Tales and Novels Volume IV Part 8

THE BLISS OF IGNORANCE.

No _well-informed_ Englishman would laugh at the blunders of such a character as little Dominick; but there are people who justify the a.s.sertion, that laughter always arises from a sense of real or imaginary superiority. Now if it be true, that laughter has its source in vanity, as the most ignorant are generally the most vain, they must enjoy this pleasure in its highest perfection. Unconscious of their own deficiencies, and consequently fearless of becoming in their turn the objects of ridicule, they enjoy in full security the delight of humbling their superiors. How much are they to be admired for the courage with which they apply, on all occasions, their test of truth! Wise men may be struck with admiration, respect, doubt, or humility; but the ignorant, happily unconscious that they know nothing, can be checked in their merriment by no consideration, human or divine. Theirs is the sly sneer, the dry joke, and the horse laugh: theirs the comprehensive range of ridicule, which takes "every creature in, of every kind." No fastidious delicacy spoils their sports of fancy: though ten times told, the tale to them never can be tedious; though dull "as the fat weed that grows on Lethe's bank," the jest for them has all the poignancy of satire: on the very offals, the garbage of wit, they can feed and batten. Happy they who can find in every jester the wit of Sterne or Swift; who else can wade through hundreds of thickly-printed pages to obtain for their reward such witticisms as the following:--

"Two Irishmen having travelled on foot from Chester to Barnet, were confoundedly tired and fatigued by their journey; and the more so when they were told that they had still about ten miles to go. 'By my shoul and St. Patrick,' cries one of them, 'it is but five miles a-piece.'"

Here, notwithstanding the promise of a jest held forth by the words, "By my shoul and St. Patrick," we are ultimately cheated of our hopes. To the ignorant, indeed, the word of promise is kept to the mind as well as to the ear; but others perceive that, instead of a bull, they have only a piece of sentimental arithmetic, founded upon the elegant theorem, that friends.h.i.+p doubles all our pleasures, and divides all our pains.

We must not, from false delicacy to our countrymen, here omit a piece of advice to English retailers or inventors of Irish blunders. Let them beware of such prefatory exclamations as--"_By my shoul and St. Patrick!

By Jasus! Arrah, honey! My dear joy!_" &c., because all such phrases, besides being absolutely out of date and fas.h.i.+on in Ireland, raise too high an expectation in the minds of a British audience, operating as much to the disadvantage of the story-teller as the dangerous exordium of--"I'll tell you an excellent story;" an exordium ever to be avoided by all prudent wits.

Another caution should be given to well-meaning ignorance. Never produce that as an Irish bull for which any person of common literature can immediately supply a precedent from our best authors. Never be at the pains, for instance, of telling, from Joe Miller, a _good_ story of an _Irish_ sailor, who _travelled_ with Captain Cook _round_ the world, and afterwards swore to his companions that it was as flat as a table.

This anecdote, however excellent, immediately finds a parallel in Pope:

"Mad Mathesis alone was unconfined, Too mad for mere material chains to bind; Now to pure s.p.a.ce lifts her ecstatic stare, Now running _round_ the circle finds it square."

Pope was led into the blunder of representing Mad Mathesis running _round the circle_, and finding it _square_ by a confused notion that mathematicians had considered the circle as composed of straight lines.

His mathematical friends could have told him, that though it was talked of as a polygon, it was not supposed to be a square; but _polygon_ would not have rhymed to _stare_; and poets, when they launch into the ocean of words, must have an eye to the helm; at all events a poet, who is not supposed to be a student of the exact sciences, may be forgiven for a mathematical blunder. This affair of squaring the circle seems to be peculiarly liable to error; for even an accurate mathematician cannot speak of it without committing something very like a bull.

Dr. Hutton, in his Treatise on Mensuration, p. 119, says, "As the _famous_ quadrature of the late Mr. John Machin, professor of astronomy in Gresham College, is extremely expeditious and _but little known_, I shall take this opportunity of explaining it."

It is to be presumed, that the doctor here uses the word _famous_ in that acceptation in which it is daily and hourly employed by our Bond-street loungers, by city apprentices, and men of the ton. "That was a _famous_ good joke;" "He is a _famous_ whip;" "We had a _famous_ hop,"

&c. Now it cannot be supposed that any of these things are in themselves ent.i.tled to fame; but they may, indeed, by the courtesy of England, be at once _famous_, and but little known. It is unnecessary to enter into the defence either of Dr. Hutton or of Pope, for they were not born in Ireland, therefore they cannot make bulls; and a.s.suredly their mistakes will not, in the opinion of any person of common sense or candour, derogate from their reputation.

"Never strike till you are sure to wound," is a maxim well known to the polite[37] and politic part of the world. "Never laugh when the laugh can be turned against you," should be the maxim of those who find their chief pleasure in making others ridiculous. This principle, if applied to our subject, would lead, however, to a very extensive and troublesome system of mutual forbearance; troublesome in proportion to the good or ill humour of the parties concerned; extensive in proportion to their knowledge and acquirements. A man of cultivated parts will foresee the possibility of the retort courteous, where an ignorant man will enjoy the fearless bliss of ignorance. For example, an illiterate person may enjoy a hearty laugh at the common story of an old Irish beggar-man, who, pretending to be dumb, was thrown off his guard by the question, "How many years have you been dumb?" and answered, "Five years last St.

