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A
PUNNING ESSAY
ON THE
ANTIQUITY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE,
BY
THE AUTHOR OF 'MY POCKET-BOOK[27];'
Originally printed as one of Dean Swift's Three Manuscripts,
discovered at St. Patrick's Abbey.
[27] This highly celebrated little book, it will by some be remembered, was written to ridicule Sir John Carr's 'Stranger in Ireland;' and a more happy, witty, original, and pleasant satire, is not to be found in the English language. The book is now out of print, and only to be met with in the libraries of the curious. Had I any reason to suppose that the author (Mr. Dubois), would have republished his work, much as I should have had to regret the loss of these articles here, I certainly would not have taken them to do injury to their own witty and original parent.
We observe in Homer's Batrachomyomachia, that the instant the frog Calaminthius sees the mouse Pternoglyphus, he is so frightened that he abandons his shield and jumps into the lake: and this confirms our etymology of the mouse's name, Turn ugly face.
In the same poem, also, we find a warrior-mouse called Lichenor, which some, who, like certain commentators on Shakspeare, will always be running to the Greek for interpretations, consider as signifying one addicted to licking, but here we see the imbecility of foreign resources, and the great strength of our own. Their explanation is certainly something near the mark, but for a mouse, how much more germain to the matter is ours—Lick and gnaw? It is true, that I may have mistaken the sense of my opponents' language, but even granting them the full latitude of understanding by their words, as applied to our military mouse, that he was one addicted to licking or conquering, yet is it by no means so full and expressive as it appears in our exposition. Besides, it must be remembered that Lichenor was not so much "addicted to licking" as to being licked, witness the frog Hypsiboas's running him through the body with a rush. See I. 202.
At v. 244, we have the mouse Sitophagus, who like many a soldier of modern times had recourse to his heels and betook himself to a snug dry ditch—[Greek: êlato d'es taphon]. I had always some suspicion that this name was particularly corrupted in the last syllable, and the foregoing circumstance has, fortunately for the literary world, furnished me with a conjecture that seems to place the etymology of this coward's title beyond all doubt:—Set off again—his invariable custom on these occasions, which was perhaps owing to his having studied the art militaire in Hudibras, where he learnt that