_ CHAPTER VIII. THE DUBLIN SHOEBLACK
Upon looking over our last chapter on practical bulls, we were much concerned to find that we have so few Irish and so many foreign blunders. It is with still more regret we perceive, that notwithstanding our utmost diligence, we have not yet been able to point out the distinguishing characteristic of an Irish bull. But to compensate for this disappointment we have devised a syllogism, which some people may prefer to an a priori argument, to prove irrefragably, that the Irish are blunderers.
After the instances we have produced, chapter 6th, of the
verbum ardens of English and foreign poets, and after the resemblance that we have pointed out betwixt certain figures of rhetoric and the Irish bull, we have little reason to fear that the candid and enlightened reader should object to our major.
Major.--Those who use figurative language are disposed to make bulls.
Minor.--The Irish use figurative language.
Conclusion.--Therefore the Irish are disposed to make bulls.
We proceed to establish the truth of our minor, and the first evidence we shall call is a Dublin shoeblack. He is not in circumstances peculiarly favourable for the display of figurative language; he is in a court of justice, upon his trial for life or death. A quarrel happened between two shoeblacks, who were playing at what in England is called pitch-farthing, or heads and tails, and in Ireland, head or harp. One of the combatants threw a small paving stone at his opponent, who drew out the knife with which he used to scrape shoes, and plunged it up to the hilt in his companion's breast. It is necessary for our story to say, that near the hilt of this knife was stamped the name of Lamprey, an eminent cutler in Dublin. The shoeblack was brought to trial. With a number of significant gestures, which on his audience had all the powers that Demosthenes ascribes to action, he, in a language not purely Attic, gave the following account of the affair to his judge.
"Why, my l
ard, as I was going past the Royal Exchange I meets Billy. 'Billy,' says I, 'will you sky a copper?' 'Done,' says he; 'Done,' says I; and done and done's enough between two jantlemen. With that I ranged them fair and even with my hook-em-snivey--up they go. 'Music!' says he--'Skulls!' says I; and down they come, three brown mazards. 'By the holy! you flesh'd 'em,' says he. 'You lie,' says I. With that he ups with a lump of a two year old, and lets drive at me. I outs with my bread-earner, and gives it him up to Lamprey in the bread-basket."
To make this intelligible to the English, some comments are necessary. Let us follow the text, step by step, and it will afford our readers, as Lord Kames says of Blair's Dissertation on Ossian, a delicious morsel of criticism.
As I was going past the Royal Exchange I meets Billy. In this apparently simple exordium, the scene and the meeting with Billy are brought before the eye by the judicious use of the present tense.
Billy, says I, will you sky a copper? A copper! genus pro specie! the generic name of copper for the base individual halfpenny.
Sky a copper. To sky is a new verb, which none but a master hand could have coined: a more splendid metonymy could not be applied upon a more trivial occasion; the lofty idea of raising a metal to the skies is substituted for the mean thought of tossing up a halfpenny. Our orator compresses his hyperbole into a single word. Thus the mind is prevented from dwelling long enough upon the figure to perceive its enormity. This is the perfection of the art. Let the genius of French exaggeration and of eastern hyperbole hide their diminished heads--Virgil is scarcely more sublime.
"Ingrediturque solo, et caput inter nubila condit."
"Her feet on earth, her head amidst the clouds."
Up they go, continues our orator.
Music! says he--Skulls! says I. Metaphor continually: on one side of an Irish halfpenny there is a harp; this is expressed by the general term music, which is finely contrasted with the word skull.
Down they come, three brown mazards. Mazards! how the diction of our orator is enriched from the vocabulary of Shakspeare! the word head, instead of being changed for a more general term, is here brought distinctly to the eye by the term mazard, or face, which is more appropriate to his majesty's profile than the word skull or head.
By the holy! you flesh'd 'em, says he.
By the holy! is an oath in which more is meant than meets the ear; it is an ellipsis--an abridgment of an oath. The full formula runs thus--By the holy poker of hell! This instrument is of Irish invention or imagination. It seems a useful piece of furniture in the place for which it is intended, to stir the devouring flames, and thus to increase the torments of the damned. Great judgment is necessary to direct an orator how to suit his terms to his auditors, so as not to shock their feelings either by what is too much above or too much below common life. In the use of oaths, where the passions are warm, this must be particularly attended to, else they lose their effect, and seem more the result of the head than the heart. But to proceed:--
By the holy! you flesh'd 'em.
