pallid and thunderstruck. With the first minister of the realm

in this cavern of conspirators, every life of whom was in peril of the

axe; my presence among them was like the dropping of a shell into a powder

magazine.

But the dismay soon passed; their native daring returned, and I saw that

my fate hung once more on the balance. After a brief consultation, and

many a gloomy glance at their prisoner, the president summed up the

opinion of the board. "You must be sensible, sir," said he, addressing me;

"that in times like the present, every man must be prepared to make

sacrifices for his cause. The call of Ireland has summoned us here--that

call is irresistible; and whatever may be our feelings, for you, sir, who

have been brought into this place wholly without our desire, the interests

of a great country, determined to be free, must not be put in competition

with the life of any individual, be his rank what it may." He paused, but

a general murmur of applause showed the full approval of his grim

auditory. "You, sir," he continued, with the solemnity of a judge passing

sentence, "are one great obstacle to the possession of our public rights.

You are a man of talents and courage, and so much the more dangerous to

the patriot cause. You would disdain our folly, if we threw away the

chance which fortune has put into our hands;--you must die. If we were in

your power, the scaffold would be our portion. You are now in ours, and

the question between us is decided." I felt, from his tone, that all

remonstrance was useless; and I scorned to supplicate. "Do as you will," I

indignantly exclaimed. "I make but one request. It is, that no imputation

shall be suffered to rest on my memory; that the manner of my death shall

be made known; and that no man shall ever be suffered to believe that I

died a coward or a traitor." "It shall be done," slowly pronounced the

president. I heard the click of a trigger, and looking up at the sound,

saw one of the sitters at this board of terror, without moving from his

place, deliberately levelling it at my head. I closed my eyes. In the next

instant, I heard a scuffle; the pistol was knocked out of his hand, and a

voice hurriedly exclaimed, "Are you all mad? For what purpose is this

butchery? Whom are you about to murder? Do you want to bring a curse upon

our cause?" All rose in confusion; but the stranger made but one spring to

the spot where I stood, and fixing his eyes on me with astonishment,

loudly repeated my name. As the light fell on him, I recollected at once,

though his hat was deeply drawn over his eyes, and a huge cloak was

wrapped round him, palpably for the purpose of concealment, the rebel

leader whom I had so strangely met before. He turned to the table. "And is

it in this infamous way," he fiercely exclaimed, "that you show your love

of liberty? Is it in blood that you are to dip your charter; is it in

making every man of common sense despise, and every man of humanity abhor

you, that you are to seek for popular good-will? Down with your weapons!

The first man who dares to use them, I declare a traitor to his country!"

His energy made an impression; and giving me his hand, which, even in that

anxious moment, I could perceive to be as cold as stone, he pronounced the

words, "Sir, you are free!" But for this they were not prepared; and some

exclamations rose, in which they seemed to regard him as false to the

cause, and the words--"sold," and "traitor"--were more than once audible.

He flamed out at the charge, and passionately demanded proofs. He then

touched another string. "Now listen to what I have to tell you, and then

call me traitor, if you will. You are in the jaws of ruin. I have but just

discovered that Government has obtained knowledge of your meeting; and

that within five minutes every man of you will be arrested. I flew to save

you; now judge of my honour to the cause. You have only to make your

escape, and thank the chance which has rescued your lives." Still my

safety was not complete. There were furious spirits among them, who talked

of revenge for the blood already shed, and graver spirits who insisted on

my being kept as a hostage. But my protector declaimed so powerfully on

the folly of exacting terms from me under duress; on the wisdom of

appealing to my generosity in case of reverses; and, above all, on the

certainty of their falling into the hands of authority, if they wasted

their time in quarrelling as to my disposal; that he again brought them to

a pause. A loud knocking at the door of one of the distant vaults, and a

sound like the breaking down of the wall, gave a sudden success to his

argument, and the meeting, snatching up their papers and weapons, glided

away as silently as so many shadows.

I naturally attempted to thank my protector, but he put his finger to his

lip and pointed to the quarter from which the police were apparently

forcing their way into the subterranean. This was clearly a time of peril

for himself as well as his associates, and I followed him silently through

the windings of this hideous locale. We shortly reached the open air, and

I cannot describe the solemn and grateful sense with which I saw the sky

above my head, the lights glimmering in the windows, and felt that I was

once more in the land of the living. My conductor led me within sight of

the door of the House of Commons, and, with a slight pressure of the hand,

turned from me, and was lost among the crowd. I rushed in, exhausted,

overpowered, sinking with apprehension of the evil which might have been

done in my absence, and blushing at the shame which probably awaited me.

But I was fortunately disappointed. By some means, which I could never

subsequently ascertain, a rumour of my seizure had reached the House; and

the strongest alarm was excited by the dread of my assassination. The

commencement of the debate was suspended. Opposition, with the dignified

courtesy which distinguished their leaders, even proposed the adjournment

of their motion; the messengers of the House were dispatched in all

directions to bring some tidings of me; and I had afterwards the

satisfaction to find that none imputed my absence to any motive unbecoming

my personal and official honour. Thus, when I entered the House, nervous

with apprehension, I was received with a general cheer; my colleagues

crowded round me with enquiries and congratulations; members crossed from

the opposite benches to express their welcome. The galaxy of the living

and the lovely in the gallery, which the expectation of the great debate

had filled with all the fashionable portion of the capital, chiefly, too,

in full dress, as was the custom of the time, glanced down approvingly on

me; and, when at last I took my seat, I felt myself flattered by being the

centre of one of the most splendid and interesting assemblies in the

world.

The House was at length hushed, and Grattan rose. I cannot revert to the

memory of that extraordinary man, without a mixture of admiration and

melancholy--admiration for his talents, and melancholy for the feeling

that such talents should expire with the time, and be buried in the common

dust of the sepulchre. As a senatorial orator, he was incontestably the

greatest whom I have ever heard. With but little pathos, and with no

pleasantry, I never heard any man so universally, perpetually, and

powerfully, command the attention of the House. Thee was the remarkable

peculiarity in his language, that while the happiest study of others is to

conceal their art, his simplicity had the manner of art. It was keen,

concentrated, and polished, by nature. His element was grandeur; the

plainest conception in his hands, assumed a loftiness and power which

elevated the mind of his hearers, as much as it convinced their reason. As

it was said of Michael Angelo, that every touch of his chisel was life,

and that he struck out features and forms from the marble with the power

of a creator, Grattan's mastery of high conceptions was so innate, that he

invested every topic with a sudden magnitude, which gave the most casual

things a commanding existence to the popular eye. It was thus, that the

grievance of a casual impost, the delinquencies of a police, the artifices

of an election, or the informalities of a measure of finance, became under

his hand historic subjects, immortal themes, splendid features, and

recollections of intellectual triumph. If the Pyramids were built to

contain the dust of nameless kings and sacrificed cattle, his eloquence

erected over materials equally transitory, memorials equally imperishable.

