of the pithy sayings, smart jokes, and witty repartees, which are in common use among us, and are imputed to well-known individuals. A large part of Joe Miller's jokes, pretending to have originated with Englishmen, are told in France, Germany, Russia, Turkey, Persia, and perchance China, and in like manner descend from generation to generation, being successively attributed to such characters as they may suit. Some scandalous story being told of Dr. Bellamy, a person asked him if it were true. "No," said the doctor; 66 some fellow invented it, and laid it to me; but the rascal knew me." It is this suitableness of an anecdote to an individual, that often gives it much additional point. The discreet story-teller, therefore, always seeks to find some hero to whom he may impute his tale, in the hope that he may give to it this adventitious zest. An American was once telling some anecdote of Ethan Allen, of Vermont, to a German, remarking, by the way, that it must be true, for his grandfather was present, and witnessed the fact. "It is a good story, certainly," said the German, "but I have heard the same told of my great grandfather, Baron Von Hottengen, ever since I was a boy." This incident throws a great deal of light upon our subject. Let one acquire a repu tation for any particular thing, and every anecdote from the time of Confucius down to the present day, that may seem to be illustrative of the qualities of this individual, is told of him. Thus it is that Ethan Allen is the hero of many wild adventures that he never achieved, and the witty Lord Norbury is credited for many a good joke that he never uttered. There is nothing like starting with a character beforehand, even though it may be the outright invention of ignorant prejudice. It is to this circumstance that the New England Yankee is indebted for the credit, among our Southern brethren, of inventing wooden nutmegs, oak-leaf segars, horses with false tails, and all other ingenious modes of cheating in trade. It is to this circumstance that the Irish are credited for every ludicrous blunder, to whomsoever it may properly belong. If the Irish were disposed to retaliate, it would be easy to find the means; for it was an English, not an Irish, orator, who said, in the house of commons, that the proposed tax on leather would be an insupportable burden to the barefooted peasantry of Ireland. It was an English poet who says, "A painted vest Prince Vortigern had on, Which from a naked Pict his grandsire won." It was a French philosopher, M. Jourville, who, being prepared to observe an eclipse of the sun, at which the king was to be present, said to M. Cassini, "Shall we not wait for the king before we begin the eclipse?" It was a French gentleman who, hearing a lady exclaim against the inhumanity of Buffon in dissecting his own cousin, remarked, "But, my dear madam, the man who was dissected was dead!" It was also a Frenchman who, being asked by a young man for his only daughter in marriage, exclaimed, "No, sir, if I had fifty only daughters, I would not give you one of them! * We can find bulls in higher company than this. Pope, in his translation of Homer, speaking of an eagle and her young, says, '' Dryden sings, "A horrid silence first invades the ear." Thomson also sings, "He saw her charming, but he saw not half The charms her downcast modesty concealed." But the prize bull belongs to Milton, who, in his Paradise Lost, says, "Adam, the goodliest man of men since born His sons; the fairest of her daughters, Eve." Such are a few samples of genuine bulls of other than Irish origin; but what story-teller, bringing them to market, and wishing to get for them the highest price, a hearty laugh,would fail of attributing them to the Irish? There is another class of what are called Irish bulls, which appear to me to be specimens of wit rather than of blunder. There was once an Irish sailor by the name of Larry, who sailed for many years on board a little packet that plied between New Haven and New York. She was commanded by Captain B******, who, I am sorry to say, was very profane. On a certain occasion, Larry was summoned before the Supreme Court of Connecticut as a witness. When he was called upon the stand, a doubt arose whether this Irish Catholic understood the nature of an oath. At length the judge made the inquiry of Larry, who replied as follows: "Is it the nathur of an oath ye'd like to know? If your honor 'd sailed with Captain Ben B****** for six years, on board the Polly packet, as I have done, ye'd not be after asking that question." An Irish woman lately applied for the place of cook, to a lady of Boston. When the terms were agreed upon, the lady asked to whom she could apply for the woman's character; to which she replied, "O, my chracter? and you wish to have my chracter? Well, I'm thinking nobody can give it to ye so well as myself." These and a multitude of other instances, which are set down as blunders, approaching to bulls, show any thing but confusion of ideas. They spring from a shrewd wit, veiled beneath the mask of simplicity. But while we would thus maintain that a large share of the blunders attributed to the Irish do not belong to them; that bulls, and good ones too, are often committed by those in whom we can trace no Hibernian blood; and that many of those which are actually traceable to Irish origin are still only such mistakes as might be expected from an imperfect knowledge of our language,still it must be admitted that a certain confusion of speech, or transposition of ideas, is common to the Irish people. A part of even this, however, arises from the inconsiderate haste with which they speak. An Irishman was once reading a newspaper, during the twenty years' war. He began a paragraph as follows: "The French have taken umbrage." He did not stop to finish the sentence, but exclaimed, "The rascals! it's the first British port they have got yet! Pat's loquacity often leads him into mistakes. It is better, in his philosophy, to blunder than be |