“Never strike till you are sure to wound,” is a maxim well known to the polite[37] and politic part of the world. “Never laugh when the laugh can be turned against you,” should be the maxim of those who find their chief pleasure in making others ridiculous. This principle, if applied to our subject, would lead, however, to a very extensive and troublesome system of mutual forbearance; troublesome in proportion to the good or ill humour of the parties concerned; extensive in proportion to their knowledge and acquirements. A man of cultivated parts will foresee the possibility of the retort courteous, where an ignorant man will enjoy the fearless bliss of ignorance. For example, an illiterate person may enjoy a hearty laugh at the common story of an old Irish beggar-man, who, pretending to be dumb, was thrown off his guard by the question, “How many years have you been dumb?” and answered, “Five years last St. John’s Eve, please your honour.” But our triumph over the Irishman abates, when we recollect in the History of England, and in Shakspeare, the case of Saunder Simcox, who pretended to be miraculously and instantaneously cured of blindness at St. Alban’s shrine. Since we have bestowed so much criticism on the blunder of a beggar-man, a word or two must be permitted on the blunder of a thief. It is natural for ignorant people to laugh at the Hibernian who said that he had stolen a pound of chocolate _to make tea of_. But philosophers are disposed to abstain from the laugh of superiority when they recollect that the Irishman could probably make as good tea from chocolate as the chemist could make butter, sugar, and cream, from antimony, sulphur, and tartar. The absurdities in the ancient chemical nomenclature could not be surpassed by any in the Hibernian catalogue. If the reader should think this a rash and unwarrantable assertion, we refer him to an essay,[38] in which the flagrant abuses of speech in the old language of chemistry are admirably exposed and ridiculed. Could an Irishman confer a more appropriate appellation upon a white powder than that of _beautiful black_? It is really provoking to perceive, that as our knowledge of science or literature extends, we are in more danger of finding, in our own and foreign languages, parallels and precedents for Irish blunders; so that a very well informed man can scarcely with any grace or conscience smile, where a booby squire might enjoy a long and loud horse-laugh of contempt.