His style has been criticised, and has been called affected and

epigrammatic. But, what is style to the true orator? His triumph is

effect--what is to him its compound? What is it to the man who has the

thunderbolt in his hands, of what various, nay, what earthly--nay, what

vaporous, material it may be formed? Its blaze, its rapidity, and its

penetration, are its essential value; and smiting, piercing, and

consuming, it is the instrument of irresistible power.

But Grattan was an orator by profession, and the only one of his day. The

great English speakers adopted oratory simply as the means of their public

superiority. Pitt's was the oratory of a ruler of empire; with Fox,

oratory was the strong, massive, and yet flexible instrument of a leader

of party. But with Grattan it was a faculty, making a portion of the man,

scarcely connected with external things, and neither curbed nor guided by

the necessities of his political existence. If Grattan had been born among

the backwoodsmen, he would have been an orator, and have been persuasive

among the men of the hatchet and the rifle. Wherever the tongue of man

could have given superiority, or the flow and vigour of conception could

have given pleasure, he would have attained eminence and dispensed

delight. If he had not found an audience, he would have addressed the

torrents and the trees; he would have sent forth his voice to the

inaccessible mountains, and have appealed to the inscrutable stars. It is

admitted, that in the suffering condition of Ireland, he had a prodigious

opportunity; but, among thousands of bold, ardent, and intellectual men,

what is his praise who alone rushes to their front, and seizes the

opportunity? The English rule over the sister country has been charged

sometimes as tyranny, which was a libel; and sometimes as injustice, which

was an error; but it had an unhappy quality which embraced the evils of

both--it was invidious. The only map of Ireland which lay before the

English cabinet of the eighteenth century, was the map of the sixteenth--a

chart spotted with the gore of many battles, not the less bloody that they

were obscure; and disfigured with huge, discoloured spaces of barbarism.

They forgot the lapse of time, and that time had since covered the graves

of the past with a living race, and was filling up the swamps of the

wilderness with the vigour and the passions of a new and glowing people.

They still governed on the guidance of the obsolete map, and continued to

administer a civilized nation with the only sceptre fit for barbarism--the

sword. By a similar misconception, while they declared the islands one

indivisible empire, they governed them on the principle of eternal

separation. No Irishman was ever called across the narrow strait between

the two countries, to take a share in the offices, or enjoy the honors of

England. Irish ambition, thwarted in its own country, might wander for

ever, like Virgil's unburied ghosts, on the banks of the Irish Channel,

without a hope of passing that political Styx. The sole connexion of the

islands was between Whitehall and the Castle--between power and

placemen--between cabinets and viceroys. It never descended to the level

of the nation. It was a slight and scarcely visible communication, a

galvanic wire, significant only at the extremities, instead of a public

language and human association--instead of a bond of heart with heart--an

amalgamation of people with people. Posterity will scarcely believe that

the neglect of unity should have so nearly approached to the study of

separation. Even the coin of the two countries was different in impress

and in value--the privileges of trade were different--the tenure of

property was different--the regulations of the customs (things which

penetrate through all ranks) were different--and a whole army of revenue

officers were embodied to carry on those commercial hostilities. The

shores of the "Sister Islands" presented to each other the view of rival

frontiers, and the passage of a fragment of Irish produce was as

impracticable as if it had been contraband of war.

It was Grattan who first broke down this barrier, and he thus rendered the

mighty service of doubling the strength of the empire; perhaps rendered

the still mightier service of averting its separation and its ruin. As the

nation had grown strong, it had grown sullen; its disgust was ripening

into wrath; and its sense of injury might speedily have sought its relief

in national revenge. And yet it is only justice to acknowledge that this

evil arose simply from negligence on the part of England; that there was

no design of tyranny, none of the capriciousness of superiority, none of

the sultan spirit in the treatment of the rayah. But no minister had yet

started up in English councils capable of the boldness of throwing open

the barrier; none of intellectual stature sufficient to look beyond the

old partition wall of the countries; no example of that statesmanlike

sagacity which discovers in the present the shape of the future, and

pierces the mists, which, to inferior minds, magnify the near into giant

size, while they extinguish the distant altogether. But no man can ever

write the annals of England, without a growing consciousness that

magnanimity has been the instinct of her dominion; that she has been

liberal on principle, and honest by nature; that even in the chillest and

darkest hour of her sovereignity, this influence has existed unimpaired,

and like gravitation on the globe, that it has accompanied and impelled

her, day and night alike, through the whole circuit of her proud and

powerful career.

This was the glorious period of Grattan's public life. His task, by

universal confession, was the noblest that could be enjoined on man, and

he sustained it with powers fitted to its nobleness. On the later portion

of his history I have no desire to touch. The most hazardous temptation of

early eminence is the fondness which it generates for perpetual publicity.

The almost preternatural trial of human fortitude is, to see faction with

its vulgar and easy triumph seizing the fame, which was once to be won

only by the purest and rarest achievements of patriotism. When the banner

which had flamed at the head of the nation on their march to Right, and

which was consigned to the hand of Grattan as its legitimate bearer, was

raised again, in a day threatening the subversion of every throne of

Europe; he exhibited a jealousy of his obscure competitors, unworthy of

his renown. But he did not join in their procession. He was unstained. If

he felt the avarice of ambition, he exhibited no decay of that original

dignity of nature, which, in his political nonage, had made him the leader

of bearded men, and a model to the maturity of his country's virtue.

On this night he spoke with remarkable power, but in a style wholly

distinct from his former appeals to the passions of the House. His

accents, usually sharp and high, were now lingering and low; his fiery

phraseology was solemn and touching, and even his gesture, habitually

wild, distorted, and pantomimical, was subdued and simple. He seemed to

labour under an unavowed impression of the share which the declamatory

zeal of his party had to lay to its charge in the national peril. But I

never saw more expressive evidence of his genius, than on this night of

universal consternation. His language, ominous and sorrowful, had the

force of an oracle, and was listened to like an oracle. No eye or ear

strayed from him for a moment, while he wandered dejectedly among the

leading events of the time, throwing a brief and gloomy light over each in

passing, as if he carried a funeral lamp in his hand, and was straying

among tombs. This was to me a wholly new aspect of his extraordinary

faculties. I had regarded rapidity, brilliancy, and boldness of thought,

as his inseparable attributes; but his speech was now a magnificent elegy.