John's Eve, please your honour."

But our triumph over the Irishman abates, when we recollect in the History of England, and in Shakspeare, the case of Saunder Simc.o.x, who pretended to be miraculously and instantaneously cured of blindness at St. Alban's shrine.

Since we have bestowed so much criticism on the blunder of a beggar-man, a word or two must be permitted on the blunder of a thief. It is natural for ignorant people to laugh at the Hibernian who said that he had stolen a pound of chocolate _to make tea of_. But philosophers are disposed to abstain from the laugh of superiority when they recollect that the Irishman could probably make as good tea from chocolate as the chemist could make b.u.t.ter, sugar, and cream, from antimony, sulphur, and tartar. The absurdities in the ancient chemical nomenclature could not be surpa.s.sed by any in the Hibernian catalogue. If the reader should think this a rash and unwarrantable a.s.sertion, we refer him to an essay,[38] in which the flagrant abuses of speech in the old language of chemistry are admirably exposed and ridiculed. Could an Irishman confer a more appropriate appellation upon a white powder than that of _beautiful black_?

It is really provoking to perceive, that as our knowledge of science or literature extends, we are in more danger of finding, in our own and foreign languages, parallels and precedents for Irish blunders; so that a very well informed man can scarcely with any grace or conscience smile, where a b.o.o.by squire might enjoy a long and loud horse-laugh of contempt.

What crowds were collected to see the Irish bottle conjuror[39] get into a quart bottle; but Dr. Desaguliers had prepared the English to think such a condensation of animal particles not impossible. He says, vol. i.

p. 5, of his Lectures on Natural Philosophy, "that the nature of things should last, and their natural course continue the same; all the changes made in bodies must arise only from the various separations, new conjunctions, and motions, of these original particles. _These must be imagined of an unconceivable smallness_, but by the union of them there are made bigger lumps," &c.

Indeed things are now come to such a lamentable pa.s.s, that without either literary or scientific acquirements, mere local knowledge, such as can be obtained from a finger-post, may sometimes prevent us from the full enjoyment of the Boeotian absurdity of our neighbours. What can, at first view, appear a grosser blunder than that of the Irishman who begged a friend to look over his library, to find for him the history of the world before the creation? Yet this anachronism of ideas is not unparalleled; it is matched, though on a more contracted scale, by an inscription on a British finger-post--

"Had you seen these roads before they were made, You'd lift up your eyes, and bless Marshal Wade!"

There is, however, a rabbi, mentioned by Bayle, who far exceeds both the Irishman and the finger-post. He a.s.serts, that Providence questioned Adam concerning the creation before he was born; and that Adam knew more of the matter than the angels who had laughed at him.

Those who see things in a philosophical light must have observed more frequently than others, that there is in this world a continual recurrence or rotation of ideas, events, and blunders. With his utmost ingenuity, or his utmost absurdity, a man, in modern days, cannot contrive to produce a system for which there is no prototype in antiquity, or to commit a blunder for which there is no precedent. For example: during the late rebellion in Ireland, at the military execution of some wretched rebel, the cord broke, and the criminal, who had been only half hanged, fell to the ground. The Major, who was superintending the execution, exclaimed, "You rascal, if you do that again, I'll kill you, as sure as you breathe."

Now this is by no means an original idea. In an old French book, called "La Charlatanerie des Savans," is the following note:--"D'autres ont propose et resolu en meme tems des questions ridicules; par exemple celle-ci: Devroit-on faire souffrir une seconde fois le meme genre de mort a un criminel, qui apres avoir eu la tete coupee viendroit a resusciter?"--_Finkelth_, Praef. ad Observationes Pract. num. 12.

The pa.s.sionate major, instead of being a mere Irish _blunderer_, was, without knowing it, a learned casuist; for he was capable of deciding, in one word, a question, which, it seems, had puzzled the understandings of the ablest lawyers of France, or which had appalled their conscientious sensibility.

Alas! there is nothing new under the sun.

"Where ignorance is bliss, 'tis folly to be wise."

CHAPTER VI.

"THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE, AND WORDS THAT BURN."

We lamented, in our last chapter, that there is nothing new under the sun; yet, perhaps, the thoughts and phraseology of the following story may not be familiar to the English.

"Plase your honour," says a man, whose head is bound up with a garter, in token and commemoration of his having been at a fair the preceding night--"Plase your honour, it's what I am striving since six o'clock and before, this morning, becaase I'd sooner trouble your honour's honour than any man in all Ireland, on account of your character, and having lived under your family, me and mine, twinty years, aye, say forty again to the back o' that, in the old gentleman's time, as I well remember before I was born; that same time I heard tell of your own honour's riding a little horse in green with your gun before you, a grousing over our town-lands, which was the mill and abbey of Ballynagobogg, though 'tis now set away from me (owing to them that belied my father) to Christy Salmon, becaase he's an Orangeman--or his wife--though he was once (let him deny it who can), to _my certain knowledge_, behind the haystack in Tullygore, _sworn_ in a United man by Captain Alick, who was hanged----Pace to the dead any how!------Well, not to be talking too much of that now, only for this Christy Salmon, I should be still living under your honour."

