With equal confidence Scrieck addresses himself to decipher the tablets of Gubbio. "That the Dutch was the language of Etruria," he says, "appears not only from these unquestionably Celtic (_i. e._ Dutch) names of the most ancient places in Italy, but also by that extraordinary monument of antiquity, the Etruscan inscription, which, Gruter writes me, was found some years back at Eugubio (Gubbio) in Etruria, on eight brazen tablets: the first written in inverted Greek letters, and the rest in Latin characters." These, upon examination, he pronounces to be clearly Dutch, and as a specimen adds some sentences of the sixth table, beginning--SERVERENT: PEMIMUMS: SERVERENT: DEITU: ETAIS EUO: PRIMATER, &c.; and containing, according to his account, near the end the following passage: SERBA MARTIA EPUSTOTE SERFIA SERFIR MARTIA TENSA SERFIR SARFER MARTIA FUTUTO. Of which he gives the following version, premising that the 's' in his copy has an additional stroke, which makes it sound ST. STERVE MAR TIE EVVERSTOTE STERFTE STERVER MAER TIER DUERSAFT STERTE STERVER MAR TIER VUT-VUTE; _i. e._ "Let him only die the death who is an extern; let them only die the death who are externs; let them only die the death who are outer externs;" being, as he says, a deprecation merely of the evils of mortality, and a prayer for their infliction on strangers, as Horace says-- Hinc bellum lacrymosum, hinc miseram famem Pestemque a populo et principe Caesare, in Persas atque Britannos, Vestra motus aget prece." Having rendered this and the incantation for the cure of sprains, given in Cato, "De Re Rustica," into the old Dutch, of which we have had so many specimens, he closes this summary of his labours with the declaration, that whoever, after these proofs, will assert that the Etruscan language was other than the Dutch, cannot be considered otherwise than as _non compos mentis_. We had little expectation, when laughing at these vagaries of Scrieck and Becan, many years ago, that it would yet be our lot to see the same follies revived in our own time, and among ourselves. But follies are like fashions, which, having once prevailed in the metropolis, usually run the round of the provinces. And so this fantastic trick of interpreting the names of antiquity by modern equivalents, spreading from the schools of Antwerp and Ypres, still shows itself occasionally in the outskirts of the republic of letters, and has here lately had a new Avatar, fully as absurd as any of its prior exhibitions, among those Jupiters Stators of every exploded folly of the Continent--the English writers on the antiquities of Ireland.