Chapter VIII: Part XVI (2)

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 funeral lamp 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.

BETHAM'S ETRURIA CELTICA.

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 of _becco_?' to
which enquiry he learned for answer, that the Phrygians call _bread_
by 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, recollecting that _bec_ has a like signification in Dutch, (_bec_ in that language meaning bread, and _becker_, 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 Antwerpianae, 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 which _bec_ hath that meaning; which _bec_ being, at this day, our word for bread, and _becker_ ("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 syllable _bec_, 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 word _ambactus_, 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 Judaeus Apella de proseucha,
Non qui de Solymis venit perustis,
Aut quisquam de grege Tabatariorum
Queis phoeni cophinique cura major:
Cimmerii denique non puto probabunt
Et si prognatos Japhet putantur
Gomoroque 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 tanta
Conatusque 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 of _Celtic and Belgic Origins_, published at Ypres A.D. 1614. Scrieck adopted as the principle of his investigation this position from the _Cratylus_ of 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 hardly exceed the folly of some of Becan's and Scrieck's derivations from the Dutch. Thus Goropius makes [Greek: Apollos] _Af-hol-los_, ("off-hole-loose,") _i. e._ "_ex antro libera_," or "I _loose_ (the rays of light) off, or out of, the _hole_ or cavern (of darkness!") and thus Scrieck derives Sequana (the river Seine) from _see gang_, _i. e._ "_via maris_," or the "_gang_-way to the _sea_!" and Cecrops from _sea-crops_, _i. e._ "_a marina gula_," because, we suppose, the Cecropidae came to Greece with their _crops_ full, (or empty, as the case might be,) after their _sea_ voyage 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, Phoenicia, 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 the _Becceselana_ on 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 Belgae, (which latter, he says, are all Celts,) are properly significant in that Scythic tongue which the Belgae 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 Belgae and Dutch; but also that the same Belgae 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--_Scythice Ad-ham_, sive _Haid-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_, significat _praegnans_ vel _elevata_, ab
_elevatione_ ventris; than which nothing could be said more _in rem_.

"NOE--_N'hohe_, that is, _altus_, _celsus_; as Noah was at the head
of time after the deluge. The Chaldeans interpret it _cessatio_,
_quies_; but Noah," says he, "had neither _rest_ nor _quiet_ during
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 'sylvae 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, 'the
_seven_-fold _outcome_;' for the Nile is seven-fold, and hath seven
mouths or outlets.

"PHAROS--_Phaer-ho_, signifying _adnavigatio 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 admits _may_ possibly have had its name from Pelops, though he thinks it more likely that it expresses the more appropriate Scythic phrase _Pfel-op-on-es_--"Campus superior ad aquas," or the _fell_ or plain _up_, _on_, or _above_ the 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 bard
Unlabouring strains the chord to a new lyre,
The twisted entrails of a sheep below
With fingers nice inserting, and above--
With such facility Ulysses bent
His own huge bow, and with his right hand play'd
The nerve, which in its quick vibration sung
Clear 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 sound ST. 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 famem
Pestemque a populo et principe Caesare, in
Persas atque Britannos,
Vestra 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 of his 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 as _non 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 Phoenician, 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 Etruscan _Aesar_ to be a designation of the Deity, (_Aesar_ being 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
that _Aesar in the Etruscan tongue_ signified _God_. 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 Etruscan _Aesar_ is said to have a like meaning with an alleged Irish word, coined and spelled by Vallancy _aosfhear_; but it has also an identical meaning with the Indian _eswara_, and the Egyptian _osiris_, and the Islandic _aesae_, which makes _aesar_ in 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 Christendom give 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 as _faland_, 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 Phoenicians.

Besides, the Phoenician 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 Phoenician equivalent of aesar is _aloni_ or _alonim_; of kypra, _astarte_; of nyrtia, _god_; of mantus, _much_; of faland, _samen_; of andras, _carbon_; of lucumo _malaho_; of damnos, _rackabe_, &c. &c., in none of which, except _samen_, 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 "till _now_ not 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 say _he_, 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 in _twenty-four_ Irish, or _quasi_-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. "Phoenician 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 Phoenicians, 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 syllable _be_, 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 that _e_ means "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 no _am_ for "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 Phoenician!" 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."

