the 'Royal George,' expressed a wish that they had it on better authority, as he was aye a leein' laddie.' In No. 20, the Scholasticus buys a raven, to see if it would live two hundred years, as it was reported to do. In No. 21, when other passengers on shipboard in a storm are laying hold of some of the spars, he attaches himself to the anchor. In No. 22, hearing of the death of one of two brothers, twins, and meeting the survivor, he asks if it is he or his brother that is dead. In No. 24, having to cross a ferry, he mounts his horse that he may get over the quicker. In No. 29, travelling with a bald man and a barber, under an arrangement that they are to sleep and watch time about, the barber shaves his head while he is asleep, and then wakes him, upon which, feeling his bare scalp, he abuses the barber for calling the wrong man. It is easy to recognise in this list a great many of those jokes which are in daily circulation among many who have no idea of the venerable antiquity of their origin.

The essence of a genuine bull seems to consist in an unconscious self-contradiction. We have given some examples of this element in practical bulls; and we would refer, as an instance of what we think a perfect verbal bull, to the dictum of the Irish doctor, that sterility is often hereditary:' a self-contradiction which has a certain plausibility at first sight, and which we have seen impose upon a very grave physician who was not Irish. But the number of bulls of this perfect type is comparatively small. The greater part of those sayings or doings which pass for bulls are merely what the French call Bêtises, Blunders or Stupidities, in which, from confusion of thought or expression, an absurd result is gravely reached, and in which the absurdity generally consists in overlooking the essential thing in the process.

Appended to Miss Edgeworth's Essay on Irish Bulls is a French Recueil de Bêtises, containing foreign specimens of the article. This Recueil we take to have been the work of the Abbé Morellet, with whom the Edgeworths had become intimate in their visit to Paris during the Peace of Amiens, shortly before the Essay on Bulls was published. A somewhat similar collection had been previously given in the Eléments de Littérature by Morellet's friend and relative, Marmontel, under the head Plaisant. Morellet, or whoever else was the author of the Recueil, says that he had previously written a dissertation on the subject of these Bêtises, but had lent it to a femme d'esprit, who lost it. He says:

'Je me souviens seulement que j'y prouvais savamment que le rire excité par les bêtises est l'effet du contraste que nous saisissons entre l'effort que fait l'homme qui dit la bêtise, et le mauvais succès de son effort. J'assimilais la marche de l'esprit dans celui qui dit une

bêtise, à ce qui arrive à un homme qui cherchant a marcher légèrement sur un pavé glissant, tombe lourdement, ou aux tours mal-adroit du paillasse de la foire. Si l'on veut examiner les bêtises rassemblées ici, on y trouvera toujours un effort manqué de ce genre.'

We subjoin a few specimens from this collection, which we suspect, if ever very well known, has fallen out of general remembrance. We select some of them, not because they are new, but rather because they are old, and here found in an unexpected quarter:

'On demandait à un Abbé de Laval Montmorency, quel âge avait son frère le marêchal dont il était l'ainé. "Dans deux ans," dit-il, nous serons du même âge.'

Un homme voyait venir de loin un médecin de sa connaissance qui l'avait traité plusieurs années auparavant dans une maladie; il se détourna et cacha son visage pour n'être pas reconnu. On lui demanda, “Pourquoi?"-" C'est," dit-il, "que je sens honteux devant lui de ce qu'il y a fort long temps que je n'ai été malade."'

'Le maire d'une petite ville, entendant une querelle dans la rue au milieu de la nuit, se lève du lit, et ouvrant la fenêtre crie aux passants, "Messieurs, me leverai-je ?"

'On parlait avec admiration de la belle vieillesse d'un homme de quatre-vingt-dix ans, quelqu'un dit-" Cela vous étonne, messieurs ! si mon père n'était pas mort, il aurait à présent cent ans accomplis."

'Un homme étant sur le point de marier sa fille unique, se brouille avec le prétendant, et dans sa colère il dit, "Non, monsieur, vous ne serez jamais mon gendre, et quand j'aurais cent filles uniques, je ne vous en donnerais pas une.'