"Very likely; but what has all this to do with the present business? If you have any complaint to make against Christy Salmon, make it--if not, let me go to dinner."

"Oh, it would be too bad to be keeping your honour from your dinner, but I'll make your honour sinsible immadiately. It is not of Christy Salmon at-all-at-all I'm talking. May be your honour is not sinsible yet who I am--I am Paddy M'Doole, of the Curragh, and I've been a flax-dresser and dealer since I parted your honour's land, and was last night at the fair of Clonaghkilty, where I went just in a quiet way thinking of nothing at all, as any man might, and had my little yarn along with me, my wife's and the girl's year's spinning, and all just hoping to bring them back a few honest s.h.i.+llings as they desarved--none better!--Well, plase your honour, my beast lost a shoe, which brought me late to the fair, but not so late but what it was as throng as ever; you could have walked over the heads of the men, women, and childer, a foot and a horseback, all buying and selling; so I to be sure thought no harm of doing the like; so I makes the best bargain I could of the little hanks for my wife and the girl, and the man I sold them to was just weighing them at the crane, and I standing forenent him--'Success to myself!'said I, looking at the s.h.i.+llings I was putting into my waistcoat pocket for my poor family, when up comes the inspector, whom I did not know, I'll take my oath, from Adam, nor couldn't know, becaase he was the deputy inspector, and had been but just made, of which I was ignorant, by this book and all the books that ever were shut and opened--but no matter for that; he seizes my hanks out of the scales that I had just sold, saying they were unlawful and forfeit, becaase by his watch it was past four o'clock, which I denied to be possible, plase your honour, becaase not one, nor two, nor three, but all the town and country were selling the same as myself in broad day, only when the deputy came up they stopped, which I could not, by rason I did not know him.--'Sir,' says I (very civil), 'if I had known you, it would have been another case, but any how I hope no jantleman will be making it a crime to a poor man to sell his little matter of yarn for his wife and childer after four o'clock, when he did not know it was contrary to law at-all-at-all.'

"'I gave you notice that it was contrary to law at the fair of Edgerstown,' said he.--'I axe your pardon, sir,' said I, 'it was my brother, for I was by.' With that he calls me liar, and what not, and takes a grip[40] of me, and I a grip of my flax, and he had a s.h.i.+lala[41] and I had none; so he gave it me over the head, I crying 'murder! murder!' and clinging to the scales to save me, and they set a swinging and I with them, plase your honour, till the bame comes down a'top o' the back o' my head, and _kilt_ me, as your honour sees."

"I see that you are alive still, I think."

"It's not his fault if I am, plase your honour, for he left me for dead, and I am as good as dead still: if it be plasing to your honour to examine my head, you'll be sinsible I'm telling nothing but the truth.

Your honour never _seen_ a man kilt as I was and am--all which I'm ready (when convanient) to swear before your honour." [42]

The reiterated a.s.surances which this hero gives us of his being killed, and the composure with which he offers to swear to his own a.s.sa.s.sination and decease, appear rather surprising and ludicrous to those who are not aware that _kilt_ is here used in a metaphorical sense, and that it has not the full force of our word killed. But we have been informed by a lady of unquestionable veracity, that she very lately received a pet.i.tion worded in this manner--

"To the Right Hon. Lady E---- P----.

"Humbly showeth; "That your poor pet.i.tioner is now lying dead in a ditch," &c.

This poor Irish pet.i.tioner's expression, however preposterous it sounds, might perhaps be justified, if we were inclined to justify an Irishman by the example, not only of poets comic and tragic, but of prose writers of various nations. The evidence in favour both of the fact and the belief, that people can speak and walk after they are dead, is attested by stout warriors and grave historians. Let us listen to the solemn voice of a princess, who comes sweeping in the sceptred pall of gorgeous tragedy, to inform us that half herself has buried the other half.

"Weep, eyes; melt into tears these cheeks to lave: One half myself lays t'other in the grave." [43]

For six such lines as these Corneille received six thousand livres, and the admiration of the French court and people during the Augustan age of French literature. But an Italian is not content with killing by halves.

Here is a man from Italy who goes on fighting, not like Witherington, upon his stumps, but fairly after he is dead.

"Nor yet perceived the vital spirit fled, But still fought on, nor knew that he was dead." [44]

Common sense is somewhat shocked at this single instance of an individual fighting after he is dead; but we shall, doubtless, be reconciled to the idea by the example of a gallant and modern commander, who has declared his opinion, that nothing is more feasible than for a garrison to fight, or at least to surrender, after they are dead, nay, after they are buried.--Witness this public doc.u.ment.

"Liberty and Equality.

"May 29th, | Garrison of Ostend.

30th Floreal, 6 |

"Muscar, commandant of Ostend, to the commandant in chief of his British majesty.

"General,