The nobleman told his name--a name dear to every Briton and every Irishman. “I beg your pardon, and that’s what no man ever accused me of doing before,” cried the gallant Hibernian; “and had I known who you were, I would as soon have _shot my own soul_ as have fired at the door. But how could I tell who was withinside?” “That is the very thing of which I complain,” said his lordship. His candid opponent admitted the justice of the complaint as soon as he understood it, and he promised never more to be guilty of such a practical bull. CHAPTER VIII. THE DUBLIN SHOEBLACK. Upon looking over our last chapter on practical bulls, we were much concerned to find that we have so few Irish and so many foreign blunders. It is with still more regret we perceive, that notwithstanding our utmost diligence, we have not yet been able to point out the distinguishing characteristic of an Irish bull. But to compensate for this disappointment we have devised a syllogism, which some people may prefer to an à priori argument, to prove irrefragably, that the Irish are blunderers. After the instances we have produced, chapter 6th, of the _verbum ardens_ of English and foreign poets, and after the resemblance that we have pointed out betwixt certain figures of rhetoric and the Irish bull, we have little reason to fear that the candid and enlightened reader should object to our major. _Major_.--Those who use figurative language are disposed to make bulls. _Minor_.--The Irish use figurative language. _Conclusion_.--Therefore the Irish are disposed to make bulls. We proceed to establish the truth of our minor, and the first evidence we shall call is a Dublin shoeblack. He is not in circumstances peculiarly favourable for the display of figurative language; he is in a court of justice, upon his trial for life or death. A quarrel happened between two shoeblacks, who were playing at what in England is called pitch-farthing, or heads and tails, and in Ireland, head or harp. One of the combatants threw a small paving stone at his opponent, who drew out the knife with which he used to scrape shoes, and plunged it up to the hilt in his companion’s breast. It is necessary for our story to say, that near the hilt of this knife was stamped the name of Lamprey, an eminent cutler in Dublin. The shoeblack was brought to trial. With a number of significant gestures, which on his audience had all the powers that Demosthenes ascribes to action, he, in a language not purely Attic, gave the following account of the affair to his judge.