Or this?

"Was which security day and night inform Phoenician 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 Phoenician 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 about as 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 contains JUBEBATREBUMPERACNE, and in the fourth division
PERAKNE stands alone. The first division of this fifth line contains
SAKRE:--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,

"Whether I was arbitrary and unauthorized in the division of the
words, will now appear by comparison, as the columns stand in
juxtaposition, and all are able to judge. _The division is merely
made into syllables, which, so far from being an unnatural or
arbitrary division, is the only division which could be reasonably
and fairly adopted._"

That is to say _Hibernice_, or rather _Bethamice_--_The ti fis e on is mear i lu om a do an do is i la bil se i i ac is o bar bro om be en go_ (we only "add a letter here and there in the Irish, when, by the genius and character of that language, it is justifiable, as when the addition of a vowel is required to make sense, and when in the original the sound does not require it to be explained,") _an en na tur al ur ar bi tre re ti fis i en is the an lu ti fis si an i i ac co al do be re as a ra be lu an do fa i ar lu a taob tuait_.

But _are_ these singular-looking syllables Irish? They certainly are neither sense nor grammar; but we take them all _as_ they appear, with their alleged meanings in English, from that copious store of ungrammatical nonsense called Irish, collected in those pretended versions of the tables of Gubbio; and the reader has already seen what a characteristic jargon they make when rendered by their English equivalents.

His fatuity and presumption appear almost incredible. Knowing but a single Etruscan word, and that a word of two syllables, and finding it, as he alleges, identical with an Irish word also of two syllables, he concludes that the Etruscan and Irish languages are the same, and both _monosyllabic_. Had he known all that men of ordinary learning know upon the subject, he would have known that of the remaining two or three-and-thirty ascertained Etruscan words, some are of two--some of three--some of four syllables--but not one of them all a monosyllable. Yet thus ignorant even of the commonest rudiments of learning on his subject, he takes it upon him to talk of men of real learning in the following strain--

"That the language of Etruria has hitherto defied the laborious
investigations of the learned of Italy, is now on all hands admitted.
Passavi, Gori, and Landsi, have done something to obscure, but little
if any thing towards its elucidation. Nor have the German
investigators been more successful. Dr Lepsius has lately given an
account of the Eugubian tables, and Dr Grotefend a work on the
rudiments of the Umbrian tongue, and still the subject is as much at
sea as ever. These profound scholars have made no real impression--no
light has been elicited--the meaning of a single word has not been
obtained with any certainty. The solemn, learned, trifling, and
absurd speculations of Passavi, Gori, and Landsi, and their
followers, are now treated with deserved contempt. This is an age of
critical enquiry; commonplace twaddling, inane generalities, and
magniloquent essays and lectures, even if delivered by professors who
enjoy the happiness of presiding over Roman colleges, only excite
derision. Learned savans must now put forth reasonable and
intelligible postulates, and opinions must be supported by facts, or
they will only expose themselves to deserved contempt."--(Vol. i. p.
22.)

Swift himself could not hit the style of the literary quack more perfectly. "I have considered the gross abuse of astrology in this kingdom," says Mr Bickerstaff, "and upon debating the matter with myself, I could not possibly lay the fault upon the art, but upon those gross impostors who have set up to be the artists. I know several learned men have contended that the whole is a cheat; and whoever hath not bent his studies that way, may be excused for thinking so, when he sees in how wretched a manner that noble art is treated by a few mean illiterate traders between us and the stars; who import a yearly stock of nonsense, lies, folly, and impertinence, which they offer to the world as genuine from the planets, though they descend from no greater height than their own brains. I intend in a short time to publish a large and rational defence of this art; and therefore shall say no more in its justification at present." But here, indeed, the comparison falls; for while Bickerstaff postpones his proofs for another occasion, Betham proudly displays his "reasonable and intelligible postulate," in his one fact, that the dissyllable _Aesar_ is God alike in Etruscan and in Irish. Whence he concludes that Etruscan and Irish are, therefore, the same language, and that both consist of words of one syllable each. "The discovery," he says, (Vol. ii. page 286,) "if 'wonderful' was also accidental, at least the first clue to it was the solitary fact mentioned in Vol. i. p. 33, of the passage in Suetonius' life of Augustus, where _Aesar_ is said to mean, in the Etruscan language, _God_. So small a spark lighted up the large fire." We are irresistibly reminded of Goropius and his "consequenter fatendum est antiquissima hoc Psammetichi sententia."