'On avait reçu à la grande poste une lettre avec cette addresse, à Monsieur mon fils, Rue, etc. Ôn allait la mettre au rebut; un commis s'y oppose, et dit qu'on trouvera à qui la lettre s'addresse. Dix on douze jours se passent. On voit arriver un grand benêt, qui dit, "Messieurs, je veux savoir si on n'aurait pas gardé ici une lettre de mon cher père ?" "Oui, Monsieur," lui dit le commis, "la voilà." On prête ce trait à Bouret fermier général.'

'Un marchand, en finissant d'écrire une lettre à un de ses correspondans, mourut subitement. Son commis ajouta en PS.: "Depuis ma lettre écrite je suis mort ce matin. Mardi, au soir 7ème," etc.'

'Un petit marchand prétendait avoir acheté trois sols ce qu'il vendait pour deux. On lui représente que ce commerce le ruinera-"Ah,” dit-il, "je me sauve sur la quantité."

'Le Chevalier de Lorenzi, étant à Florence, était allé se promener avec trois de ses amis à quelques lieues de la ville, à pied. Ils revenaient fort las; la nuit s'approchait; il veut se reposer: on lui dit qu'il restait quatres milles à faire :-" Oh," dit-il, nous sommes quatres, ce n'est qu'un mille chacun."'

Here is the conclusion of an Italian letter, containing several Spropositi or absurdities

'O ricevete o non ricevete questa, datemene aviso.'

It will be observed, that of the Bétises which we have just quoted, one at least is from Hierocles, others are now in common use as Irish bulls, and others belong to that species of blunder, which, in the mouth of Lord Dundreary, has lately excited so much hearty merriment. His Lordship is the 'knight of the shire' of a large class of constituents, who in scattered examples, and under partial development, have been long familiar to us, but of whose peculiarities the full type and expression were never before so well represented, or so well recommended to us by general goodness and thorough nobility of nature and manners. A good specimen of Dundrearyism is attributed to a Scotch Judge of the last century, who on visiting a dentist, and being placed in the patients' chair, was requested by the operator to allow him to put his finger into his mouth, upon which the Judge, with a distrustful look, said, 'Na! you'll bite me.' The confusion here in the speaker's mind is obvious. He knew that if one man's finger is put into another man's mouth a bite may ensue; but he did not correctly see which of them might bite, and which of them be bitten. It was told afterwards of a descendant of this worthy person, as a proof of hereditary similarity of talent, that when canvassing for the representation of a Scotch county, he refused to take a glass of wine from a voter, on the ground that it would be treating.

Some bulls, or some of the bêtises which come nearest to bulls, contain, as Southey has suggested, a confusion of what the schoolmen call Objectivity with Subjectivity. The fears of the Scotch Judge that he would be bitten by the dentist seem an illustration of that remark, and so also is the Irishman's perplexity, whose sister had got a child, but who, from not knowing its sex, could not say whether he was an uncle or an aunt. An instance of this confusion of subjectivities, which we have naturalized, and made a standing jest, is found in the explanation, said by Marmontel to have been given by a simpleton of his simplicity: Ce n'est pas ma faute si je n'ai point d'esprit ; on m'a changé en nourrice.'

Marmontel's definitions of this kind of stupidity are not without felicity of expression:

'La bêtise,' he says, 'est un défaut innocent et naïf, dont on s'amuse sans le hair.' 'La bêtise est tout simplement une intelligence émoussée, une longue enfance de l'esprit, un dénuement presque absolu d'idées, ou une extrême inhabileté à les combiner et à les mettre en œuvre; et soit habituelle ou soit accidentelle, comme elle nous donne sur elle un avantage qui flatte notre vanité, elle nous amuse, sans nous causer ce plaisir malin que nous goutons à voir châtier la sottise.'

He thinks that the pleasantry of a bêtise consists in the manifest effort to think or reason accurately, and in its palpable want of

success.

