494 The Pleader's Guide. work through the remaining stages of "The editor has only further to remark, that he has, for the satisfaction of the candid reader, been at very considerable pains to discover, if possible, whom the author really intended under the different characters he has interwoven with the history of the process and trial; in this, however, the editor has completely failed; partly owing to a defect in the author's original MSS. and the total absence of dates, and partly to the changing of the venue, and the circumstance of the cause not having been tried at the assizes for the coun ty wherein the trespass is supposed to have been committed-it is, perhaps, a fault in the original design of this poem, that it should have been unfortunately so constructed, that the eharacters attempted to be delineated in it, will not admit of any particular application; but, as it is a posthumous production, due allowances, it is to hoped, will be made for this imperfection." p. iii-vi. As a specimen we give the 7th lecture, which opens and states the cause. (aside.) I rise with pleasure, I assure ye, Beat, bruis'd, and wounded John-a-Gudgeon, First count's for that' with divers jugs, To wit, twelve pots, twelve cups, twelve mugs, Of certain vulgar drink called toddy, Said Gull did sluice said Gudgeon's body; • The second count's, for other toddy, Cast, flung or hurl'd on Gudgeon's body; And clothes which he had then and there on; To wit, twelve jackets, twelve surtouts, • Twelve pantaloons, twelve pair of boots, Which did thereby much discompose Said Gudgeon's mouth, eyes, ears, and nose, Back, belly, neck, thighs, feet, and toes, "Middlesex"-This being an election affray, the venue is supposed to have been changed upon the usual affidavit, for the sake of a more fair and impartial trial before a Middlesex jury. ་ By which, and other wrongs unheard of, To all these counts the plea I find, What facts, what species of excuse, That he no more may triumph and parade cause, Taught the proud Gull to sing an humbler strain, And sent him waddling to his bogs again." CXXIII. MENTOR; or the Moral Conductor of Youth from the Academy to Manhood. A Work, the result of actual but painful Experience, candidly stated, and usefully adapted to the Level of youthful Understanding; being a Sequel to the Art of Teaching, or communicating Instruction, and digested on the same Principle. To which is added, as an Incitement to the Study of it in grown Youth, during their Hours of Relaxation from Business, an Essay on the extensive Utility, Advantages, and Amusement of Mathematical Learning. By DaVID MORRICE, 8vo. HIS work contains six chapters Essay mentioned in the title. Chap. I. Consists of two sections, containing introductory observations and admonitions. This chapter concludes with a sketch of the author's life, and states the misery he has experienced as the effects of vice. Informing the reader of his sincere repentance, and his having conquered the Syren VICE, he proceeds to Chap. II Sect. 1. Of the fear of God. 2. Of speaking the truth. 3. Of dishonesty and connivance. From the second section we select the following remarks. "A STRICT REGARD FOR TRUTH, however, it is our first duty to impress upon our minds; and it is the more to be recommended by the moralist, as the contrary practice is so often observable in youth, which, if not checked in time, seldom fails to introduce a false and crooked disposition of heart, a disposition which is the very bane of all virtue, and one of the greatest pests of society. Youth should remember, that God hears as well as sees and knows, and that not a single word escapes his tongue, but it is recorded for or against the speaker, in the volume of the great account from which he will be judged. "Falsehood is of such a vile, low in the breast of every ingenuous nature, that it ought to excite horror be hated and despised; it is the surest youth it requires only to be seen to mark of an abject mind, and robs one of the very dignity of a man, and the character of a gentleman. "On the contrary, truth and sincerity are always admired and applauded, as the proof of a soul truly great, too conscious of its own dignity to use any of the little tricks of falsehood. Honour and nobleness of mind are naturally associated in our ideas with openness and veracity; and infamy and littleness of soul, with dissimulation and falsehood. "To lie, to the prejudice of others, argues malice and villany; to lie in excuse of ourselves, guilt, meanness, and cowardice; both ways, a design to delude with false representations of things, and to benefit ourselves by the deceit. Now, however artfully we may carry on this practice for a while, in the end it is always discovered, and it is hardly to be imagined what infinite contempt is the conwe have conducted our fallacies before, the more severely shall we be censured afterwards: from that moment we lose all trust, all credit, all society; for men avoid a liar as a common enemy truth itself, in his mouth, loses its dignity, being always suspected, and often disbelieved.This I have found, from fatal and hard experience, to be the inevitable and sure effects of swerving from the truth and however extraordinary it may appear, it is a fact, that falsehood is born with many of us; and, from the corruption of our nature, is actually inherent in the moral con He that formed the ear, shall he not hear? He that planted the eye, shall he not see? Isaiah. stitution of our depraved mind. I need not, I suppose, observe to you, that the natural constitution relates to the body, and the moral to the mind." p. 40, 41. "If therefore, O young man! you are enamoured with the beauties of truth, and have fixed your heart on the simplicity of her charms, hold fast your fidelity to her, and forsake her not the constancy of your vir tue will crown you with honour, you will support, as a man, the dignity of your character, scorning to stoop to the arts of hypocrisy. "To the hypocrite and liar, the EASTERN MORALIST aptly says,O fool, fool! the pains which thou takest to hide what thou art, are ⚫ more than would make thee what thou wouldst seem; and the chil❝dren of wisdom shall mock at thy ⚫ cunning, when in the midst of security, thy disguise is stripped off, and the finger of derision shall point thee to scorn'. p. 43. Chap. III. Sect. 1. Of preserving a good character. 