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ther he nor Raleigh have even given their name to the objects they discovered. Great men have never obtained justice from their contemporaries.-I'll trouble you for some of the fins of that turbot, Prout.

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PROUT.

Nay, further, without going beyond the circle of this festive board, why has not Europe and the world united to confer some signal distinction on the useful inventor of Pyroligneous Acid?" Why is not the discoverer of " Trotter oil" and "Eukeirogeneion" fittingly rewarded by mankind? Because men have narrow views, and prefer erecting columns to Spring Rice, and to Bob Waithman who sold shawls in Fleet Street.-Let me recommend some lobster-sauce.

CORBET.

Minerva, who first extracted oil from the olive, was deified in Greece; and Olden is not yet even a member of the dullest scientific body; while Dr. Lardner belongs to them all, if I can understand the phalanx of letters that follows his name.

KNAPP.

I have read the utilitarian Doctor's learned treatise on the potato-a subject of which he seems to understand the chemical manipulation. He says, very justly, that as the root contains saccharine matter, sugar may be extracted therefrom; he is not sure whether it might not be distilled into whisky; but he is certain that it makes capital starch, and triumphantly shews that the rind can feed pigs, and the stalk thatch the pigsty. O most wonderful Doctor Lardner! Here's his health! Alovuoros!-not a bad introduction to a bumper of claret. [Three times three.]

PROUT.

I too have turned my thoughts into that channel, and among my papers there is a treatise on "the root." I have prefixed to my dissertation this epigraph from Cicero's speech "pro Archiâ Poetâ," where the Roman orator talks of the belles lettres; but I apply the words much more literally I hate metaphor in practical matters such as

these: "They are the food of our youth, the sustenance of our old age; they are delightful at home, and by no means in one's way abroad; they cause neither nightmare nor indigestion, but are capital things on a journey, or to fill the wallet of a pilgrim." "Adolescentiam alunt, senectutem oblectant; delectant domi, non impediunt foris; pernoctant nobiscum, peregrinantur, rusticantur." So much for potatoes. But there are other excellent natural productions in our island, which are also duly celebrated in my papers, and possibly may be published; but not till I am gathered to the grave. I have never forgotten the interests of posterity.-Pass that decanter.

SCOTT.

Talking of the productions of the soil, I cannot reconcile the antiquity, the incontestable antiquity, of the lyric ode called the "Groves of Blarney," of which before dinner we have traced the remote origin, and examined so many varied editions with a book of more modern date, 'called "Cæsar's Commentaries." The beech tree, Cæsar says, does not grow in these islands, or did not in his time: All trees grow there, he asserts, the same as in Gaul, except the lime-tree and the beech-" Materia ferè eadem ac in Galliâ, præter fagum et abietem." (Cæs. de Bello Gallico, lib. v.) Now in the song, which is infinitely older than Cæsar, we have mention made," besides the leeches," of certair "groves of beeches," the text is positive.

KNAPP.

That observation escaped me totally; and still the different versions all concur in the same assertion. The Latin or Vulgate codex says

"Grande decus pagi

Fluvii stant margine FAGI."

The Greek or Septuagint version is equally stubborn in making out the case

Ισταμένων και ύλη
ΦΗΓΩΝ, ςοης φυλακτηρ.

And the French copy, taken from Doomsday Book, is conclusive, and a complete poser

"Sur ces bords champêtres

On a planté des HETRES."

I am afraid Cæsar's reputation for accuracy will be greatly shaken by this discovery: he is a passable authority in military tactics, but not in natural history: give me Pliny!This trout is excellent!

OLDEN.

I think the two great authors at issue on this beech-tree business can be conciliated thus; let us say, that by the Greek nyw, and the Latin fagi, nothing more is meant than the clan the O'FAGANS, who are very thickly planted hereabouts. They are still a hungry race, as their name Fagan indicates απο του φαγειν.

PROUT.

