And when that Cabinet waxing insolent because they had raised the mob to back them, declared that they would have the Bill, the whole Bill, and nothing but the Bill, then I expressed my contempt, amazement, and indignation, by uttering in its omnisignificant totality the great word ABALLIBOOZOBANGANORRIBO. CHAPTER CXLIX. A PARLOUS QUESTION ARISING OUT OF THE FOREGOING CHAPTER. MR. IRVING AND THE UNKNOWN TONGUES. TAYLOR THE WATER POET. POSSIBLE SCHEME OF INTERPRETATION PROPOSED. OPINIONS CONCERNING THE GIFT OF TONGUES AS EXHIBITED IN MADMEN. Speak what terrible language you will, though you understand it not yourselves, no matter! Chough's language, gabble enough and good enough. SHAKESPEARE. But here, gentle reader, occurs what Bishop Latimer would call a parlous question, if he had lived in these portentous times. There is no apparent meaning in Lilli burlero bullen a-la, nor in Raderer too, tandaro tee, nor in Dan dan dan derridan, any more than there is in Farra diddle dyno,—Hayley gayly gamborayly, higgledy piggledy, galloping draggle-tail dreary dun, and other burthens of a similar kind, which are to be found in the dramas of poor old blind O'Keeffe, and in Tom D'Urfey's songs. There is I say no apparent meaning in them; but we must not too confidently apply the legal maxim in this case, and conclude that _de non apparente et non existente eadem est ratio_; for although these choruses are not in any known tongue, they may by possibility be in an unknown one: and if Mr. Irving has not a cast in his intellect as well as in his eye, there is mystery in an unknown tongue; and they who speak it, and consequently they who write it, may be inspired for the nonce—though they may be as little conscious of their inspiration as they are of their meaning. There may be an unknown inspiration as well as an unknown tongue. If so what mighty revelations may lie unrevealed in the gibberish of Taylor the Water Poet! Now if Mr. Irving would but read one of the wine-drinking Water Poet's effusions of this kind, in his chapel, on a day appointed for that purpose, some of his inspired speakers male or female might peradventure be moved to expound it in their kindred language; and as two negatives make an affirmative, it might be found that two unintelligibles make a meaning, and the whole affair would thus become intelligible to every one. Two specimens therefore of the Taylorian tongues I shall here set before the public, in the hope that this important experiment may be tried with them. They were both intended as epitaphs for Thomas Coriat the famous Odcombian traveller; the first was supposed by the inspired Water Poet to be in the Bermuda tongue.