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to repeat it here, or to give the additions with which I favoured my
comrade in misfortune. But I confess that I told him ours was the
greatest family and finest palace in Ireland, that we were
enormously wealthy, related to all the peerage descended from the
ancient kings, &c.; and, to my surprise, in the course of our
conversation, I found that my interlocutor knew a great deal more
about Ireland than I did. When, for instance, I spoke of my
descent,--
'From which race of kings?' said he.
'Oh!' said I (for my memory for dates was never very accurate),
'from the old ancient kings of all.'
'What! can you trace your origin to the sons Japhet?' said he.
''Faith, I can,' answered I, 'and farther too,--Nebuchadnezzar, if
you like.'
'I see,' said the candidate, smiling, 'that you look upon those
legends with incredulity. These Partholans and Nemedians, of whom
your writers fondly make mention, cannot be authentically vouched
for in history. Nor do I believe that we have any more foundation
for the tales concerning them, than for the legends relative to
Joseph of Arimathea and King Bruce which prevailed two centuries
back in the sister island.
And then he began a discourse about the Phoenicians, the Scyths or
Goths, the Tuath de Danans, Tacitus, and King MacNeil; which was, to
say the truth, the very first news I had heard of those personages.
As for English, he spoke it as well as I, and had seven more
languages, he said, equally at his command; for, on my quoting the
only Latin line that I knew, that out of the poet Homer, which
says,--
'As in praesenti perfectum fumat in avi,'
he began to speak to me in the Roman tongue; on which I was fain to
tell him that we pronounced it in a different way in Ireland, and so
got off the conversation.
My honest friend's history was a curious one, and it may be told
here in order to show of what motley materials our levies were
composed:--
'I am,' said he, 'a Saxon by birth, my father being pastor of the
village of Pfannkuchen, where I imbibed the first rudiments of
knowledge. At sixteen (I am now twenty-three), having mastered the
Greek and Latin tongues, with the French, English, Arabic, and
Hebrew; and having come into possession of a legacy of a hundred
rixdalers, a sum amply sufficient to defray my University courses, I
went to the famous academy of Gottingen, where I devoted four years
to the exact sciences and theology. Also, I learned what worldly
accomplishments I could command; taking a dancing-tutor at the
expense of a groschen a lesson, a course of fencing from a French
practitioner, and attending lectures on the great horse and the
equestrian science at the hippodrome of a celebrated cavalry
professor. My opinion is, that a man should know everything as far
as in his power lies: that he should complete his cycle of
experience; and, one science being as necessary as another, it
behoves him.
'I am not of a saving turn, hence my little fortune of a hundred
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