I had seen him, when he furnished my mind almost with the image of some of

those men of might and mystery, sent to denounce the guilt, and heap coals

of fire on the heads of nations. He now gave me the image of the prophet,

lamenting over the desolation which he had once proclaimed, and

deprecating less the crimes than the calamities of the land of his

nativity. I never was more struck with the richness and variety of his

conceptions, but their sadness was sublime. Again, I desire to guard

against the supposition, that I implicitly did homage to either his

talents or his political views. From the latter, I often and deeply

dissented; in the former I could often perceive the infirmity that belongs

even to the highest natural powers He was no "faultless monster." I am

content to recollect him as a first-rate human being. He had enemies and

may have them still. But all private feelings are hourly more and more

extinguished in the burst of praise, still ascending round the spot where

his dust is laid. Time does ultimate justice to all, and while it crumbles

down the fabricated fame, only clears and separates the solid renown from

the common level of things. The foibles of human character pass away. The

fluctuations of the human features are forgotten in the fixed majesty of

the statue; and the foes of the living man unite in carrying the memorial

of the mighty dead to its place in that temple, where posterity comes to

refresh its spirit, and elevate its nature, with the worship of genius and

virtue.

BETHAM'S ETRURIA CELTICA.

Herodotus has this amusing story of a philological experiment made by the

Egyptian king Psammetichus, who may, not inappropriately, be termed the

James the First of his dynasty:--

"The Egyptians, before the reign of Psammetichus, considered

themselves the oldest of mankind; but, after the reign of

Psammetichus, enquiry having been made as to whether that were the

case, thenceforth they considered the Phrygians to be their elders,

themselves being next in seniority. For Psammetichus, finding no

satisfactory solution to his enquiry on this subject, devised the

following plan: He took two infant boys, born of humble parents, and

committed them to the care of a shepherd, to be educated in this

manner--that he should not permit any one to utter a sound in their

hearing, but should keep them by themselves in a lonely house,

admitting only she-goats at stated times to suckle them, and

rendering them the other requisite services himself. So he did so;

and Psammetichus directed him, as soon as the infants should cease

their inarticulate cries, that he should carefully note what word

they should first utter. And so it was, that, after the lapse of two

years, both infants, with outstretched hands, running to meet their

attendant the shepherd, as he entered one day, cried out, 'becco.' Of

which the shepherd at first made no report, but hearing them

reiterate the same, as often as he went to visit them, he informed

his lord, and, by his commands, brought the boys and exhibited them;

whereupon Psammetichus, as soon as he heard them, enquired 'what

nation they were who called any thing by the name of _becco_?' to

which enquiry he learned for answer, that the Phrygians call _bread_

by that name. So the Egyptians being convinced by that argument,

conceded the point, that the Phrygians had existed before them. 'All

which,' says the father of history, 'I learned from the priests of

Vulcan at Memphis.'"

This story, after exciting the smiles of the learned for about two

thousand years, fell, in an evil hour for the peace of mind of modern

philologers, into the hands of John Goropius Becan, a man of letters at

Antwerp, who, recollecting that _bec_ has a like signification in Dutch,

(_bec_ in that language meaning bread, and _becker_, as in our own, a

baker,) immediately jumped to the conclusion, that Dutch must have been

the language of the Phrygians, and that the Dutch were consequently the

most ancient of mankind. This insane proposition he puts forward as the

sole foundation of his two great folios, entitled, "_Origines Antwerpianae,

sive Cimmeriorum Beceselana_," printed at Antwerp in 1569, in which he

derives all the nations of antiquity from the Dutch, and makes all the

names of gods, demigods, heroes, and places of the Old World, to have

their only proper and characteristic signification in that language. The

grave precision with which he lays the first and only foundation-stone of

this monstrous superstructure, is sufficiently entertaining. "The

Phrygians spoke the Scythic (_i. e._ the High-Dutch) tongue; and the

Egyptians allowed the Phrygian language to be the primitive one. For when

their king had ascertained that bec was a word of the original language of

mankind, and could not understand it, he was informed that, among the

Phrygians, it signified bread; whereupon he adjudged that language to be

of all others the first in which _bec_ hath that meaning; which _bec_

being, at this day, our word for bread, and _becker_ ("baker") for

bread-maker, it stands, consequently, confessed, on this most ancient

testimony of Psammetichus, that our language is, of all others, the first

and oldest." From so extravagant a commencement, nothing but the most

fantastical results could be expected, and the reader will not be

surprised to find Goropius making Adam and Eve a Dutchman and a

Dutchwoman, as one of the very first corollaries from his fundamental

proposition; the Patriarchs follow; then the Gentile gods, goddesses, and

heroes; the Titans, the Cyclops, the pigmies, griffins, and

"Gorgons, and hydras, and chimeras dire,"--

nations, tribes, territories, seas, rivers, lakes, mountains, valleys,

cities, and villages--all are drawn into this vast vortex of nonsense, set

agoing originally by the single syllable _bec_, which, after all, if this

story of the priests of Vulcan have any foundation in fact, was, most

probably, nothing more than an imitation of the peculiar cry of the goats

by which the infants had been suckled. Goropius's book was published at a

time when the learned world were in no humour to tolerate such

absurdities; and therefore, although exhibiting a considerable amount of

learning in its own mad way, and a proportionate and characteristic degree

of ingenuity, it called forth one of the severest reproofs that literary

presumption has ever brought down, from the pen of Joseph Scaliger, whose

condemnation was re-echoed by all the literary men of note of the day. It

being part of Goropius's system that the ancient Gauls were Dutch, and the

task of showing all the known words of the old Gaulish language to be

significant in Dutch, being, consequently, incumbent on him as a first

step to his bolder speculations on the unexplained names of men and

places, he had, among others, given some ridiculous Dutch equivalents from

the word _ambactus_, which, as we are informed by Festus, meant a slave or

retainer in the old Gaulish tongue. Scaliger, shortly after, editing

Festus, with annotations, and coming to the word in question, took that

opportunity to administer to Goropius the following castigation--"I am

unable to restrain my laughter," he says, "at what this singularly

audacious and impudent person has written against Turnebus on this word.