2. Of avoiding debt, 3. Of temperance in pleasure, and moderating the affections; of fruga. lity in expences, and diligence in busi ness. Chap. IV. Sect. 1. Of company and dissipation. 2. Of gaming, and plays of hazard in general. 3. Of public places, and other recreation. Chap. V. Sect. I. Of the proper employment of time, and its value; and deoting the hours of relaxation from business to useful objects. 2. Of the knowledge of the world, with suitable maxims and advice. 3. Of maintaining an independant spirit of thinking and acting for yourself; and persevering in the line of business you are originally brought up In the second section, on the topic, safest to deal with those on your own level,' is the following anecdote. "A remarkable instance of this hap. pened in the case of Philip, King of Spain, husband of the English Queen Mary, who demanded the guardianship of her heir, if she should have one, with certain places of strength to confirm his authority, offering at the same time his bond to deliver up his trust, in case the child should die immediately. But when the house, out of false complaisance to the throne, was on the point of agreeing to the proposal, an unlucky ques tion of LORD PAGET's, Who should put the king's bond in suit, in case he trespassed on the condition? turned the tide at once, and the proposal was rejected, I think, unanimously.— Public transactions may be sometimes applied to private; never en ter into articles, therefore, but where there is a reasonable prospect of recovering the penalty.". 124, 125. Chap. VI. Sect. 1. Of friendship, and the choice of friends...with some observations on the bad consequences of unlawful connections with the female sex. 2 Of unlawful love, seduction, and early marriage. 3. Of respect, gratitude, and attention to parents; humanity and kindness to individuals, and love for our country. An essay on the extensive utility, advantages, and amusements of mathematical learning. CXXIV. ESSAY ON IRISH BULLS. By R. L. EDGWORTH, and MARIA EDGWORTH, 12mo. HE To fillowing are the contents of this whimsical publication. Vulgar Errours-Etymology of an Irish Bull uncertain-Originality of Irish Bulls disputed-Irish Newspapers-The Criminal Law of Bulls and Blunders-Little Dominick-The Bliss of Ignorance-Thoughts that breathe, and Words that burn-Practical Bulls-The Dublin Shoeblack The Hibernian Mendicant-Irish Wit and Eloquence-The Brogue Bath Coach Conversation-The Irish Incognito-Conclusion. As a specimen of this farrago we give the following extract from the chapter on Irish newspapers," as one of least exceptionable, some of them bordering on profaneness. "The first advertisement that meets our eye is promising. "It is the late proclamation of an Irish mayor, in which we are informed, that certain business is to be transacted in that city every Mon day, (Easter Sunday only excepted). This seems rather an unnecessary exception; but it is not an inadvertency, caused by an hurry of business in his worship, it is deliberately copied from a precedent set in England, by a baronet formerly well known in parliament, who, in the preamble to a bill, proposed, that certain regulations should take place on every Monday (Tuesday excepted.) We fear also, that an English mayor has been known to blunder. Some years ago the mayor of a capital. English city published a proclamation and advertisement, previous to the races, that no gentle' man will be allowed to ride on the course, but the horses that are to run.' A mayor's blundering proclamation is not, however, worth half so much in the eye of ridicule, as a lord lieutenant's. A saint in crape is twice a saint in lawn.’ "A bull on the throne is worth twice as much as a bull in the chair. "By the lord lieutenant and coun'cil of Ireland. A proclamation. "Whereas the greatest economy is necessary in the consumption of all species of grain, and, especially, in the consumption of potatoes, &c. Given at the council chamber ' in Dublin.' "This is the first time we have been informed, by authority, that potatoes are a species of grain; but we must accede to this new botanical arrangement, when published under such splendid auspices. The assertion, certainly, is not made in distinct terms, but all who understand the construction of language must imply the conclusion, that we draw from these premises. A general position is in the first member of the sentence laid down, that the greatest economy is necessary in the consumption of all species of grain.' A particular exemplication of the principle is made in the next clauseespecially in the consumption of potatoes.' "The inference is as plain as can be made. "The next article in our news paper, is an advertisement of lands to e let to an improving tenant :—A few miles from Cork, in a most sporting country, bounded by an uncommon fine turf bog, on the verge of which there are a number of fine lime kilns, where that manure may be had on very moderate terms, the distance for carriage not VOL. I. being many hundred yards. The whole lands being now in great heart, and completely laid down, ' entirely surrounded and divided by impenetrable furze ditches, made of quarried stone, laid edgeways. It will be a matter of difficulty to the untravelled English reader, to