The translation of the Eugubian tablets, however, is but a part of the huge mass of absurdity piled up on these two little syllables, _Ae-sar_. There is a second volume, in which all the topographical extravagances of Scrieck are played over again, _praeconis ad fastidium_, with this difference, however, that where Scrieck, in his interpretations, gave genuine Dutch, Betham, in his, gives spurious Irish; for he owns himself, that "if a sentence be formed of these obsolete monosyllabic words, the translation in English making good sense, the original, if read to the best Irish scholar of the day, will appear to him an unknown tongue." He begins first with Sanconiathan, which he makes the name of the book, not of the author, _sean cead na than_; i. e. "the old beginning of time," when the gods spoke in monosyllabic Irish, and called chaos _cead-os_, "the first intelligence." And here it must be admitted that the Dutchmen are outdone: for neither Becan nor Scrieck went above Adam. But Betham is as much at home on Olympus as either of the Dutchmen was in Paradise; and with the aid of his monosyllabic glossary, transmutes the celestials into Teagues and Oonahs as fast as his sybilline syllables can be put together. Apollo is _ab ol lo_, "the mighty lord of the waters;" (this is hardly as good as the _off-hole-loose_ of Goropius:) Minerva is _Ma na er ar fad_, (a terribly long recipe for a name this,) or "the good, the illustrious guiding wisdom." Hermes is _tur-mees_, "the messenger of the wind." Hercules is _er cu lais_, "the illustrious hero of light;" but he seems to be sadly at sea for a derivation for Neptune, whom he is obliged to turn into a Tyrrhenian catamaran or Irish currow, _Naebh tonn_ "the ship of the sea." Jupiter (not being an Etruscan, he is not here allowed the _pas_) _iudh bit er_, "day being great," (which is a very dark saying.) Bacchus, _bac aois_, "the sustainer of time." Mercury, _meer cu re_, "the swift champion of the moon"--really this is mere lunacy. Any one might, with equal plausibility, derive the whole Pantheon from the English, as Apollo, "aye follow," because day always follows night, and Apollo always followed pretty girls, Daphne in particular; Mercury, "mirk hurry," because Mercury hurried the ghosts down through the mirk or murky darkness to the Styx. Hercules, "he reckless," because Hercules was a great daredevil. Venus, "vain is," because a pretty woman is too often vain of her good looks. Juno, "do now," because people were in the habit of making their requests to her, or, perhaps, because Jupiter used to say so when he wished her to give him a kiss. Jupiter, "stupider," because it was natural that Juno should say he was the stupider of the two when they happened to differ; or, _pace viri tanti_, "you pitier," when poor mortals raised their sorrowful supplications to him.

Scrieck's foundation for all his extravagant topographical derivations was the passage from Plato. Doctor Johnson seems to have been the Plato of these new etymological rambles; but we apprehend that neither the Greek nor the British philosopher would be much edified by the philological excursions of the Irish disciple. Nothing can be more perfect in its way than the dogmatic audacity with which he assigns his derivations; it is in the true vein of Bickerstaff, and a model to quacks of all classes.