But, as all his books exhibit nothing else than a most impudent confidence

in himself, so I reject his opinion on this matter as utterly impertinent

and nonsensical. Never have I read greater absurdities; never have I seen,

neither heard of greater or more audacious temerity, seeking, as he does,

to derive all languages from his own barbarous dialect, so as to make the

Hebrew itself inferior to the Dutch; nay, even reprehending Moses for

taking the names of the patriarchs from his native Hebrew. Unlucky

patriarchs and fathers, that were born Philistines of Palestine, and not

Dutchmen of Antwerp!" Abrahan Mylius, another great scholar, though not of

so extended a reputation as either of the Scaligers, soon after expressed

much the same sentiments. "I am not," he says, "so full of wantonness as

to be able to crack his insufferably absurd jokes with Becan, and give the

palm of antiquity to the language of Flanders in preference to the Hebrew,

making it the parent tongue not only of all other languages, but of the

Hebrew itself." Schrevelius, the lexicographer, gave vent to his contempt

in verse:--

"Quis tales probet oscitationes!

Quis has respectat meras chimeras!

Non Judaeus Apella de proseucha,

Non qui de Solymis venit perustis,

Aut quisquam de grege Tabatariorum

Queis phoeni cophinique cura major:

Cimmerii denique non puto probabunt

Et si prognatos Japhet putantur

Gomoroque parente procreati."

Our own Cambden, about the same time commencing his great work on British

Antiquities, began by a protestation against being supposed "insaniam

Becani insanire." Justus Lipsius alone, of all the learned men of the day,

restrained the expression of positive indignation. "We often speak of

Becan and his book about our language," he says, writing to Schottius,

"and have frequent jokes on the subject. He, as you know, would have it

not only to be an elegant and polished tongue, but the primitive one, and

mother of all the rest. But we

'Stupuimus omnes tentamina tanta

Conatusque novos.'

And, indeed, many of us laugh heartily. What do I? I love the man himself,

and I admire his quick, keen, and happy wit; happy, indeed, if he would

turn it to some other subject-matter. But these speculations of his, what

credit can we give to them, or what advantage expect from them? Whom shall

I persuade that our language is thus supremely ancient--thus pregnant with

mysterious meanings? That we here, next the Frozen Pole, are the earliest

of mankind? that we alone preserve our language unadulterate and free from

foreign admixture? Such assertions challenge laughter, not opposition."

Goropius did not live to make any reply, dying shortly after in 1572; but

his etymological mantle descended on a worthy successor, in the person of

his countryman Adrien Von Scrieck, lord of Rodorn, who followed up the

subject, on a slightly modified plan, in three-and-twenty books of _Celtic

and Belgic Origins_, published at Ypres A.D. 1614. Scrieck adopted as the

principle of his investigation this position from the _Cratylus_ of Plato.

"All things possess some quality which is the proper reason of their

respective names; and those words which express things as they exist, are

the true names, whereas those that give a contrary meaning are spurious."

Nothing can be truer than this, provided only we knew the existing

characteristics of each object, as the original namers had them in view

when imposing their nomenclature; but when this clue is wanting, no

labyrinth can lead an adventurer into more hopeless error. All articulate

sounds necessarily resemble one another, and there is no name, either of a

place or of a person, in any articulate language, that may not be

constrained to bear some resemblance in sound to some words of any other

given language. These, it is true, will seldom make sense, and never be

truly appropriate; yet, with a little sleight-of-hand, dropping a letter

here and adding one there, substituting a mute for a liquid or a liquid

for a mute, and so forth, the ingenious etymologist will sometimes produce

an equivalent, sounding not unlike the original, and making some sort of

sense not altogether inapplicable to the subject-matter. As, for instance,

if any one, impressed with the conviction that our own language is the

mother tongue of mankind, were to derive Crotona from "Crow-town," he

would produce an equivalent, sounding much the same, and having a meaning

which might possibly have been quite applicable to Crotona, though 'tis

pretty certain that it was not as "a city of kites and crows" that place

originally obtained its designation. So Swift's "All-eggs-under-the-grate"

sounds very nearly identical with the name of the Macedonian conqueror,

though it by no means follows that the son of Philip either was partial to

poached eggs, or named accordingly.

Absurd and ridiculous as these instances may appear, they hardly exceed

the folly of some of Becan's and Scrieck's derivations from the Dutch.

Thus Goropius makes [Greek: Apollos] _Af-hol-los_, ("off-hole-loose,")

_i. e._ "_ex antro libera_," or "I _loose_ (the rays of light) off, or out

of, the _hole_ or cavern (of darkness!") and thus Scrieck derives Sequana

(the river Seine) from _see gang_, _i. e._ "_via maris_," or the

"_gang_-way to the _sea_!" and Cecrops from _sea-crops_, _i. e._ "_a

marina gula_," because, we suppose, the Cecropidae came to Greece with

their _crops_ full, (or empty, as the case might be,) after their _sea_

voyage from Egypt.

The indignation and contempt of the learned world seem to have spent

themselves on Goropius; and Scrieck's preposterous labour appears only to

have excited laughter. The most illustrious writers in every department of

erudition had just ceased to occupy the stage. Scrieck, coming out with

his thousand folios of puerilities among a public familiar with the works

of the two Scaligers, of Cassaubon, Lipsius, Cluver, Cambden, and the

other great lights of learning that shed such a lustre on the latter end

of the sixteenth century, was regarded much as Beau Coates may have been

in latter days, presenting himself in the character of Romeo before

audiences accustomed to the highest histrionic efforts of the Kembles. And

as Coates, not satisfied with convulsing his audience by dying before them

in the regular course of the play, would sometimes die over and over again

for their entertainment; so Scrieck, not content with torturing all the

names of men and places in Chaldea, Phoenicia, Egypt, Greece, Italy,

Spain, and Gaul, into Dutch equivalents, through the three-and-twenty

books of his first impression, followed up his fantasy, in 1615, by an

additional essay, in which whatever was extravagant before, became, if

possible, still more transcendently nonsensical. Perhaps no part of the

entire work is more characteristic of the vanity and blindness of the

writer than his preface to this second part, where he gravely takes his

guide, Goropius, to task for founding so large a work as the _Becceselana_

on so small a foundation as the "_bec_" of Psammetichus, and regrets that

his predecessor did not confine himself to etymons more consistent with

the local and personal characteristics of his several subjects. For his

own part the ground he goes upon is this, that the names of men and places

among the Chaldeans, Egyptians, Greeks, and Latins, as also among the

Scythians, Celts, Etruscans, and Belgae, (which latter, he says, are all

Celts,) are properly significant in that Scythic tongue which the Belgae

and Dutch to this day preserve; whence it follows, says he, "as an

argument superior to all exception, that not only the Chaldaic, Egyptian,

Greek, and Latin tongues (he does not mention the Hebrew, which he

concedes to be the language of Paradise) are inferior and posterior to the

tongue now used by the Belgae and Dutch; but also that the same Belgae and

Dutchmen are extracted from a more ancient people, and a higher original,

than the said Chaldeans, Egyptians, Greeks, or Romans."