comprehend how furze ditches can be made of quarried stones laid edgeways, or any way; and we fear that we should only puzzle his intellects still more, if we should attempt to explain to him the mysteries of Irish . ditching in the technical terms of the country. With the face of a ditch he may be acquainted, but to the back and gripe, and bottom of the gripe, and top of the back of a ditch, we fear he is still to be introduced. "We can never sufficiently admire these furze ditches made of quarried stones, they can, indeed, be found only in Ireland: but we have heard in England of things almost as extraordinary. Dr. Grey, in his erudite and entertaining notes on Hudibras, records the deposition of a lawyer, who in an action of battery told the judge, that the defendant 'beat his client with a certain wood en instrument called an iron pestle. Nay to go further still, a wise annotator on the Pentateuch, named Pe. ter Harrison, observed of Moses's two tables of stone, that they were made of shittim wood. The stone furze ditches are scarcely bolder instances of the catachresis, than the stone tables of shittim wood. This bold figure of rhetoric in an Irish advertisement of an estate may lead us to expect, that Hibernian advertisers may, in time, emulate the fame of Christie, the prince of auctioneers, whose fine descriptive powers can make more of an estate on paper, than ever was made of it in, any other shape, except in the form of an ejectment. The fictions of law, indeed, surpass even the auctioneer's imagination; and a man may be said never to know the extent of his own possessions, until he is served with a process of ejectment. He then finds himself required to give up the possession of a multitude of barns, orchards, fish - ponds, horse - ponds, dwelling-houses, pigeon-houses, dove cotes, out-houses, and appurtenances, which he never saw or beard of, and 3 R which are no where to be found upon the surface of the habitable globe: so that we cannot really express this English legal transaction, without being guilty of an Irish bull, and saying, that the person ejected is ousted from places which he never entered. "Let not any conscientious person be startled at the mode of reasoning, by which we have convicted an imaginary Irish waiter of a real bull; it is at least as good, if not better logic, than that which was successfully employed in the time of the popish plot, to convict an Irish phy"To proceed with our newspapers. sician of forgery. The matter is -The next advertisement is from a thus recorded by l'Estrange. The school-master: but we shall not des- Irish physician was charged with cant upon its grammatical errors, writing a treasonable libel, but debecause they are not blunders pecu- nied the thing, and appealed to liar to Irish school-masters. We the unlikeness of the characters. have frequently observed, that the It was agreed, they said, that there advertisements of school masters, was no resemblance at all in the even in England, are seldom free hands; but they asserted that the from solecisms: too much care in doctor had two hands, his physic writing, it seems, is almost as bad as 'hand and his plot hand, and the too little. In the preface of the dic- ' one not a jot like the other. Now tionary of the French academy, 'this was the doctor's plot hand, and there are, as it is computed by an they insisted upon it, that because able French critic, no less than six-it was not like one of his hands, it teen faults; and in Harris, the celebrated grammarian's dedication of his Hermes, there is one bull, and almost as many faults as lines. It appears as if the most precise and learned writers sometimes, like the Jadies in one of Congreve's plays, run into the danger to avoid the ⚫ apprehension.' After a careful scrutiny of the Hibernian advertisements, we are compelled to confess, that we have not met with any blunders that more nearly resemble our notion of an Irish bull than one which some years ago appeared in our English papers. It was the title to an advertisement of a washing machine, in these words 'must be like the other.' "By this convenient mode of rea. soning, an Irishman may at any time be convicted of any crime, or of any absurdity. "But what have we next in our newspaper- Murder, robbery, and reward.'-This seems a strange connection of things, according to our vulgar notions of distributive justice; but we are told that the wicked shall have their reward even in this world, and we suppose it is upon this principle that over the stocks in a town in Ireland there appears this inscription- A reward for vagabonds.' "Upon proceeding further in our Every man his own washerwo- advertisement, which begins with man!' To come down to the pre-murder, robbery, and reward,' we sent times; an eye witness assures find, however, that contrary to the ns, that last summer he saw an adver- just expectations raised by the title, tisement in the following terms, stuck the reward is promised not to the up on the wall of an English coffee- robbers and murderers, but to those house This coffee-house removed who shall discover and prosecute · up stairs!' them to conviction. Here we se led into error by that hasty mode 4 elision, which sometimes obtains 7 the titles even of our English law pr cesses; as, sci-fa, fi-fa, qui-tam, & names which, to preserve the glories uncertainty of the law, never refer the sense, but to the first words of writs. A Roman emperor used to draw his stairs up after him every night into his bed-chamber, but drawing a whole house up into itself is new. "How can we account for such a blunder in an English advertisment, except by supposing that it was penned by some Irish waiter? If that were the case it would be an admi. rable example of an Irish bull; and, therefore, we had best take it for granted. |