“I outs with my bread-earner,” continues he.
We forbear to comment on outs with, because the intelligent critic immediately perceives that it has the same sort of merit ascribed to ups with. What our hero dignifies with the name of his bread-earner is the knife with which, by scraping shoes, he earned his bread. Pope’s ingenious critic, Mr. Warton, bestows judicious praise upon the art with which this poet, in the Rape of the Lock, has used many “periphrases and uncommon expressions,” to avoid mentioning the name of scissars, which would sound too vulgar for epic dignity—fatal engine, forfex, meeting-points, &c. Though the metonymy of bread-earner for a shoeblack’s knife may not equal these in elegance, it perhaps surpasses them in ingenuity.
I gives it him up to Lamprey in the bread-basket.[49]
Homer is happy in his description of wounds, but this surpasses him in the characteristic choice of circumstance. Up to Lamprey, gives us at once a complete idea of the length, breadth, and thickness of the wound, without the assistance of the coroner. It reminds us of a passage in Virgil—
“Cervice orantis capulo tenus abdidit ensem.”
“Up to the hilt his shining falchion sheathed.”
Let us now compare the Irish shoeblack’s metaphorical language with the sober slang of an English blackguard, who, fortunately for the fairness of the comparison, was placed somewhat in similar circumstances.
Lord Mansfield, examining a man who was a witness in the court of King’s Bench, asked him what he knew of the defendant.
“Oh, my lord, I knew him. I was up to him.”
“Up to him!” says his lordship; “what do you mean by being up to him?”
“Mean, my lord! why, I was down upon him.”