Page:Blackwood's Magazine volume 046.djvu/681

1839.] for a scythe, and Prudentius for a hedging-bill. This last writer delivers his opinion thus:—

i. e. his brother, jealous of his attested sanctity, fractures his brotherly throat with a curved hedging-bill. "All which is respectfully submitted by your Committee, not so much as decisive of the question, (for it is not,) but in order to impress upon the youthful mind the importance which has ever been attached to the quality of the tooling by such men as Chrysostom and Irenæus."

"Dang Irenæus!" said Toad-in-the-hole, who now rose impatiently to give the next toast:—"Our Irish friends—and a speedy revolution in their mode of Tooling, as well as every thing else connected with the art!"

"Gentlemen, I'll tell you the plain truth. Every day of the year we take up a paper, we read the opening of a murder. We say, this is good—this is charming—this is excellent! But, behold you! scarcely have we read a little farther before the word Tipperary or Ballina-something betrays the Irish manufacture. Instantly we loathe it: we call to the waiter; we say, 'Waiter, take away this paper; send it out of the house; it is absolutely offensive to all just taste.' I appeal to every man whether, on finding a murder (otherwise perhaps promising enough) to be Irish, he does not feel himself as much insulted as when Madeira being ordered he finds it to be Cape; or when, taking up what he believes to be a mushroom, it turns out what children call a toadstool. Tithes, politics, or something wrong in principle, vitiate every Irish murder. Gentlemen, this must be reformed, or Ireland will not be a land to live in; at least, if we do live there, we must import all our murders, that's clear." Toad-in-the-hole sat down growling with suppressed wrath, and the universal "Hear, hear!" sufficiently showed that he spoke the general feeling.

The next toast was—"The sublime epoch of Burkism and Harism!"

This was drunk with enthusiasm; and one of the members, who spoke to the question, made a very curious communication to the company:—"Gentlemen, we fancy Burkism to be a pure invention of our own times: and in fact no Pancirollus has ever enumerated this branch of art when writing de rebus deperditis. Still I have ascertained that the essential principle of the art was known to the ancients, although, like the art of painting upon glass, of making the myrrhine cups, &c., it was lost in the dark ages for want of encouragement. In the famous collection of Greek epigrams made by Planudes is one upon a very charming little case of Burkism: it is a perfect little gem of art. The epigram itself I cannot lay my hand upon at this moment: but the following is an abstract of it by Salmasius, as I find it in his notes on Vopiscus: 'Est et elegans epigramma Lucilii, (well he might call it 'elegans!') ubi medicus et pollinctor de compacto sic egerunt, ut medicus ægros omnes curæ suæ commissos occideret'—this was the basis of the contract, you see, that on the one part the doctor for himself and his assigns doth undertake and contract duly and truly to murder all the patients committed to his charge: but why? There lies the beauty of the case—'Et ut pollinctori amico suo traderet pollingendos.' The pollinctor, you are aware, was a person whose business it was to dress and prepare dead bodies for burial. The original ground of the transaction appears to have been sentimental: 'he was my friend,' says the murderous doctor—'he was dear to me,' in speaking of the pollinctor. But the law, gentlemen, is stern and harsh: the law will not hear of these tender motives: to sustain a contract of this nature in law, it is essential that a 'consideration' should be given. Now, what was the consideration? For thus far all is on the side of the pollinctor: he will be well paid for his services; but meantime, the generous, the noble-minded doctor, gets nothing. What was the little consideration, again, I ask, which the law would insist on the doctor's taking? You shall hear: 'Et ut pollinctor vicissim quos furabatur de pollinctione mortuorum medico mitteret doni ad alliganda vulnera eorum quos curabat.' Now, the case is clear: the whole went on a principle of reciprocity which would have kept up the trade for ever. The doctor was also a sur-