[39] How a nature endowed with powerful impulses like these might be led along with them into a totally different groove, I am reminded by a traditionary anecdote of student life. A couple of college chums are under the impression that their motions are watched by an inquisitive tutor, who for the occasion may be called Dr Fusby. They become both exceeding wroth, and the more daring of the two engages on the first opportunity to "settle the fellow." They are occupied in ardent colloquy, whether on the predicates or other matters it imports not, when a sudden pause in the conversation enables them to be aware that there is a human being breathing close on the other side of the "oak." The light is extinguished, the door opened, and a terrific blow from a strong and scientifically levelled fist hurls the listener down-stairs to the next landing-place, from which resting-place he hears thundered after him for his information, "If you come back again, you scoundrel, I'll put you into the hands of Dr Fusby." From that source, however, no one had much to dread for some considerable period, during which the Doctor was confined to his bedroom by serious indisposition. It refreshed the recollection of this anecdote, years after I had heard it, and many years after the date attributed to it, to have seen a dignified scholar make what appeared to me an infinitesimally narrow escape from sharing the fate of Dr Fusby, having indeed just escaped it by satisfactorily proving to a hasty philosopher that he was not the party guilty of keeping a certain copy of Occam on the sentences of Peter Lombard out of his reach.
[40] The author, from a vitiated reminiscence, at first made the unpardonable blunder of attributing this touching trait of nature to the noble purchaser of the Valderfaer Boccaccio. For this, as not only a mistake, but in some measure an imputation on the tailor who could have made for his lordship pockets of dimensions so abnormal, I received due castigation from an eminent practical man in the book-hunting field.
[41] Dict. de Bibliologie, i. 391.
[42] A good modern specimen of a lengthy title-page may be found in one of the books appropriate to the matter in hand, by the diligent French bibliographer Peignot:—
"Dictionnaire Raisonné de Bibliologie: contenant—1mo, L'explication des principaux termes relatifs à la bibliographie, à l'art typographique, à la diplomatique, aux langues, aux archives, aux manuscrits, aux médailles, aux antiquités, &c.; 2do, Des notices historiques détaillées sur les principales bibliothèques anciennes et modernes; sur les différentes sectes philosophiques; sur les plus célèbres imprimeurs, avec une indication des meilleures éditions sorties de leurs presses, et sur les bibliographes, avec la liste de leurs ouvrages; 3tio, enfin, L'exposition des différentes systèmes bibliographiques, &c.,—ouvrage utile aux bibliothécaires, archivistes, imprimeurs, libraires, &c. Par G. Peignot, Bibliothécaire de la Haute-Saône, membre-correspondant de la Société libre d'emulation du Haut-Rhin. Indocti discant, et ament meminisse periti. Paris, An x. 1802."
Here follows a rival specimen selected from the same department of literature:—
"Bibliographie Instructive; ou, Traité de la Connaissance des Livres Rares et Singuliers; contenant un catalogue raisonné de la plus grande partie de ces livres précieux, qui ont paru successivement dans la république des lettres, depuis l'invention de l'imprimerie jusqu'à nos jours; avec des notes sur la différence et la rareté de leurs éditions, et des remarques sur l'origine de cette rareté actuelle, et son dégré plus ou moins considerable; la manière de distinguer les éditions originales, d'avec les contrefaites; avec une description typographique particulière, du composé de ces rares volumes, au moyen de laquelle il sera aisé de reconnoître facilement les exemplaires, ou mutilés en partie, ou absolument imparfaits, qui s'en rencontrent journellement dans le commerce, et de les distinguer sûrement de ceux qui seront exactement complets dans toutes leurs parties. Disposé par ordre de matières et de facultés, suivant le système bibliographique généralement adopté; avec une table générale des auteurs, et un système complet de bibliographie choisie. Par Guillaume-François de Bûre le jeune, Libraire de Paris."
[43] This passage has been quoted and read by many people quite unconscious of the arrant bull it contains. Indeed, an eminent London newspaper, to which the word Bull cannot be unfamiliar, tells me, in reviewing my first edition, that it is no bull at all, but a plain statement of fact, and boldly quotes it in confirmation of this opinion. There could be no better testimony to its being endowed with the subtle spirit of the genuine article. Irish bulls, as it has been said of constitutions, "are not made—they grow," and that only in their own native soil. Those manufactured for the stage and the anecdote-books betray their artificial origin in their breadth and obviousness. The real bull carries one with it at first by an imperceptible confusion and misplacement of ideas in the mind where it has arisen, and it is not until you reason back that you see it. Horace Walpole used to say that the best of all bulls, from its thorough and grotesque confusion of identity, was that of the man who complained of having been "changed at nurse;" and perhaps he is right. An Irishman, and he only, can handle this confusion of ideas so as to make it a more powerful instrument of repartee than the logic of another man: take, for instance, the beggar who, when imploring a dignified clergyman for charity, was charged not to take the sacred name in vain, and answered, "Is it in vain, then? and whose fault is that?" I have doubts whether the saying attributed to Sir Boyle Roche about being in two places at once "like a bird," is the genuine article. I happened to discover that it is of earlier date than Sir Boyle's day, having found, when rummaging in an old house among some Jacobite manuscripts, one from Robertson of Strowan, the warrior poet, in which he says about two contradictory military instructions, "It seems a difficult point for me to put both orders in execution, unless, as the man said, I can be in two places at once, like a bird." A few copies of these letters were printed for the use of the Abbotsford Club. This letter of Strowan's occurs in p. 92.
[44] This case has been often referred to in law-books, but I have never met with so full a statement of the contents of the declaration as in the Retrospective Review (vol. v. p. 81).
[45] It is curious to observe how bitter a prejudice Themis has against her own humbler ministers. Most of the bitterest legal jokes are at the expense of the class who have to carry the law into effect. Take, for instance, the case of the bailiff who had been compelled to swallow a writ, and, rushing into Lord Norbury's court to proclaim the indignity done to justice in his person, was met by the expression of a hope that the writ was "not returnable in this court."