It must have been one of that family who, in the reign of Aurelius, distinguished himself by his great appetite at the imperial court of Rome. Thus Berchoux sings, on the authority of Suetonius:

"Phagon fut en ce genre un homme extraordinaire;

Il avait l'estomac (grands Dieux!) d'un dromadaire :
Il faisait disparaître, en ses rares festins,

Un porc, un sanglier, un mouton, et cent pains!!!"

O'MEARA.

That's what we at Paris used to call pain à discrétion.— Margaret, open some oysters, and get the cayenne pepper.

BELLEW.

I protest I don't like to see the O'Fagans run down-my aunt was an O'Fagan; and as to deriving the name from the Greek aro Toυ puyen, I think it a most gratuitous assumption.

KNAPP.

I agree with my worthy friend Bellew as to the impropriety of harping upon names. One would think the mayor of Cork ought to obtain some respect, and be spared the infliction of the waggery of his fellow-townsmen. But no; because I clear the city of mad dogs, and keep hydrophobia

far from our walls, I am called the "dog- (I had almost said kid-) Knapper !" Now, my family is of German extraction, and my great-grandfather served under the gallant Dutchman in his wars with the "Grande Monarque," before he came over with William to deliver this country from slavery and wooden shoes. It was my great-grand-father who invented that part of a soldier's accoutrement, called, after him, a "Knapp's sack."

CORBET.

I hope, Sir Walter, you will not leave Cork without dining at the mansion-house with our worthy mayor. Falstaff himself could not find fault with the excellent flavour of Knapp's sack.

SCOTT.

I fear I shall not be able to postpone my departure; but as we are on this subject of names, I have to observe, that it is an old habit of the vulgar to take liberty with the syllables of a great man's patronymic. Melancthon * forced to clothe his name in Greek to escape their allusions; Jules de l'Echelle changed his into Scaliger; Pat Lardner has become Dionysius; and the great author of those immortal letters, which he has taken care to tell us will be read when the commentaries of Cornelius à Lapide are forgotten, gave no name at all to the world

"Stat nominis umbra!"

PROUT.

Poor Erasmus! how he used to be badgered about his cognomen

"Quæritur unde tibi sit nomen, ERASMUS ?-Eras Mus!"

for even so that arch wag, the Chancellor Sir Thomas More, addressed him. But his reply is on record, and his pentameter beats the Chancellor's hexameter

"Si sum Mus ego, te judice Summus ero

The real name of Melancthon was Philipp Schwartzerd(Schwarßerd), which means black earth, and is most happily rendered into Greek by the term Melancthon, Meλaiva xowv. Thus sought he to escape the vulgar conundrums which his name in the vernacular German could not fail to elicit. A Lapide's name was stein.

SCOTT.

Ay, and you will recollect how he splendidly retaliated on the punster by dedicating to Sir Thomas his Magias Eyxwv. Erasmus was a capital fellow,

"The glory of the priesthood, and the shame!"

O'MEARA.

Pray, Sir Walter, are you any relation of our great irrefragable doctor, Duns Scotus? He was an ornament of the Franciscan order.

SCOTT.

No, I have not that honour; but I have read what Erasmus says of certain members of your fraternity, in a dialogue between himself and the Echo:

'

(ERASMUS loquitur.)—Quid est sacerdotium?

(ECHO respondit.)—Otium !"

PROUT.

That reminds me of Lardner's idea of "otium cum dignitate," which he proposes to read thus-otium cum diggin' 'taties!-The sugar and the materials here for Mr. Bellew.

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CORBET.

There was a witty thing, and a severe thing, said of the Barberini family at Rome, when they took the stones of the Amphitheatrum Flavium to build them their palazzo: Quod non fecerant Barbari, hoc fecerunt Barberini." But I think Jack Bellew, in his "Chronicle," made as pointed a remark on Sir Thomas Deane, knight and builder, who bought the old furniture and gutted the old castle of Blarney: "The Danes," quoth Jack, “have always been pillaging old Ireland!"

SCOTT.

Whoever connived at or abetted the destruction of that old mansion, or took any part in the transaction, had the soul of a Goth; and the "Chronicle" could not say less.

CORBET.

Bellew has vented his indignation in a song, which,

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