To flesh is another verb of Irish coinage; it means, in shoeblack dialect, to touch a halfpenny, as it goes up into the air, with the fleshy part of the thumb, so as to turn it which way you please, and thus to cheat your opponent. What an intricate explanation saved by one word!
You lie, says I.
Here no periphrasis would do the business.
With that he ups with a lump of a two year old, and lets drive at me.
He ups with.--A verb is here formed of two prepositions--a novelty in grammar. Conjunctions, we all know, are corrupted Anglo-Saxon verbs; but prepositions, according to Horne Tooke, derive only from Anglo-Saxon nouns.
All this time it is possible that the mere English reader may not be able to guess what it is that our orator ups with or takes up. He should be apprised, that a lump of a two year old is a middle-sized stone. This is a metaphor, borrowed partly from the grazier's vocabulary, and partly from the arithmetician's vade-mecum. A stone, to come under the denomination of a lump of a two year old, must be to a less stone as a two year old calf is to a yearling; or it must be to a larger stone than itself, as a two year old calf is to an ox. Here the scholar sees that there must be two statements, one in the rule of three direct and one in the rule of three inverse, to obtain precisely the thing required; yet the untutored Irishman, without suspecting the necessity of this operose process, arrives at the solution of the problem by some short cut of his own, as he clearly evinces by the propriety of his metaphor. To be sure, there seems some incongruity in his throwing this lump of a two year old calf at his adversary. No arm but that of Milo could be strong enough for such a feat. Upon recollection, however, bold as this figure may seem, there are precedents for its use.
"We read in a certain author," says Beattie, "of a giant, who, in his wrath, tore off the top of the promontory, and flung it at the enemy; and so huge was the mass, that you might, says he, have seen goats browsing on it as it flew through the air." Compared with this, our orator's figure is cold and tame.
"
I outs with my bread-earner," continues he.
We forbear to comment on
outs with, because the intelligent critic immediately perceives that it has the same sort of merit ascribed to
ups with. What our hero dignifies with the name of his bread-earner is the knife with which, by scraping shoes, he earned his bread. Pope's ingenious critic, Mr. Warton, bestows judicious praise upon the art with which this poet, in the Rape of the Lock, has used many "periphrases and uncommon expressions," to avoid mentioning the name of
scissars, which would sound too vulgar for epic dignity--fatal engine, forfex, meeting-points, &c. Though the metonymy of
bread-earner for a shoeblack's knife may not equal these in elegance, it perhaps surpasses them in ingenuity.
I gives it him up to Lamprey in the bread-basket.[1]
[Footnote 1: The stomach.]
Homer is happy in his description of wounds, but this surpasses him in the characteristic choice of circumstance.
Up to Lamprey, gives us at once a complete idea of the length, breadth, and thickness of the wound, without the assistance of the coroner. It reminds us of a passage in Virgil--
"Cervice orantis capulo tenus abdidit ensem."
"Up to the hilt his shining falchion sheathed."
Let us now compare the Irish shoeblack's metaphorical language with the sober
slang of an English blackguard, who, fortunately for the fairness of the comparison, was placed somewhat in similar circumstances.
Lord Mansfield, examining a man who was a witness in the court of King's Bench, asked him what he knew of the defendant.
"Oh, my lord, I knew him.
I was up to him."
"Up to him!" says his lordship; "what do you mean by being up to him?"
"Mean, my lord! why,
I was down upon him."
"Up to him, and down upon him!" says his lordship, turning to Counsellor Dunning, "what does the fellow mean?"
"Why, I mean, my lord, as deep as he thought himself,
I stagged him."
"I cannot conceive, friend," says his lordship, "what you mean by this sort of language; I do not understand it."
"Not understand it!" rejoined the fellow, with surprise: "
Lord, what a flat you must be!"
Though he undervalued Lord Mansfield, this man does not seem to have been a very bright genius. In his cant words, "
up to him, down upon him, stagged him," there are no metaphors; and we confess ourselves to be as great
flats as his lordship, for we do not understand this sort of language.
"True no meaning puzzles more than wit,"
as we may see in another English example. Proverbs have been called the wisdom of nations; therefore it is fair to have recourse to them in estimating national abilities. Now there is an old English proverb, "Tenterden steeple is the cause of Goodwin sands."
