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CHAPTER III.

A SHORT NOTE FROM CROFTON CROKER, TO OLIVER YORKE, COMMUNICATING BOYLE'S TABLE TALK.

Admiralty, Monday.

DEAR YORKE,-Among the archives of the Deipnosophist Club, I do not find any paper composed by the Founder of it, JOHN BOYLE. Your correspondent Brallaghan by whose extensive and exquisite learning, the whole literary world has been delighted, having applied to me on the subject, I am happy to forward you the enclosed, and if you publish it as an introduction to your account of the meetings and transactions of the Club, you will render its proceedings more clear and intelligible to the profane than they would otherwise be. I feel so strong an interest in the success of this great work that I assure you I did not get one wink of sleep last night with dreaming of you, it, and Brallaghan.

The claret which you sent down to this place was extremely cold. Pat and I finished it all in one night, but we never could have done so, only, that we converted

it into whiskey punch by adding hot water and sugar to it. We drank your health in many a bumper.

Wishing you all happiness, I remain

Your's truly,

T. CROFTON CROKER.

P.S.-You have often said I could not write a letter without putting some Irish bulls in it. Now I challenge you to discover a single bull in the above.

SPECIMENS OF THE TABLE-TALK OF THE LATE JOHN

BOYLE, ESQ., P.L., TO THE CORK CORPORATION,

"Look at that little fellow, with a crowd

Of lubbers 'round him: that's that little BOYLE
That makes the Freeholders. Just hear how loud
He talks: his clapper's not in want of oil.
He's a damned funny chap, though bloody proud."
BOLSTER'S Cork (Screw) Quarterly,

Ληρους και φλυαρεας.—TATIAN.

Jests and trifles.

I.

I was standing yesterday at the corner of Fishamble Lane, deliberating, after my usual manner, whether I should dine on beefsteak or calves' head when an Italian,

He stopped

with an organ and a monkey came by. within a few yards of where I stood, and presently became the cynosure of all the lazy vagabonds who.congregate around our Exchange. Suddenly a Kerry man came up. I knew him by his large open mouth, grey frieze, and potent shilalah. With suspended breath he stood listening to the national air of "Patrick's Day in the Morning," while he glanced alternately from the monkey to his master with an inimitable stare of surprise. Suddenly seeing another of his countrymen coming towards the place, my Kerryman ran up to him, exclaiming, "Och, Dan, my boy! honom on dhioul; here's a fellow grinding music;"

II.

What is an Irishman but a mere machine for converting potatoes into human nature ?

III.

If the age of women were known by their teeth, they would not be so fond of shewing them.

IV.

The mythology of the ancient world is Philosophy in the robe of fiction. In the sublime story of the Titans hurling mountains against the gods, and striving to tear down the very battlements of Olympus, is shadowed forth the daring impiety of ATHEISTS, who sought to wrest from the minds of men the dominion of the Deity;

and introduce into the world an anarchy of thought, and word, and act, to which the wildest chaos were harmony itself.

V.

The motto of Arminius is characteristic of the man :— "Bona conscientia est Paradisus." If his doctrines were but as good, why it would have been all the better for his proselytes.

VI.

What is the Latin for Quakeress ?-Quassatrix. Who were the first people who said nay?—The Naiads, Who first sold bacon?—The Hamadryades. Where did the dentists originally come from ?-Tuscany. Which is the most celestial part of the British empire?—The Isle of Sky. In what Greek work do we find the best account of eels?-The Iliad.

VII.

" "Tis an ill wind that blows nobody good." This is the converse of a famous Latin axiom, "Nihil ex omni parte beatum." What would tailors and milliners have done had not Mother Eve plucked the tree of knowledge?

VIII.

Vox populi, vox Dei," I call "Vox et præterea nihil.”

IX.

folks.

Rich specimens of unsophisticated nature are we Cork One of our ladies seeing a fine turbot, said to her husband, "Oh, Jerry! did you ever see such a large

fluke?" Another, a thirty-ninth cousin of my own, on her first visit to London, seeing the footmen behind the lord-mayor's coach with long wigs and gold liveries, sensibly asked, “Yerrah Dan, are them bishops ?" A Cork schoolmaster declared Cove Harbour to be "the finest water scape he ever saw !" and another commenting on the great and christian patience of a friend of mine, whom I had handled pretty severely in The Freeholder, said, "He must be a distant relation of Job." Yet with all our simplicity, we are witty betimes. Boeotia had her Pindar. Father Mat Horgan, who can quiz a pretty girl and take his tumbler like a fine old parish priest, once seeing a group of country maidens laughing heartily, asked them, inquisitively enough, "What they were laughing at? "Nothing," says rosy Peggy Callaghan. "What's nothing, my child?" says his rever"Shut your eyes," says Peggy, "and you'll soon see it, sir.”—Mem. Charley Porter, LL.D., defines nothing to be a legless stocking without a foot to it!

ence.

X.

The smiles of a pretty woman are glimpses of Paradise.

XI.

I have had intimate intercourse with sundry Englishmen, both here, and in England, and have invariably found them as ignorant of this gem of the sea," as if it were planted in the Pacific Ocean. Some of them think

I