Some of the blunders or absurdities which excite our laughter arise rather from a confusion of words than of ideas. An example of this is afforded by the paragraph in the Irish newspapers announcing with much pleasure' that on such a day Lady had publicly renounced the errors of the Church of Rome for those of the Church of England.' The penny-aliner had merely forgotten that his antecedent to those was 'errors,' and not doctrines.'

A very ludicrous class of failures are those of which Mrs. Slipslop in Joseph Andrews, and Mrs. Malaprop in The Rivals, supply us with the richest or most finished examples. The attempts of ignorant persons to use fine or peculiar words, and their unconscious substitution of others having quite a different meaning or character, never fail to amuse. Take as specimens the old lady who in windy weather observed that the antenuptial gales seemed to be coming earlier than usual; the would-be connoisseur who spoke of a picture of the Venus Anno Domini; the military veteran who was always for taking time by the firelock; and the Nabob who told a ragged school the fable of the Hare and the Tortoise, and exhorted them thence to perseverance, as the likeliest means of bringing them first to the gaol.

Akin to these are the cases of Anti-climax, where the speaker or writer commences with something rhetorical or poetical, and ends with something low or prosaic, e.g., the designating the great Robert Boyle as the Father of Chemistry-and brother of the Earl of Cork;' the lines given by Scriblerus, And thou Dalhousy,' etc.; the entry in the index of a law-book, 'ChiefJustice Best-great mind;' and the discovery in the text that this refers to his lordship's having had a great mind' to transport a man for seven years. Those poets or orators who are said to spell Pathos with a B, afford us abundant specimens of this variety. A feeling allied to this is produced by the solemnity with which a converted German Jew addressed to an Exeter Hall audience the not inappropriate invitation: 'My brethren, let us bray.'

The affectation of science or of talent, resulting in the exhibition of ignorance or of dulness, are among the most legitimate objects of ridicule. The orator who did not know whether a certain idea was in Cicero or Tully; the traveller who, when asked if, in crossing the country, he had taken the hypotenuse, answered that he had taken the diligence; the Scotch laird who advised his neighbour, when going to see the Painters

of Italy, to see also the Glaziers of Switzerland,-all fall under a part of this category. The various readings of Virgil by Scriblerus are examples of another branch of it; but of this kind, perhaps one of the best is the emendation attributed to one of the dullest of Shakespeare's commentators, of a passage in As You Like It, where, instead of the figurative and forced reading of 'tongues in trees,' etc., it is proposed to correct it in an obvious and easy way :

'And this our life, exempt from public haunt,

Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in everything:'

For which read:-

And this our life, exempt from public haunt,
Finds leaves in trees, stones in the running brooks,
Sermons in books, and good in everything.'

Among the instances of ridiculous absurdity in what may be called suicidal statements, are those extravagances which are known as Gasconades. In these, the speaker, wishing to magnify his character or achievements, so vastly overstates his case as to defeat his purpose by becoming incredible-

'Vaulting ambition, which o'erleaps itself,
And falls on the other side.'

The Gascon priest who came so quickly to do a charitable action that his guardian angel could not keep pace with him; the Gascon officer who said that his mattresses were all stuffed with the whiskers of the men he had killed in duels; and the other native of the same region who alleged that the only firewood used at his father's château consisted of the batons belonging to those of his family who had been Mareschals of France, excite our laughter from the very fact that they so far overdraw their account with our credulity. It seems a favourite style of jest with Americans to push a wonderful fact or story to such a degree of exaggeration as to be literally a reductio ad absurdum. The examples of this figure among them are too numerous to require quotation. But we may observe that they are not in general Gasconades, but palpable caricatures of the national tendency to boasting, and meant to ridicule it by over-doing it. The comic effect on the stage of the sayings and doings of gasconading cowards is familiar to us by the frequent representation of such characters, as in the Miles Gloriosus, Bobadil, and Falstaff.

In Southey's Omniana we are told of a drunken squabble at Malta between some soldiers and sailors, in which a good specimen is given of the ludicrous, in what may be termed suicidal evidence. Each party alleged the other to be the

VOL. XLVI.-NO. XCII.

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