Chapter IX: Part XVI (3)

But to come back to the geographical division of the Levant, to which _e u ro ba tur ros_, which the foolish Greeks construed Europa and the bull, were only preparatory, we have another luculent example of the Bickerstaff style in _Gallia Togata_.

"It is said the country was called _Togata_ by the Romans, because
they wore the Roman _toga_ or gown. This seems doubtful, for when a
country became a Roman province, the same reason for the name should
apply universally. We must therefore seek a more satisfactory
derivation for that name, to be found in the circumstances of the
country. Gallia Togata consists of the plain country intersected by
the Po and its numerous tributaries, and surrounded on the north and
west by the high ranges of the Alps, on the south by the Apennines,
and on the east by the Adriatic. It is, perhaps, the best-watered and
most fertile country in Europe, enjoying a delightful climate. Its
name, Togata, says all this, _togh_, _it is the chosen land_, or, to
use an English idiom, _choice land, the most desirable and delightful
country_; _togh a ta_, literally _the chosen spot or place_. Sound,
not sense, suggested the Roman derivation."

Of course Gallia _Braccata_ and Gallia _Comata_ had just as little to say to "long hair," or a "pair of breeches," as Gallia Togata to a Roman gown, and the application of _gens togata_ to the inhabitants of Italy, as contradistinguished from the transalpine and other provinces, was altogether a blunder of the ancients.

"We have before us again CRETA, the largest of the Greek islands. Its
name is derived by some from the Curetes, who are said to have been
its first inhabitants; by others from the nymph Crete, daughter of
Hesperus; and by others from Creos, a son of Jupiter, and the nymph
Idoea. These are private conceits. It derives its name from its
shape and external appearance from the sea; and had such an island
been discovered in modern times by English navigators, it would have
been called _the ridge_ island, the precise meaning of its name in
Celtic _creit a_, "the ridge," putting the article last, in
conformity to idiom."

CYTHERA, "one of the Ionian Islands. Like all the other names for
which the Greeks had no known origin, they derived it from an
individual called _Cytherus_. It is subject to _heavy showers_, from
which the name _cith_, showers, _er_, great, _a_, the,--that is, _the
island of heavy showers_."

ZACYNTHUS.--"A small island to the south of Cephalonia, (_ce fal ia_;
_i. e._ the fruitful plains country.) The Greeks say the island was
named from a companion of Hercules, who, dying from the bite of a
serpent, was buried there. It was so called, because a strong current
is there first felt by the mariner coming from the east, _za cing
thus_, current, strong, first."

We really find some difficulty in believing that it is not Swift's _Essay on the Antiquity of the English Language_ that we have before us.

"My present attempt is to assert the antiquity of our English tongue,
which, as I shall undertake to prove by invincible arguments, hath
varied very little for these two thousand six hundred and thirty-four
years past. And my proof shall be drawn from etymology, wherein I
shall use my matter much better than Skinner, Verstegan, Cambden, and
many other superficial pretenders have done; for I will put no force
upon the words, nor desire any more favour than to allow for the
usual accidents of composition, or the avoiding a _cacophonia_.

"I will begin with the Grecians, among whom the most ancient are the
Greek leaders on both sides at the siege of Troy. For it is plain,
from Homer, that the Trojans spoke Greek, as well as the Grecians. Of
these latter _Achilles_ was the most valiant. This hero was of a
restless, unquiet nature, and therefore, as Guy of Warwick was called
a _Kill-care_, and another terrible man a _Kill-Devil_, so this
general was called a _Kill-Ease_, or destroyer of ease, and at length
by corruption _Achilles_.

"Hector, on the other side, was the bravest among the Trojans. He had
destroyed so many of the Greeks by _hacking_ and _tearing_ them, that
his soldiers, when they saw him fighting, would cry out, 'Now the
enemy will be _hackt_--now he will be _tore_.' At last, by putting
both words together, the appellation was given to their leader under
the name of _Hack-tore_, and, for the more commodious sounding,
_Hector_.

"The next I shall mention is _Andromache_, the famous wife of Hector.
Her father was a Scottish gentleman of a noble family still
subsisting in that ancient kingdom; but being a foreigner in Troy, to
which city he led some of his countrymen in the defence of Priam, as
_Dictys Cretensis_ learnedly observes, Hector fell in love with his
daughter, and the father's name was _Andrew Mackay_. The young lady
was called by the same name, only a little softened to the Greek
accent."