And that this may appear by sufficient proofs, he proceeds to show that

the chief names of men and places in each of these counties are rightly

significant in Dutch, and not in their respective proper languages: as,

for example--

"ADAM--_Scythice Ad-ham_, sive _Haid-am_, ens conjunctivum, 'a united

entity.' The Chaldeans," says he, "interpreted Adam to mean 'red,'

for what reason I cannot see. It doth not appear a name of sufficient

dignity for the first and most perfect and absolute of men. 'Tis much

more to the purpose that he should have got the name of an united

entity, from the first institution of marriage by his Creator.

"EVA--_i. e. heve_, significat _praegnans_ vel _elevata_, ab

_elevatione_ ventris; than which nothing could be said more _in rem_.

"NOE--_N'hohe_, that is, _altus_, _celsus_; as Noah was at the head

of time after the deluge. The Chaldeans interpret it _cessatio_,

_quies_; but Noah," says he, "had neither _rest_ nor _quiet_ during

the deluge.

"MOSES--_mos-es_, that is, the 'mud of the waters;' being, when an

infant, exposed and raised out of the mud and slime of the river

Nile. The Chaldeans interpret his name 'raised,' simply according to

the mere circumstance of his being taken up; but the Celtic (_i. e._

the Dutch) signification denotes the whole fact.

"DAVID--_D'af-heid_, that is to say, 'lowness,' 'humility.' For David

was not only of a low stature, but, above all, low and humble in his

mind, as appears from 1 Kings," &c. &c.

After Teutonising the Hebrew in this manner, he next proceeds to the

Egyptian.

"AEGYPTOS--_haeg-up-t'hos_, that is 'sylvae supra altitudines,' 'the

woody heights above.' (How this is exactly applicable he does not

inform us.)

"NILUS--_N'hil-ho_, that is, the 'high descent,' to wit, of waters;

for the Nile descends from the Mountains of the Moon, which are very

high.

"SEBENUTICUM--(a town of the Delta,) _Seben-vuyticum_, that is, 'the

_seven_-fold _outcome_;' for the Nile is seven-fold, and hath seven

mouths or outlets.

"PHAROS--_Phaer-ho_, signifying _adnavigatio alti_, or the navigation

towards the high places; for Pharos is an island with a lofty tower,"

&c. &c.

Then he takes his course into Greece and Latium, but it would be idle to

follow him through a hundredth part of these vagaries. In not a single

instance does he pay the least attention to what the Greeks and Romans

themselves thought or taught on these subjects, except, indeed, in the

solitary case of the Peloponnesus, which he admits _may_ possibly have had

its name from Pelops, though he thinks it more likely that it expresses

the more appropriate Scythic phrase _Pfel-op-on-es_--"Campus superior ad

aquas," or the _fell_ or plain _up_, _on_, or _above_ the water.

Coming in the course of his peregrinations to Etruria, and being equally

successful in making all the ancient names of men and places there

significant in Dutch, he boldly attempts the interpretation of the

Eugubian tablets. These singular remains of the extinct language of

Etruria, had already exercised the skill of some of the best scholars of

the 16th century, but none of them had succeeded in bending this new bow

of Ulysses. To the insane all things are easy. Scrieck made no more of the

task than did Ulysses--

"When the wary hero wise,

His hand now familiar with the bow,

Poising it and examining--at once;

As when in harp and song adept, a bard

Unlabouring strains the chord to a new lyre,

The twisted entrails of a sheep below

With fingers nice inserting, and above--

With such facility Ulysses bent

His own huge bow, and with his right hand play'd

The nerve, which in its quick vibration sung

Clear as a swallow's voice."

With equal confidence Scrieck addresses himself to decipher the tablets of

Gubbio. "That the Dutch was the language of Etruria," he says, "appears

not only from these unquestionably Celtic (_i. e._ Dutch) names of the

most ancient places in Italy, but also by that extraordinary monument of

antiquity, the Etruscan inscription, which, Gruter writes me, was found

some years back at Eugubio (Gubbio) in Etruria, on eight brazen tablets:

the first written in inverted Greek letters, and the rest in Latin

characters." These, upon examination, he pronounces to be clearly Dutch,

and as a specimen adds some sentences of the sixth table,

beginning--SERVERENT: PEMIMUMS: SERVERENT: DEITU: ETAIS EUO: PRIMATER,

&c.; and containing, according to his account, near the end the following

passage: SERBA MARTIA EPUSTOTE SERFIA SERFIR MARTIA TENSA SERFIR SARFER

MARTIA FUTUTO. Of which he gives the following version, premising that the

's' in his copy has an additional stroke, which makes it sound ST. STERVE

MAR TIE EVVERSTOTE STERFTE STERVER MAER TIER DUERSAFT STERTE STERVER MAR

TIER VUT-VUTE; _i. e._ "Let him only die the death who is an extern; let

them only die the death who are externs; let them only die the death who

are outer externs;" being, as he says, a deprecation merely of the evils

of mortality, and a prayer for their infliction on strangers, as Horace

says--

Hinc bellum lacrymosum, hinc miseram famem

Pestemque a populo et principe Caesare, in

Persas atque Britannos,

Vestra motus aget prece."

Having rendered this and the incantation for the cure of sprains, given in

Cato, "De Re Rustica," into the old Dutch, of which we have had so many

specimens, he closes this summary of his labours with the declaration,

that whoever, after these proofs, will assert that the Etruscan language

was other than the Dutch, cannot be considered otherwise than as _non

compos mentis_.

We had little expectation, when laughing at these vagaries of Scrieck and

Becan, many years ago, that it would yet be our lot to see the same

follies revived in our own time, and among ourselves. But follies are like

fashions, which, having once prevailed in the metropolis, usually run the

round of the provinces. And so this fantastic trick of interpreting the

names of antiquity by modern equivalents, spreading from the schools of

Antwerp and Ypres, still shows itself occasionally in the outskirts of the

republic of letters, and has here lately had a new Avatar, fully as absurd

as any of its prior exhibitions, among those Jupiters Stators of every

exploded folly of the Continent--the English writers on the antiquities of

Ireland.