"This proverb," says Mr. Ray, "is used when an absurd and ridiculous reason is given of any thing in question; an account of the original whereof, I find in one of Bishop Latimer's sermons in these words--'Mr. Moore was once sent with commission into Kent to try out, if it might be, what was the cause of Goodwin sands, and the shelf which stopped up Sandwich haven. Thither cometh Mr. Moore, and calleth all the country before him, such as were thought to be men of experience, and men that could, of all likelihood, best satisfy him of the matter concerning the stopping of Sandwich haven. Among the rest came in before him an old man with a white head, and one that was thought to be little less than a hundred years old. When Mr. Moore saw this aged man, he thought it expedient to hear him say his mind in this matter (for being so old a man, it was likely that he knew the most in that presence or company); so Mr. Moore called this old aged man unto him and said, 'Father,' said he, 'tell me, if you can, what is the cause of the great arising of the sands and shelves here about this haven, which stop it up so that no ships can arrive here. You are the oldest man I can espy in all the company, so that if any man can tell any cause of it, you, of all likelihood, can say most to it, or, at leastwise, more than any man here assembled.'
"'Yea, forsooth, good Mr. Moore,' quoth this old man, 'for I am well nigh a hundred years old, and no man here in this company any thing near my age.'
"'Well then,'quoth Mr. Moore, 'how say you to this matter? What think you to be the cause of these shelves and sands which stop up Sandwich haven?'
"'Forsooth, sir,' quoth he, 'I am an old man; I think that, Tenterden steeple is the cause of Goodwin sands. For I am an old man, sir,' quoth he, 'I may remember the building of Tenterden steeple, and I may remember when there was no steeple at all there; and before that Tenterden or
Totterden steeple was in building, there was no manner of talking of any flats or sands that stopped up the haven, and therefore I think that Tenterden steeple is the cause of the decay and destroying of Sandwich haven.'" [2]--Thus far the bishop.
[Footnote 2: This ancient old man, we fear, was more knave than fool. History informs us, that the Bishop of Rochester had diverted the revenue, appropriated for keeping Sandwich harbour in repair, to the purpose of building a steeple.--Vide Fuller's Worthies of England, page 65.]
The prolix pertinacity with which this
old aged man adheres to the opinion that he had formed, without any intelligible reason, is characteristic of an English peasant; but however absurd his mode of judging may be, and however confused and incongruous his ideas, his species of absurdity surely bears no resemblance to an Hibernian blunder. We cannot even suspect it to be possible that a man of this slow, circumspect character could be in any danger of making an Irish bull; and we congratulate the English peasantry and populace, as a body, upon their possessing that temper which
"Wisely rests content with sober sense,
Nor makes to dangerous wit a vain pretence."
Even the
slang of English pickpockets and coiners is, as we may see in Colquhoun's View of the Metropolis, free from all seducing mixture of wit and humour. What Englishman would ever have thought of calling persons in the pillory
the babes in the wood? This is a common cant phrase amongst Dublin reprobates. Undoubtedly such phrases tend to lessen the power of shame and the effect of punishment, and a witty rogue will lead numbers to the gallows. English morality is not in so much danger as Irish manners must be from these humourous talents in their knights of industry. If, nevertheless, there be frequent executions for capital crimes in England, we must account for this in the words of the old Lord Chief Justice Fortescue--"More men," says his lordship, "are hanged in
Englonde in one year than
in Fraunce in seven,
because the English have better hartes; the
Scotchmenne likewise never
dare rob, but only commit larcenies." At all events, the phlegmatic temper of
Englonde secures her from making bulls. The propensity to this species of blunder exists in minds of a totally different cast; in those who are quick and enthusiastic, who are confounded by the rapidity and force with which undisciplined multitudes of ideas crowd for utterance. Persons of such intellectual characters are apt to make elisions in speaking, which they trust the capacities of their audience will supply: passing rapidly over a long chain of thought, they sometimes forget the intermediate links, and no one but those of equally rapid habits can follow them successfully.
We hope that the evidence of the Dublin shoeblack has, in some degree, tended to prove our
minor, that the Irish are disposed to use figurative language: we shall not, however, rest our cause on a single evidence, however respectable; but before we summon our other witnesses, we beg to relieve the reader's attention, which must have been fatigued by such a chapter of criticism. They shall now have the tale of a mendicant. A specimen of city rhetoric is given in the shoeblack; the country mendicant's eloquence is of a totally different species. _