Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 19.djvu/97

Rh except one blue, one green ribbon, and a lieutenant-general of the queen's army, that had courage and insipidity enough to hear the poor doctor preach to the bare walls. Then the cloud that had hung so long and so obstinately over their intellectuals, disappeared. However, they were too stout to quit the field as their betters had done, and so contented themselves with casting sheep's eyes and silly leers at each other, while Bob and I enjoyed their stupidity.

This received notion of dulness in the Irish, has not taken its rise from the mob, though they gladly join in the cry. The English populace, the bluntest and most unenlightened race of people in Europe, are incapable of making so nice a discovery. They can readily imagine that the Irish have horns and hoofs; and it has been found easy, and of excellent use in politicks, not very long ago, to persuade them that every Irishman was somewhat more than of Venner's gang; since, instead of only chasing, he was to have slain his thousands. What affects the English mob, with regard to Irishmen, is terrour. Our English ancestors dispatched into Ireland, and their descendants, have taken effectual care to fasten this bugbear upon their mother country, and represent the Irish as monsters and cannibals, in order to justify their own more barbarous oppressions upon that people. These dreadful ideas have left so strong an impression, that even at this day, when the nations are more mixed than they have been formerly, an Irishman is looked upon by the vulgar in England, remote from great towns, as a raw head and bloodybones! It is therefore that the rumour spread of an Irish massacre has been found, of all stratagems, the Rh