And now, and as no Irish antiquary can be well supposed to write a complete book without giving his own theory of the round towers of that country, we come to the chapter on these singular structures, in which, of course, all former enquirers are proved to have been egregiously wrong, and a new theory established on incontrovertible evidence; viz. that the round towers were monuments erected over different incarnations of the god Buddho. As usual, there is the alleged mistake of sound for sense to account for the reason why their common appellation of _clogteach_, or "bell house," should not truly express their use.

"I shall remark upon a _vulgar error_ which has had great currency
among Irish antiquarians, who have asserted that they were called
_clogteach_, 'steeples, belfries.' Bells are of comparatively recent
introduction into Ireland, and _clock_, from which the word has
evidently been derived, still more modern. The blunder has arisen
from ignorance of the language. I have a memorandum in an Irish MS.,
that they were called by the people _leactaidh_, that is, _monuments
of the dead_, the sound of which has been mistaken by those who but
imperfectly knew the language. Many writers have been mistaken by
this."

The memorandum in the Irish MS. looks very like Bickerstaff's _Letter to a Lord_. We could wager our crutch against the baton of the Ulster king, that the memorandum is in his own or his scribe's handwriting, and the language in which it is imagined, a variety of that new dialect in which Mr Silk Buckingham declares that his Irish friends converse with the Phoenician aborigines of Mount Atlas. But the proof of the pudding is the eating of it, and it seems that under one of the towers they have found Buddho himself, body and bones, which puts the matter beyond controversy; for if Buddho be buried under the tower, the tower itself must needs be Buddho's monument. At p. 210, (Vol. ii.,) we have a representation of the Indian divinity (how comes it that Buddho is not made an Etruscan?) lying buried in the basement of the tower at a place called Ardmore. There seems to be no question that a skeleton was got in the bottom of this tower, and another in another; and the discoverers of the fact deserve credit for their addition to the slight stock of knowledge that the Irish antiquarians seem to possess of those which are perhaps the most singular monuments in their country; but that the bones are those of a Buddho! really this exceeds our largest estimate of human fatuity.

But for the communications announcing these discoveries, the two volumes would be altogether destitute of a single fact, or even useful hint, bearing on the diversified subjects which their prodigiously ignorant and audacious author has presumed to handle. How far the fact of these skeletons being found in such a situation, may affect the rational investigation of the question, we do not pretend to judge. We would merely observe, that human interments are found under most ecclesiastical foundations, and that their occurrence under the "turres ecclesiasticae" of Cambrensis, seems at present no more wonderful than their occurrence in the vaults of an ordinary church.

But we really were surprised, after our long familiarity with "the holy illustrious guiding one of the sea"--"the mighty lord of the waters"--"the swift champion of the moon," and the other moonstruck pseudo deities of the Eugubian tables, to find the chief place and honour in the island of their own discovery and adoption taken from them, and bestowed on the Indian Buddho. The "swift champion of the moon" seems to have been sensible of the affront, and to have made his indignation perceptible in the suggestion of an argument that can hardly have descended from any but the lunar sphere; viz. that because the Buddhists of the east raise monumental dagobas over the relics of their deity, and the Irish round towers, as is alleged, (by a nameless interpolation in a nameless Irish MS.,) have been called by a name arguing monumental purposes, that therefore the Irish towers are dagobas, and any bones that may be found in or about their foundations are relics of Buddho. The dagobas of Ceylon and India are buildings of a totally different character from these towers; they do strongly resemble the pyramidal structures of Yucatan, but bear not the remotest likeness to any round tower either in Ireland or elsewhere. Such facts might furnish grounds for arguing an identity between Buddho and Quaccalcoatle, (and such an identity appears by no means improbable;) but thence to attempt the deduction of any argument applicable to the round towers in Ireland or Great Britain, only shows the illogical constitution of the arguer's mind.

We have given the book and the subject more space than we intended, and certainly much more than the former, by itself, is worth; but the subject is one that, whether magnified into an undue importance by having been repeatedly treated by men of note and learning or not, does, in the present state of European literature, stand high among the loftiest marks aimed at by human intellect; and any one singling himself from the crowd of lookers-on, and addressing himself to hit it, makes himself, for the moment, the observed of the whole learned world, and by his success or his failure acquires honour, or brings down reproach upon his country. We cannot permit British literature to be scandalized by the failure of one from our ranks who is manifestly inadequate to the task even of handling his piece, much less of bringing down the popinjay, without condemning the rashness of the attempt, and exonerating ourselves from any charge of participating in it.

SUSPIRIA DE PROFUNDIS: BEING A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER.