above all other people; and yet these very endowments, which, if well cultivated, might produce such infinite blessings, serve only in their present miserable condition, to render them more sensible of wrong, more tenacious of resentment, and more eager for revenge.

For these people Catholic Emancipation can do nothing,. a Catholic establishment might do much; but, though it would remove much misery, it would perpetuate so much evil, that it is no more to be thought of than Harrington's extraordinary proposal of selling Ireland to the Jews. This, however, is the ultimate object of those people who have any object at all, and this would readily be conceded by the majority of their advocates; a number, happily so inconsiderable, that there is no reason to be alarmed at their disposition. No opinion has been more loudly and insolently maintained by men who disguise their irreligion under the name of liberality, than that nations are to be suffered to enjoy their superstitions, however monstrous; that no attempt should be made to shake their faith and supplant it by a better; and that the established religion of every country ought to be that of the majority of its inhabitants. The ground of these political dogmas is a heartless and hopeless Pyrrhonism, and that desperate moral atheism, which, resolving all things into expediency, considers truth and falsehood as equally indifferent in themselves. Even upon their own grounds these reasoners might be confuted. For, were it admitted that truth is not to be attained, and that there is no resting-place for the heart and hopes of man, . . . that which is false may still be proved to be so, . . . the specific evils which originate in such falsehood can be demonstrated from history and experience, and it is our duty to prevent those consequences. Wherever the Roman Catholic superstition predominates, it offers only these alternatives. Unbelief, with scarce a decent covering of hypocrisy, and all the abominations of vice, as exhibited in Italy and France, among the higher ranks; or base, abject, degrading, destructive bigotry in all, as in Spain, Portugal, and the Catholic Low Countries. These are the effects which always have been, and always must be produced by a Roman Catholic establishment. Whatever good, therefore, might immediately be obtained by the complete restoration of Popery, would be more than counterbalanced by the subsequent evil.

(From Collected Essays.)

TOM FOOL A KNIGHT

IN these days when honours have been so profusely distributed by the most liberal of Administrations and the most popular of kings, I cannot but think that Tom Fool ought to be knighted. And I assure the reader that this is not said on the score of personal feeling, because I have the honour to be one of his relations, but purely with regard to his own claims, and the fitness of things as well as to the character of the Government.

It is disparaging him, and derogatory to his family, which in undisputed and indisputable antiquity exceeds any other in these kingdoms,—it is disparaging him, I say, to speak of him as we do of Tom Duncombe, and Tom Cribb, and Tom Campbell; or of Tom Hood and Tom Moore, and Tom Sheridan; and before them of Tom Browne and Tom D'Urfey, and Tom Killigrew. Can it be supposed if he were properly presented to his Majesty (Lord Nugent would introduce him), and knelt to kiss the royal hand, that our most gracious and good-natured king would for a moment hesitate to give him the accolade, and say to him "Rise Sir Thomas!"

I do not ask for the Guelphic Order; simple knighthood would in this case be more appropriate.

It is perfectly certain that in this case Sir Thomas More, if he were alive, would not object to have him for a brother knight and namesake. It is equally certain that Sir Thomas Lethbridge could not, and ought not.

Dryden was led into a great error by his animosity against Hunt and Shadwell when he surmised that dulness and clumsiness were fatal to the name of Tom. "There are," says Serjeant Kite, "several sorts of Toms; Tom o' Lincoln, Tom Tit, Tom Tell-truth, Tom o' Bedlam and Tom Fool!" With neither of these is dulness or clumsiness associated. And in the primitive world, according to the erudite philologist who with so much industry and acumen collected the fragments of its language, the word itself signified just or perfect. Therefore the first Decan of the constellation Virgo was called Tom, and from thence Court de Gobelin derives Themis and thus it becomes evident that Themistocles belongs to the Toms. Let no Thomas then or Sir Thomas, who has made shipwreck of his fortune or his reputation or of both, consider himself as having been destined to such disgrace by his

godfathers and godmothers when they gave him that name.