This new Irish Becceselana is entitled "Etruria-Celtica. Etruscan

Literature and Antiquities investigated, or the language of that ancient

and illustrious people compared and identified with the Iberno-Celtic, and

both shown to be Phoenician, by Sir William Betham, Ulster King-at-Arms,

Vice-President of the Royal Dublin Society, F.S.A., M.R.I.A., &c. &c."[6]

This title exhibits a design in no respect different from that of Goropius

and Scrieck, except in the substitution of the Iberno-Celtic, by the Irish

writer, for the Belgico-Celtic equivalents of the Dutch. If there were

sufficient reason to suppose that the vice-president of the Royal Dublin

Society was acquainted with the Greek and Latin writers who concur in

establishing the non-identity of these nations, we would say that he

exhibits as culpable a contempt for their authority as his Batavian

precursors; but Sir William Betham appears scarcely to have read on the

subject at all; and what was wilful presumption on their part, may be the

innocence of mere want of knowledge on his; for both Scrieck and Becan

were perfectly aware that, in identifying so many nations of antiquity

with their own, they were flying in the face of all authority; but Betham

Hibernicizes all the nations from Taprobana to Thule, apparently

unconscious of any recorded reason against their universal identity.

That the Etruscans spoke Irish, he concludes just as Goropius concluded

that the Phrygians spoke Dutch, from the coincidence of a single word

having, as he alleges, the same sound and meaning in each; and as a single

passage from Herodotus was the sole foundation for the vast inverted

pyramid of nonsense piled up by Goropius on that individual point, (and

kept from toppling over only by sheer force of impudence,) so the single

well-known passage from Suetonius, ascertaining the Etruscan _Aesar_ to be

a designation of the Deity, (_Aesar_ being also, as it is said, Irish for

the same,) gives the only ground on which Betham rests his extravagant

assertion, that the Eugubian inscriptions contain an account of the

discovery of Ireland by the Etruscan navigators, and with a pretended

version of which, through the medium of Irish, as he alleges, he has

filled the whole first volume of his book.

"In reading in Suetonius the life of Augustus," he says, "I found

that _Aesar in the Etruscan tongue_ signified _God_. The import in

Irish being the same, it struck me forcibly that this might not be

accidental, but that the Etruscan language might be essentially

Celtic, and therefore capable of interpretation by the Irish. On

examination, the conjecture proved well-founded. The results of the

investigation, consequent on the discovery of this clue, will be

found in the following pages."

It is true the Etruscan _Aesar_ is said to have a like meaning with an

alleged Irish word, coined and spelled by Vallancy _aosfhear_; but it has

also an identical meaning with the Indian _eswara_, and the Egyptian

_osiris_, and the Islandic _aesae_, which makes _aesar_ in the plural; and

it would be just as reasonable to infer, that therefore the Etruscans

spoke the Hindostanee, or the Coptic, or the Islandic language, as that

they spoke Irish.

All the nations of Christendom give God the name Christ; but he would be

justly deemed insane who would argue, that therefore English is the proper

medium of interpretation for a Russian ukase.

Common sense, without any further learning, might have told Sir William

Betham, that till he stood on some surer ground than the coincidence of a

single word, even supposing that word a genuine one, it would be the

excess of folly to venture on such an application of a modern language;

and further learning (if he had possessed it) would have confirmed the

suggestion of common sense. With a moderate amount of learning, he would

have known that, besides the names of known deities--_Kupra_, _Nyrtia_,

_Mantus_, _Aukelos_, _Camillus_, corresponding to the heathen Juno,

Fortuna, Pluto, Aurora, Mercury--there are also several other Etruscan

words of which we know the meanings, such as _faland_, the heavens;

_andras_, the north wind; _lucumo_, a king; _drouna_, a kingdom or

principality; _damnos_, a horse; _capra_, a goat; _agalletor_, a youth;

_verse_, fire; _ites_, the ides of a month; _hister_, a stage-player;

_subulo_, a trumpeter; _italos_, a bull; _arimoi_, monkeys, _antar_, an

eagle; _arakos_, a lark; _gnis_, a crane; _capys_, a falcon; _gapos_, a

chariot; _burros_, a bowl; _atarin_, a wine-cruet; _nanos_, a wanderer;

_mantissa_, an increase or addition; _turseis_, a space enclosed with

walls; and several others, not one of which bears the remotest resemblance

to any Irish or Celtic word of equivalent meaning.

Further learning, also, would have taught him the hopelessness of

reconciling the Etruscan with any of the languages of Europe known as

spoken languages immediately before the Christian era--Dionysius of

Halicarnassus having expressly declared, that neither in language nor in

customs were the Etruscans of his time similar to any other known nation;

and Dionysius was well acquainted with both Celts and Phoenicians.

Besides, the Phoenician equivalents for most of the Etruscan words in

the list we have just enumerated, are known, and ought to have been known

to any writer undertaking an investigation of either language; and if

known to Sir William Betham, ought at once to have deterred him from this

preposterous attempt. Thus the Phoenician equivalent of aesar is _aloni_

or _alonim_; of kypra, _astarte_; of nyrtia, _god_; of mantus, _much_; of

faland, _samen_; of andras, _carbon_; of lucumo _malaho_; of damnos,

_rackabe_, &c. &c., in none of which, except _samen_, does there appear

the least similarity, either with the Etruscan or the Irish words of like

signification. So also in respect of a number of Gaulish words, the

meanings of which have come down to us, and of which no one pretending

competency to such enquiries ought to be ignorant, but of the existence of

which this vice-president of a leading literary society of Ireland seems

utterly unconscious. But fools will rush in where angels fear to tread,

and Ignoramus walks with confidence where Eruditus fears to take a step.

Reader, do not think that Christopher is too severe! For what but

condemnation and contempt can any rational mind conceive, for a writer so

incapable of dealing with even the rudiments of his subject, and yet so

presumptuous in the temerity of his ignorance, as to declare that "till

_now_ not a scintilla of light has appeared on the subject of Etruscan

antiquities?" We can pardon learned trifling, but when a man wholly

unlearned, on a subject of the greatest interest to the learned world,

presumes to dogmatize in this manner, we strip him in an instant, and have

no mercy in exposing to both learned and simple the nakedness of his

pretensions.

Still facts are facts, and if the fact be, that the tablets of Gubbio are

written in the Irish language, and that Sir William Betham, though as

ignorant of his subject as was the boy who invented the safety-valve of

the steam-engine, has happened in any way, by skill or by chance,

learnedly or unadvisedly, modestly or arrogantly, on the truth, let him,

together with the condemnation, have the credit he deserves, if not as a

Columbus of a new world of letters, at least as a Madoc or a Thorfinn.