"Before we commence our examination into the geographical divisions
of Italy, it is necessary to say something of that portion of the
world with which the Phoenicians became for the first time
acquainted after their settlements in Syria, since called _Europe_,
by an accident as trivial and unlikely to happen as that by which the
new world in modern times was denominated _America_, that is, by a
blunder of the Greeks. The fable of the rape of Europa, &c., was a
mere national allegory, of which the following is the substance. When
the Phoenician Homeritae had discovered the Mediterranean, &c.--they
sent out vessels to explore it, _e_, 'it,' _u_, 'from,' _ro_, 'to
go,' _ba_, 'was,' _tur_, 'voyage,' _ros_, 'to the promontory;' I. E.
_it was to go from a voyage to (Italy) the promontory_. This was, as
usual of the Greeks taking sound for sense, made into a _lady_ and a
_bull_--_tur ros_ must be the Greek [Greek: tauros], and the Lady
Europa was to ride the bull to Crete, which was one of the first
discoveries and settlements. Of the _children or results_, Minos has
been already explained as _mian_, 'minis,' nos, 'knowledge,' or 'the
art of mining.' Rhadamanthus means nothing more than that the voyage
to Crete was the first great result of discoveries on this sea: _ra_,
'going,' _ad_, 'illustrious,' _am_, 'great sea,' _en_, 'the,' _tus_,
'first.' So simple is the explanation!--(Vol. ii. p. 244.)

Scrieck had some remains of the modesty of learning, which prevent his becoming a complete master of this style. The Peloponnesus might perhaps possibly, he owned, have been derived from Pelops; though 'twas more likely it should come from _Pfel-op-on_, &c. &c. That admission was ill-judged: he ought to have denied that Pelops ever existed, and laughed at the blundering Greeks. But the Irishman is a deacon of his craft, and settles the point like an adept. "PELOPONNESUS, according to the Greek, the island of Pelops. But the name was of much greater antiquity than Greek civilization, and was, like all others, given by the Phoenicians. Pelops was an imaginary character. The meaning of the word is, _the promontory of the courteous people_; _bel_, 'mouth,' _aiobh_, 'courteous,' _a_, 'the', _neas_, 'promontory,' _aos_, 'community, race of people.'"--(Vol. ii. p. 254.)

When Partridge, the almanack-maker, had overlived the fatal day assigned for his decease by Bickerstaff, he intimated as much to his friends and the public, assuring them that he was not only then alive, but had also been alive on the very 29th March, when the wise astrologer had foretold he should die.

"Now," says Bickerstaff in reply, "I will plainly prove him to be
dead out of his own almanack for this year, and from the very passage
which he produceth to make us think him alive. He says, _he is not
only now alive, but was alive upon that very 29th of March which I
foretold he should die on_; by this he declares his opinion that a
man may be alive now who was not alive a twelvemonth ago. And,
indeed, there lies the sophistry of his argument. He dares not assert
that he was alive ever since that 29th of March, but that he _is now
alive, and was so on_ that day. I grant the latter, for he did not
die till night, as appears by the printed account of his death in a
_letter to a lord_, and whether he since revived I leave the world to
judge. This, indeed, is perfect cavilling; and I am ashamed to dwell
any longer upon it."

So if the shade of Pelops will receive our counsel, we advise him to abstain from vouching any of the family of Tantalus to testify to the reality of his existence; for he has to deal with a Bickerstaff, by whom it has been demonstrated that Tantalus is nothing but _tain tal ais_, "water receding backwards," or an incarnation of those fabulous times when water was supposed to run uphill, whence it appears that the whole race of Atreus is a mere series of non-existences. It is true we take this latter derivation from an extract from another of this judicious discriminator's labours, in the Transactions of his Academy, where, among other etymological curiosities, we have that very Irish youth Narcissus, a beautiful youth, who, seeing his _own_ image reflected in a stream, became enamoured of it, thinking it the _nymph_ of the water. _Naobh ceas as_--"the sight of a nymph in the stream." Pythia, "the priestess of Apollo at Delphos. She _always_ delivered her oracles in hexameter verses, and with musical intonation--_pitead_, 'music,' from whence the name."[10]

Sanconiathon, no longer the "old beginning of time," appears here as _san_, "holy," _con_, "understanding, sense, or wise men," _niod_, "real," _tain_, "of the country"--"the sacred writer or wise recorder of the events of his country." Pygmalion, _big_, "little," _mallein_, "mule," the _little mule_, or person of a low stature and obstinate disposition. This is hardly so good as Swift's _pigmy lion_. "Pasiphae, _ba sabas_, 'the propensity, fancy, or disposition of a cow;' and, _proh pudor_, Venus, 'herself,' _bhean_, 'the woman,' _aois_, 'of the community'--pronounced _vanus_, 'the ---- or _woman of the town_!'"