The

name is a good name. Any one who has ever known Sir Thomas Acland may like it and love it for his sake ever think the worse of it for Tom Fool's.

and no wise man will

No! the name Thomas is a good name, however it has been disparaged by some of those persons who are known by it at this time. Though Bovius chose to drop it and assume the name Zephiriel in its stead in honour of his tutelary angel, the change was not for the better, being indeed only a manifestation of his own unsound state of mind. And though in the reign of King James the First, Mr. William Shepherd of Towcester christened his son by it for a reason savouring of disrespect, it is not the worse for the whimsical consideration that induced him to fix upon it. The boy was born on the never-to-be forgotten fifth of November 1605, about the very hour when the Gunpowder Treason was to have been consummated; and the father chose to have him called Thomas, because he said this child, if he lived to grow up, would hardly believe that ever such wickedness could be attempted by the sons of men.

It is recorded that a parrot which was seized by a kite and carried into the air, escaped by exclaiming Sancte Thoma adjuva me! for upon that powerful appeal the kite relaxed his hold, and let loose the intended victim. This may be believed, though it is among the miracles of Thomas à Becket, to whom, and not to the great schoolman of Aquino, nor the Apostle of the East, the invocation was addressed. Has any other human name ever

wrought so remarkable a deliverance?

Let

Has any other name made a greater noise in the world? Lincoln tell, and Oxford; for although, omnis clocha clochabilis in clocherio clochando, clochans clochativo, clochare facit clochabiliter clochantes, yet among them all, Master Janotus de Bragmardo would have assigned pre-eminence to the mighty Toms.

The name then is sufficiently vindicated, even if any vindication were needed, when the paramount merits of my claimant are considered.

Merry Andrew likewise should be presented to receive the same honour, for sundry good reasons, and especially for this, that there is already a Sir Sorry Andrew.

I should also recommend Tom Noddy, were it not for this consideration, that the honour would probably soon be merged in an official designation, and therefore lost upon him; for when a

certain eminent statesman shall be called from the Lower House, as needs he must ere long, unless the party who keep moving and push him forward as their leader, should before that time relieve him of his hereditary rights, dignities, and privileges, no person can possibly be found so worthy to succeed him in office and tread in his steps, as Tom Noddy.

(From The Doctor.)

CHARLES LAMB

[Charles Lamb (1775-1834), born in the Temple, London, the son of John Lamb, clerk and confidential servant to Samuel Salt, a bencher of the Inner Temple. Educated at Christ's Hospital, he early obtained a clerkship in the South Sea House, which however was exchanged after a year or two for one in the India House, where he remained until his retirement on a pension, in the year 1824. Lamb never married, but devoted himself to the care of his sister Mary, ten years his senior, who was subject to fits of mental aberration, in one of which she had fatally wounded her mother, in the year 1796. Besides his essays and other writings, mainly critical, in prose, Lamb wrote occasional verse; a short romance modelled upon the sentimental school of Sterne and Mackenzie; a blank verse tragedy, redolent of Massinger and Fletcher; and a farce, the memorable Mr. H." produced, for one night only, at Drury Lane, in 1806.]

"

THE literary style of Charles Lamb, and the sources from which it was derived, have been so often described and traced, that there remains little new to be said. But it may be doubted whether that style, characteristic as it is, has had much to do with the writer's popularity. The style is certainly "quaint" in a true sense of that much abused word—that is to say, it wears the strangeness we associate with something old-fashioned; it contains an element of the fantastic which yet is not affectation. So far as Lamb's style was deliberately manipulated by himself, it was the result of a humorous intuition that the style of his favourite writers of the 16th and 17th centuries would have a novel and whimsical effect if applied to modern ways, thoughts, and topics. It is quite easy to trace in Lamb's English, imitations (conscious or unconscious) of the writers he most loved, notably Milton and Sir Thomas Browne; Fuller, and the earlier "Character" writers, Earle and Overbury; besides others, such as Burton and Isaac Walton. He falls naturally into these writers' rhythms and vocabularies, just as the subject he is treating recalls them to his memory. Thus, although Lamb is undeniably

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