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many eminent men who had kissed the Blarney stone during Prout's residence in the parish-an experience extending itself over a period of nearly half a century-Doctor D. Lardner was triumphantly mentioned by the benevolent and simple-minded incumbent of Watergrasshill, as a proud and incontestable instance of the virtue and efficacy of the talisman, applied to the most ordinary materials with the most miraculous result. Instead of feeling a lingering remnant of gratitude towards the old parent-block for such supernatural interposition on his behalf, and looking back to that "kiss" with fond and filial recollection-instead of allowing the stone" to occupy the greenest spot in the wilderness of his memorythe stone" that first sharpened his intellect, and on which ought to be inscribed the line of Horace, "Fungor vice cotis, acutum

Reddere quæ valeat ferrum, exsors ipsa secandi"—

instead of this praiseworthy expression of tributary acknowledgment, the Doctor writes to us denying all obligation in the quarter alluded to, and contradicting most flatly the "soft impeachment" of having kissed the stone at all. His note is couched in such peevish terms, and conceived in such fretful mood, that we protest we do not recognise the tame and usually unexcited tracings of his gentle pen; but rather suspect he has been induced, by some medical wag, to use a quill plucked from the membranous integument of that celebrated "man-porcupine" who has of late exhibited his hirsuteness at the Middlesex hospital.

"SIB,

"London University, May 8th.

"I owe it to the great cause of 'Useful Knowledge,' to which I have dedicated my past labours, to rebut temperately, yet firmly, the assertion reported to have been made by the late Rev. Mr. Prout (for whom I had a high regard), in conversing with the late Sir Walter Scott on the occasion alluded to in your ephemeral work; particularly as I find the statement re-asserted by that widely-circulated journal the Morning Herald of yesterday's date. Were either the reverend clergyman or the distinguished baronet now living, I would appeal to their candour, and so shame

the inventor of that tale. But as both are withdrawn by death from the literary world, I call on you, sir, to insert in your next Number this positive denial on my part of having ever kissed that stone; the supposed properties of which, I am ready to prove, do not bear the test of chymical analysis. I do recollect having been solicited by the present Lord Chancellor of England (and also of the London University), whom I am proud to call my friend (though you have given him the sobriquet of Bridlegoose, with your accustomed want of deference for great names), to join him, when, many years ago, he privately embarked on board a Westmoreland collier to perform his devotions at Blarney. That circumstance is of old date: it was about the year that Paris was taken by the allies, and certainly previous to the Queen's trial. But I did not accompany the then simple Harry Brougham, content with what nature had done for me in that particular department.

"You will please insert this disavowal from,

"SIR,

"Your occasional reader,

"DIONYSIUS LARDNER, D.D.

"P.S.-If you neglect me, I shall take care to state my own case in the Cyclopædia. I'll prove that the block at Blarney is an Aerolithe,' and that your statement as to its Phoenician origin is unsupported by historical evidence. Recollect, you have thrown the first stone.”

Now, after considering these things, and much pondering on the Doctor's letter, it seemed advisable to refer the matter to our reporter, Frank Cresswell aforesaid, who has given us perfect satisfaction. By him our attention was called, first, to the singular bashfulness of the learned man, in curtailing from his signature the usual appendages that shed such lustre o'er his name. He lies before us in this epistle a simple D.D., whereas he certainly is entitled to write himself F.R.S., M.R.I.A., F.R.A.S., F.L.S., F.Z.S., F.C.P.S., &c. Thus, in his letter, "we saw him," to borrow an illustration from the beautiful episode of James Thomson, "We saw him charming; but we saw not halfThe rest his downcast modesty concealed."

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Next as to dates: how redolent of my Uncle Toby"about the year Dendermonde was taken by the allies.' The reminiscence was probably one of which he was unconscious, and we therefore shall not call him a plagiary; but how slily, how diabolically does he seek to shift the onus and gravamen of the whole business on the rickety shoulders of his learned friend Bridlegoose! This will not do, O sage Thaumaturgus! By implicating "Bridoison," you shall not extricate yourself "et vitulá tu dignus, et hic;" and Frank Cresswell has let us into a secret. Know then, all men, that among these never-too-anxiously-to-be-looked-outfor "Prout Papers," there is a positive record of the initiation both of Henry Brougham and Patrick Lardner to the freemasonry of the Blarney stone; and, more important still-(0, most rare document!)-there is to be found amid the posthumous treasures of Father Prout the original project of a University at Blarney, to be then and there founded by the united efforts of Lardner, Dan O'Connell, and Ton Steele; and of which the Doctor's AEROLITHE was to have been the corner-stone.*

66

We therefore rely on the forthcoming Prout Papers for a confirmation of all we have said; and here do we cast down the glove of defiance to the champion of Stinkomalee, even though he come forth armed to the teeth in a panoply, not, of course, forged on the classic anvil of the Cyclops, however laboriously hammered in the clumsy arsenal of his own "Cyclopædia."

