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, insteadof 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 funerallamp 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.
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 ofbecco?' to which enquiry he learned for answer, that the Phrygians callbreadby 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.'"
"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 ofbecco?' to which enquiry he learned for answer, that the Phrygians callbreadby 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, recollectingthatbechas a like signification in Dutch, (becin that language meaning bread, andbecker, 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 Antwerpianæ, 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 whichbechath that meaning; whichbecbeing, at this day, our word for bread, andbecker("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 syllablebec, 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 wordambactus, 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 Judæus Apella de proseucha,Non qui de Solymis venit perustis,Aut quisquam de grege TabatariorumQueis phœni cophinique cura major:Cimmerii denique non puto probabuntEt si prognatos Japhet putanturGomoroque 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 tantaConatusque 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 ofCeltic and Belgic Origins, published at YpresA.D.1614. Scrieck adopted as the principle of his investigation this position from theCratylusof 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 hardlyexceed the folly of some of Becan's and Scrieck's derivations from the Dutch. Thus Goropius makesΑπολλωςAf-hol-los, ("off-hole-loose,")i. e."ex antro libera," or "Iloose(the rays of light) off, or out of, theholeor cavern (of darkness!") and thus Scrieck derives Sequana (the river Seine) fromsee gang,i. e."via maris," or the "gang-way to thesea!" and Cecrops fromsea-crops,i. e."a marinâ gulâ," because, we suppose, the Cecropidæ came to Greece with theircropsfull, (or empty, as the case might be,) after theirseavoyage 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, Phœnicia, 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 theBecceselanaon 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 Belgæ, (which latter, he says, are all Celts,) are properly significant in that Scythic tongue which the Belgæ 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 Belgæ and Dutch; but also that the same Belgæ 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—Scythicè Ad-ham, siveHaid-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, significatprægnansvelelevata, abelevationeventris; than which nothing could be said morein rem."Noe—N'hohe, that is,altus,celsus; as Noah was at the head of time after the deluge. The Chaldeans interpret itcessatio,quies; but Noah," says he, "had neitherrestnorquietduring 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.
"Adam—Scythicè Ad-ham, siveHaid-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, significatprægnansvelelevata, abelevationeventris; than which nothing could be said morein rem.
"Noe—N'hohe, that is,altus,celsus; as Noah was at the head of time after the deluge. The Chaldeans interpret itcessatio,quies; but Noah," says he, "had neitherrestnorquietduring 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 'sylvæ 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, 'theseven-foldoutcome;' for the Nile is seven-fold, and hath seven mouths or outlets."Pharos—Phær-ho, signifyingadnavigatio alti, or the navigation towards the high places; for Pharos is an island with a lofty tower," &c. &c.
"Aegyptos—haeg-up-t'hos, that is 'sylvæ 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, 'theseven-foldoutcome;' for the Nile is seven-fold, and hath seven mouths or outlets.
"Pharos—Phær-ho, signifyingadnavigatio 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 admitsmaypossibly have had its name from Pelops, though he thinks it more likely that it expresses the more appropriate Scythic phrasePfel-op-on-es—"Campus superior ad aquas," or thefellor plainup,on, orabovethe 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 bardUnlabouring strains the chord to a new lyre,The twisted entrails of a sheep belowWith fingers nice inserting, and above—With such facility Ulysses bentHis own huge bow, and with his right hand play'dThe nerve, which in its quick vibration sungClear 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 soundst. 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 famemPestemque a populo et principe Cæsare, inPersas atque Britannos,Vestrâ 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 ofhis 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 asnon 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 Phœnician, 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 EtruscanAesarto be a designation of the Deity, (Aesarbeing 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 thatAesar in the Etruscan tonguesignifiedGod. 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."
"In reading in Suetonius the life of Augustus," he says, "I found thatAesar in the Etruscan tonguesignifiedGod. 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 EtruscanAesaris said to have a like meaning with an alleged Irish word, coined and spelled by Vallancyaosfhear; but it has also an identical meaning with the Indianeswara, and the Egyptianosiris, and the Islandicaesæ, which makesæsarin 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 Christendomgive 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 asfaland, 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 Phœnicians.
Besides, the Phœnician 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 Phœnician equivalent of aesar isalonioralonim; of kypra,astarte; of nyrtia,god; of mantus,much; of faland,samen; of andras,carbon; of lucumomalaho; of damnos,rackabe, &c. &c., in none of which, exceptsamen, 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 "tillnownot 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 sayhe, 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 intwenty-fourIrish, orquasi-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. "Phœnician 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 Phœnicians, 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 syllablebe, 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 thatemeans "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 noamfor "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 Phœnician!" 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."
"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 Phœnician 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 Phœnician far away steering night and day and then to whence is in the ocean night sailing happy."
"Was which security day and night inform Phœnician 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 Phœnician 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 aboutas 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 containsJUBEBATREBUMPERACNE, and in the fourth divisionPERAKNEstands alone. The first division of this fifth line containsSAKRE:—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.)
"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 containsJUBEBATREBUMPERACNE, and in the fourth divisionPERAKNEstands alone. The first division of this fifth line containsSAKRE:—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,