The first line of the first table, reading from right to left, he reads

thus: we say _he_, for the very form of some of the letters are still

doubtful:--PUNE: CARNE: SPETURIE: ATUERIE: ABIECATI: NAROCLUM. Is this

Irish? If so, we would expect some six Irish words to be adduced, of

corresponding sound, and having a grammatical dependence and sensible

meaning among themselves. Instead of this, Betham professes to find the

equivalent expressions in _twenty-four_ Irish, or _quasi_-Irish words,

which have neither grammatical relation to one another, nor any coherent

meaning in their united senses--viz. _Pune car na is be tur i e at i i er

i e a bi e ca ta na ra ac lu am_; i. e. "Phoenician to Carne (the turn)

it is night voyage in it likewise in knowledge great in it the being away

how it is the going with water on the ocean." And this he tells us, being

interpreted, signifies, "O Phoenicians, this is a statement of the night

voyage to Carne, (the turn,[7]) and of the manner of going such great

seawise over by the waters of the ocean!"

The only glimmering of any thing like meaning in this string of

unconnected verbiage, appears in the detached phrases "night voyage," "the

being away," and "going with water on the ocean." But the syllable _be_,

which he renders "night," (on what authority Night and Chaos only know,)

is not found in the original; and "being away," depends for its meaning

wholly on the certainty that _e_ means "away" in that collocation of

words, and not "it," as in the phrases immediately preceding; and there is

no suggestion of any reason why it should not here have the same

signification as above, or why it should not mean "of" or "from," in both

of which senses the writer employs it in the subsequent sentences. "Going

with water on the ocean," owes its only pretension to meaning, however

absurd, to "going" and "ocean;" but there is no _am_ for "ocean" in the

original, and the "ra" which he interprets "going" and "moving," is wholly

a coinage of his own brain.

The same may be observed throughout the endless rigmarole of "moon,"

"stars," "steering," "ocean," "night," "day," "knowledge," "science," and

"O Phoenician!" that succeed one another in monotonous repetition for

the next 200 pages. Wherever there appears the least symptom of connected

meaning or applicable language, (admitting the preposterous supposition

that these tables are the records of early voyagers to Ireland,) we

invariably find that either the original is departed from, or that the

alleged equivalents belong to no known language of articulately-speaking

men.

Taking the same liberty of arbitrary division, any one of moderate

ingenuity might turn these inscriptions into a jargon just as readable in

any language of the world. Divide any sentence of any articulate language

into syllables, and apply these alleged Irish words used by Betham as

their equivalents, and you may make it an equally authentic record of a

voyage to Ireland or to the moon, or a recipe for the toothache, or any

thing else you please, with the greatest facility.

Curious reader, tell us, pray, which is the more readable jargon--this,

"God to knowledge agreeable it is quick and water lonely star indeed

the to it in day the month this in knowledge with is from the sea

very solitary being water with the water the voyage always the coast

steering being throughout moon to knowledge in water God indeed the

water to danger this the in knowledge with with altogether to night

the man from current the being water the to cause knowledge steering

water by Ocean the north."

Or this?

"Was which security day and night inform Phoenician from night

means in defence by skill throughout the means being also water means

voyage from the means as indeed the voyage in it far away people

water of the sea in gentle inward it is by wisdom day and night in it

is gentle indeed the sea by science which by night in the will be to

will be means of the star it far away Phoenician far away steering

night and day and then to whence is in the ocean night sailing

happy."

We believe most of our readers will incline to say that the one is about

as insane gibberish as the other; or if they discover a distinction, will

give the palm of a less degree of incoherency to the first. The first is

our own; the second is Betham's--being his literal version of the first

three sentences of the second table, and in no material respect different

from his version of any other three sentences of any of the rest of the

series.[8] The other is our own literal version, on the same principle, of

a sentence of his own, marked in italics in the following extracts, in

which he defends his arbitrary division of the Etruscan text into

monosyllables, though the punctuation of the original plainly divides it

into many-syllabled words.

In defence of this unjustifiable corruption of the original, he alleges

these excuses--

"In the chapter on language, p. 52, &c., are a few remarks upon the

division of the words in these inscriptions, in answer to the

criticism of the learned Committee of the Royal Irish Academy, who

charged me with 'having made alterations' in the text unwarrantably,

'especially in the division of the words.' The charge of having made

any alterations is altogether groundless, I might add unjust,

uncourteous, and uncalled for. I have not altered a single letter. I

have added a letter here and there in the Irish, when, by the genius

and character of that language, it was justifiable, as (when) the

addition of a word was required to make sense, and when in the

original the sound did not require it to be expressed; but this is

fully answered and explained in the chapter alluded to. The 'division

of the words' requires a few brief observations here.

"It will be observed that in the first five tables there are

divisions marked with colons, thus (:); in the sixth and seventh

tables, and in the Perugian inscription, the divisions are marked

with a single period (.)

"In the first few lines of the first table it appears, that, although

these divisions generally include perfect syllables and words, yet

the same words are differently divided. In the fifth line, the second

division contains JUBEBATREBUMPERACNE, and in the fourth division

PERAKNE stands alone. The first division of this fifth line contains

SAKRE:--in the next line it is worded thus, UNUERIETUSAKRE; this same

variation of division pervades all the tables, and indeed almost

every line of each table; the same may be observed on the Perugian

inscription. The hypercriticism of the learned committee was

therefore altogether erroneous, and their observations not borne

out.[9] These marks are evidently not intended as divisions of words,

but of sentences, and they are not sufficiently precise even in that

respect to constitute an accurate guide. The syllabic division,

however, is governed by rule, is precise, uniform, fixed, and

consistent, and may therefore be acted on with some degree of

certainty. Instances occur where three or four consonants follow each

other, and vowels are altogether omitted; but a little exertion of

sagacity, after some practice and study, enables us to judge of this

and supply the omissions."--(Vol. i. p. 369.)

And again, in the passage referred to at p. 53,

"Whether I was arbitrary and unauthorized in the division of the

words, will now appear by comparison, as the columns stand in

juxtaposition, and all are able to judge. _The division is merely

made into syllables, which, so far from being an unnatural or

arbitrary division, is the only division which could be reasonably

and fairly adopted._"

That is to say _Hibernice_, or rather _Bethamice_--_The ti fis e on is

mear i lu om a do an do is i la bil se i i ac is o bar bro om be en go_

(we only "add a letter here and there in the Irish, when, by the genius

and character of that language, it is justifiable, as when the addition of

a vowel is required to make sense, and when in the original the sound does

not require it to be explained,") _an en na tur al ur ar bi tre re ti fis

i en is the an lu ti fis si an i i ac co al do be re as a ra be lu an do

fa i ar lu a taob tuait_.

