In the wide range of literary disquisition there is no one topic which has so engrossed the investigation of studious individuals as the origin of the word _Hibernia_. The great Bochart, the uncertain Vallancy, the spiteful Macpherson, the pompous O’Flaherty, and the “antiquary of antiquaries,” Camden himself,--with a thousand others unworthy of recognition,--have been all consecutively shipwrecked upon its unapproachable sand-banks. But the most miserable failure of all is that of a namesake of my own, _the author of a dictionary upon the language of his country_, who, in his mad zeal for an outlandish conceit, foists into his book a term with which our language owns no kindred, and then builds upon that a superstructure which “would make even the angels weep.” This gentleman would fain make out[126] that, because those islands have been denominated the _Cassiterides_, or _Tin Reservoirs_, therefore Eirin, our own one of them, must have been so called as an _Iron Store_! forgetting that the genius of our vocabulary has never had a term whereby to express that _metal_ at all,--that by which we now designate it, namely, _iarun_, being only a modern _coinage_ from the English word,--as the general voice of antiquity speaks trumpet-tongued on the point, and the fragments of our Brehon laws give it insuperable confirmation, that _iron_ was the last metal which mankind has turned to profit, or even known to exist, while with us it was an exotic until a very recent period.[127] But admitting that _Eirin_ or _Erin_ did signify _the Land of Iron_, then its Greek formation _Ierne_ must convey the same idea, and so must _Hibernia_, their Latin inflection; and it would afford me a considerable portion of merriment to behold any champion for this _iron-cased_ knight buckle on his _etymological_ armour, and analyse these two last terms so as to make them indicate the _Land of Iron_. Yet pitiable as this appears, for the author of an Irish dictionary, its ingenuity, at all events, must screen it from contempt. But how will the public estimate the brightness of that man’s intellect, who would state that _Erin_ is but a _metempsychosis_ of the word _Green_? Will it be believed that such is the sober utterance of the author of the _Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_? But lest I should misrepresent, I shall let him speak for himself, viz.: “Ireland, from its luxuriant vegetation, obtained the epithet _Green_, and has preserved, with a slight alteration, the name _Erin_.”[128] So that a country which piques itself on its _Irishry_, has remained ever without a cognomen, until the _English_ language has been _matured_; and then, in compliment to her sister, Britain, has borrowed an adjective from her _rainbow_, which, however, she had not the good manners to preserve pure, but allowed to degenerate so far, that the sagacity of a conjurer could not trace any resemblance between this _vitiation_ and the _original epithet_ which pourtrayed her _verdure_!