*This projected university has since assumed another shape, and a house in Steven's Green, Dublin, once the residence of "Buck Whalley," or "Jerusalem Whalley," (he having walked there and back for a wager, has been bought by Dr. Cullen, to whom Mr. Disraeli will grant a charter to put down the Queen's colleges." The Blarney university would have cultivated fun and the genial development of national acuteness, but the Cullen affair can have naught in common with Blarney, save being

"A cave where no daylight enters,

But cats and badgers are for ever bred!"

a foul nest of discord, rancour, hopeless gloom, and Dens' theology, or as the Italian version, page 55, has it,

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We know there is another world, where every man will get his due according to his deserts; but if there be a limbus patrum, or literary purgatory, where the effrontery and ingratitude of folks ostensibly belonging to the republic of letters are to be visited with condign retribution, we think we behold in that future middle state of purification (which, from our friend's real name, we shall call Patrick's Purgatory), Pat Lardner rolling the Blarney stone, à la Sisyphus, up the hill of Science.

Και μην Σισύφον εισείδον κρατερ' αλγε' έχοντα

Λᾶαν βαστάζοντα πελώριον αμφοτέρησιν,

Αυτις έπειτα πεδονδε κυλινδετο ΛΑΑΣ ΑΝΑΙΔΗΣ!

And now we return to the progress of events on Watergrasshill, and to matters more congenial to the taste of our REGINA.

Regent Street, 1st June, 1835.

OLIVER YORKE.

Furnival's Inn, May 14.

ACCEPT, O Queen! my compliments congratulatory on the unanimous and most rapturous welcome with which the whole literary world hath met, on its first entrance into life, that wonderful and more than Siamese bantling your "Polyglot edition" of the "Groves of Blarney." Of course, various are the conjectures of the gossips in Paternoster Row as to the real paternity of that "most delicate monster;" and some have the unwarrantable hardihood to hint that, like the poetry of Sternhold and Hopkins, your incomparable lyric must be referred to a joint-stock sort of parentage: but, entre nous, how stupid and malignant are all such insinuations! How little do such simpletons suspect or know of the real source from which hath emanated that rare combination of the Teïan lyre and the Tipperary bagpipe-of the Ionian dialect blending harmoniously with the Cork brogue; an Irish potatoe seasoned with Attic salt, and the humours of Donnybrook wed to the glories of Marathon! Verily, since the days of the great Complutensian Polyglot (by the compilation of which the illustrious Cardinal Ximenes so endeared himself to the bibliomaniacal world), since the appearance of that still grander effort of the "Clarendon" at Oxford, the "Tetrapla," originally compiled by the

most laborious and eccentric father of the Church, Origen of Alexandria, nothing has issued from the press in a completer form than your improved quadruple version of the "Groves of Blarney." The celebrated proverb, lucus à non lucendo, so often quoted with malicious meaning and for invidious purposes, is no longer applicable to your "Groves:" this quaint conceit has lost its sting, and, to speak in Gully's phraseology, you have taken the shine out of it. What a halo of glory, what a flood of lustre, will henceforth spread itself over that romantic "plantation!" How oft shall its echoes resound with the voice of song, Greek, French, or Latin, according to the taste or birthplace of its European visitors; all charmed with its shady bowers, and enraptured with its dulcet melody! From the dusty purlieus of High Holborn, where I pine in a foetid atmosphere, my spirit soars afar to that enchanting scenery, wafted on the wings of poesy, and transported with the ecstacy of Elysium"Videor pios

Errare per lucos, amœnæ

Quos et aquæ subeunt et auræ!"

"amabilis in

Mine may be an illusion, a hallucination, an sania," if you will; but meantime, to find some solace in my exile from the spot itself, I cannot avoid poring, with more than antiquarian relish, over the different texts placed by you in such tasteful juxtaposition, anon comparing and collating each particular version with alternate gusto

"Amant alterna Camoenæ."

How pure and pellucid the flow of harmony! how resplendent the well-grouped images, shining, as it were, in a sort of milky way, or poetic galaxy, through your glorious columns; to which I cannot do better than apply a line of St. Gregory (the accomplished Greek father) of Nazian

zene

Η σοφίας πηγη εν βιβλιοισι ρεει !

A great minister is said to have envied his foreign secretary the ineffable pleasure of reading "Don Quixote" in the original Spanish, and it would, no doubt, be a rare sight to get a peep at Lord Palmerston's French notes to Talleyrand;

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