Scotchman.--“If I am not mistaken, that very same Irish orator made an allusion at which no one could laugh. ‘The protection,’ said he, ‘which Britain affords to Ireland in the day of adversity, is like that which the oak affords to the ignorant countryman, who flies to it for shelter in the storm; it draws down upon his head the lightning of heaven:’ may be I do not repeat the words exactly, but I could not forget the idea.” Englishman.--“I would with all my heart bear the ridicule of a hundred blunders for the honour of having made such a simile: after all, his saying, ‘I am sorry to hear my honourable friend stand _mute_,’ if it be a bull, is justified by Homer; one of the charms in the cestus of Venus is, ‘Silence that speaks, and eloquence of eyes.’” Scotchman.--“Silence that speaks, sir, is, I am afraid, an English, not a Grecian charm. It is not in the Greek; it is one of those beautiful liberties which Mr. Pope has taken with his original. But silence that speaks can be found in France as well as in England. Voltaire, in his chef-d’oeuvre, his Oedipus, makes Jocasta say, ‘Tout parle centre nous jusqu’à notre _silence_.’” [59] _Englishman_.--“And in our own Milton, Samson Agonistes makes as good, indeed a better bull; for he not only makes the mute speak, but speak loud:-- ‘The deeds themselves, though _mute, spoke loud_ the doer.’ And in Paradise Lost we have, to speak in _fashionable_ language, two _famous_ bulls. Talking of Satan, Milton says, ‘God and his Son except, Created thing nought valued he nor shunn’d.’ And speaking of Adam and Eve, and their sons and daughters, he confounds them all together in a manner for which any Irishman would have been laughed to scorn:-- ‘Adam, the goodliest man of men since born, His sons; the fairest of her daughters Eve.’ Yet Addison, who notices these blunders, calls them only little blemishes.” _Scotchman_.--“He does so; and he quotes Horace, who tells us we should impute such venial errors to a pardonable inadvertency; and, as I recollect, Addison makes another very just remark, that the ancients, who were actuated by a spirit of candour, not of cavilling, invented a variety of figures of speech, on purpose to palliate little errors of this nature.” “Really, gentlemen,” interrupted the Hibernian, who had sat all this time in silence that spoke his grateful sense of the politeness of his companions, “you will put the finishing stroke to my obligations to you, if you will prove that the ancient figures of speech were invented to palliate Irish blunders.”