ABSTRACT
Madame de Sevigné observes, that there are few people sufficiently candid, or sufficiently enlightened, to distinguish, in their judgments of others, between those faults and mistakes which proceed from manque d’esprit, and those which arise merely from manque d’usage. 56 We cannot appreciate the talents or character of foreigners, without making allowance for their ignorance of our manners, of the idiom of our language, and the multifarious significations of some of our words. A French gentleman, who dined in London, in company with the celebrated author of the Rambler, wishing to show him a mark of peculiar respect, drank Dr Johnson’s health in these words: ‘Your health, Mr Vagabond.’ 57 Assuredly no well-judging Englishman would undervalue the Frenchman’s abilities, because he mistook the meaning of the words Vagabond and Rambler; he would recollect, that in old English and modern French authors, vagabond / means wanderer: des eaux vagabondes is a phrase far from inelegant. But independently of this consideration, a no well-bred gentleman would put a foreigner out of countenance by openly laughing at such a mistake: he would imitate the politeness of the Frenchman, who, when Dr Moore said, ‘I am afraid the expression I have just used is not French,’ replied, ‘Non, monsieur — mais it mérite bien de l’être.’ 58 It would, indeed, be a great stretch of politeness to extend this to our Irish neighbours: for no Irishism can ever deserve to be Anglicised, though so many Gallicisms have of late not only been naturalised in England, but even adopted by the most fashionable speakers and writers. The mistaking a feminine for a masculine noun, or a masculine for a feminine, must, in all probability, have happened to every Englishman that ever opened his lips in Paris; yet without losing his reputation for common sense. But when a poor Irish haymaker, who had but just learned a few phrases of the English language by rote, mistook a feminine for a masculine noun, and began his speech in a court of justice with these words: ‘My lord, I am a poor widow,’ instead of ‘My lord, I am a poor widower;’ it was sufficient to throw a grave judge and jury into convulsions of laughter. It was formerly, in law, no murder to kill a merus Hibernicus; 59 and it is to this day no offence against good manners to laugh at any of this species. b It is of a thousand times more consequence to have the laugh than the argument on our side, as all those know full well / who have any experience in the management of the great or little vulgar. By the common custom and courtesy of England we have the laugh on our side: let us keep it by all means. All means are justifiable to obtain a great end, as all great men maintain in practice, if not in theory. We need not, in imitating them, have any scruples of conscience; we need not apprehend, that to ridicule our Hibernian neighbours unmercifully is unfriendly or ungenerous. Nations, it has been well observed, are never generous in their conduct towards each other. We must follow the common custom of nations where we have no law to guide our proceedings. We must therefore carefully continue the laudable practice of ridiculing the blunders, whether real or imaginary, of Irishmen. In conversation, Englishmen are permitted sometimes to blunder, but without ever being called blunderers. It would, indeed, be an intolerable restraint upon social intercourse, if every man were subject to be taxed for each inaccuracy of language — if he were compelled to talk, upon all occasions, as if he were amenable to a star-chamber of criticism, and surrounded by informers. 60