But _are_ these singular-looking syllables Irish? They certainly are

neither sense nor grammar; but we take them all _as_ they appear, with

their alleged meanings in English, from that copious store of

ungrammatical nonsense called Irish, collected in those pretended versions

of the tables of Gubbio; and the reader has already seen what a

characteristic jargon they make when rendered by their English

equivalents.

His fatuity and presumption appear almost incredible. Knowing but a single

Etruscan word, and that a word of two syllables, and finding it, as he

alleges, identical with an Irish word also of two syllables, he concludes

that the Etruscan and Irish languages are the same, and both

_monosyllabic_. Had he known all that men of ordinary learning know upon

the subject, he would have known that of the remaining two or

three-and-thirty ascertained Etruscan words, some are of two--some of

three--some of four syllables--but not one of them all a monosyllable. Yet

thus ignorant even of the commonest rudiments of learning on his subject,

he takes it upon him to talk of men of real learning in the following

strain--

"That the language of Etruria has hitherto defied the laborious

investigations of the learned of Italy, is now on all hands admitted.

Passavi, Gori, and Landsi, have done something to obscure, but little

if any thing towards its elucidation. Nor have the German

investigators been more successful. Dr Lepsius has lately given an

account of the Eugubian tables, and Dr Grotefend a work on the

rudiments of the Umbrian tongue, and still the subject is as much at

sea as ever. These profound scholars have made no real impression--no

light has been elicited--the meaning of a single word has not been

obtained with any certainty. The solemn, learned, trifling, and

absurd speculations of Passavi, Gori, and Landsi, and their

followers, are now treated with deserved contempt. This is an age of

critical enquiry; commonplace twaddling, inane generalities, and

magniloquent essays and lectures, even if delivered by professors who

enjoy the happiness of presiding over Roman colleges, only excite

derision. Learned savans must now put forth reasonable and

intelligible postulates, and opinions must be supported by facts, or

they will only expose themselves to deserved contempt."--(Vol. i. p.

22.)

Swift himself could not hit the style of the literary quack more

perfectly. "I have considered the gross abuse of astrology in this

kingdom," says Mr Bickerstaff, "and upon debating the matter with myself,

I could not possibly lay the fault upon the art, but upon those gross

impostors who have set up to be the artists. I know several learned men

have contended that the whole is a cheat; and whoever hath not bent his

studies that way, may be excused for thinking so, when he sees in how

wretched a manner that noble art is treated by a few mean illiterate

traders between us and the stars; who import a yearly stock of nonsense,

lies, folly, and impertinence, which they offer to the world as genuine

from the planets, though they descend from no greater height than their

own brains. I intend in a short time to publish a large and rational

defence of this art; and therefore shall say no more in its justification

at present." But here, indeed, the comparison falls; for while Bickerstaff

postpones his proofs for another occasion, Betham proudly displays his

"reasonable and intelligible postulate," in his one fact, that the

dissyllable _Aesar_ is God alike in Etruscan and in Irish. Whence he

concludes that Etruscan and Irish are, therefore, the same language, and

that both consist of words of one syllable each. "The discovery," he says,

(Vol. ii. page 286,) "if 'wonderful' was also accidental, at least the

first clue to it was the solitary fact mentioned in Vol. i. p. 33, of the

passage in Suetonius' life of Augustus, where _Aesar_ is said to mean, in

the Etruscan language, _God_. So small a spark lighted up the large fire."

We are irresistibly reminded of Goropius and his "consequenter fatendum

est antiquissima hoc Psammetichi sententia."

The translation of the Eugubian tablets, however, is but a part of the

huge mass of absurdity piled up on these two little syllables, _Ae-sar_.

There is a second volume, in which all the topographical extravagances of

Scrieck are played over again, _praeconis ad fastidium_, with this

difference, however, that where Scrieck, in his interpretations, gave

genuine Dutch, Betham, in his, gives spurious Irish; for he owns himself,

that "if a sentence be formed of these obsolete monosyllabic words, the

translation in English making good sense, the original, if read to the

best Irish scholar of the day, will appear to him an unknown tongue." He

begins first with Sanconiathan, which he makes the name of the book, not

of the author, _sean cead na than_; i. e. "the old beginning of time,"

when the gods spoke in monosyllabic Irish, and called chaos _cead-os_,

"the first intelligence." And here it must be admitted that the Dutchmen

are outdone: for neither Becan nor Scrieck went above Adam. But Betham is

as much at home on Olympus as either of the Dutchmen was in Paradise; and

with the aid of his monosyllabic glossary, transmutes the celestials into

Teagues and Oonahs as fast as his sybilline syllables can be put together.

Apollo is _ab ol lo_, "the mighty lord of the waters;" (this is hardly as

good as the _off-hole-loose_ of Goropius:) Minerva is _Ma na er ar fad_,

(a terribly long recipe for a name this,) or "the good, the illustrious

guiding wisdom." Hermes is _tur-mees_, "the messenger of the wind."

Hercules is _er cu lais_, "the illustrious hero of light;" but he seems to

be sadly at sea for a derivation for Neptune, whom he is obliged to turn

into a Tyrrhenian catamaran or Irish currow, _Naebh tonn_ "the ship of the

sea." Jupiter (not being an Etruscan, he is not here allowed the _pas_)

_iudh bit er_, "day being great," (which is a very dark saying.) Bacchus,

_bac aois_, "the sustainer of time." Mercury, _meer cu re_, "the swift

champion of the moon"--really this is mere lunacy. Any one might, with

equal plausibility, derive the whole Pantheon from the English, as Apollo,

"aye follow," because day always follows night, and Apollo always followed

pretty girls, Daphne in particular; Mercury, "mirk hurry," because Mercury

hurried the ghosts down through the mirk or murky darkness to the Styx.

Hercules, "he reckless," because Hercules was a great daredevil. Venus,

"vain is," because a pretty woman is too often vain of her good looks.

Juno, "do now," because people were in the habit of making their requests

to her, or, perhaps, because Jupiter used to say so when he wished her to

give him a kiss. Jupiter, "stupider," because it was natural that Juno

should say he was the stupider of the two when they happened to differ;

or, _pace viri tanti_, "you pitier," when poor mortals raised their

sorrowful supplications to him.