The Linguist of the Liffey
[Among the many “learned” opponents of Home Rule in Ireland a few years ago, was one somewhat famous professor of Trinity College, who boasted among his other attainments an unlimited knowledge of all Oriental languages, living and dead. An irreverent wag of a student carefully copied the inscription on a tea-chest, and bringing it to the loyal professor assured him it was a letter from a Chinese mandarin on the Irish question, and that a translation of it for the Tory papers would be of absorbing interest in that crucial hour. The task proved too much for Polyglot. The tea-chest knocked him out in one short round.]
THERE once was a doctor of famed T. C. D.—
Dr. Blank we shall call him—a Crichton was he;
Not a science or language earth ever has known
But he’d mastered so well he could call them his own—
Astronomy, Chemistry, Botany—these
Were trifles he’d learned in his moments of ease;
Mathematics, Mechanics, Geology, Law,
Theology, Medicine, Strategy—pshaw!
They all were mere flea-bites to that massive mind
Which left intellects minor some eras behind.
’Twas in linguistic lore that he dazzled the most
The Dons of the College—our doctor could boast
An intimate knowledge of every tongue
Ever written, or printed, or spoken or sung.
In the purest of Attic he silenced a Greek;
For hours to Ojibbeway chiefs he would speak;
A Zulu, whom accident brought to our shore,
Heard him preach in Zulost, and was dumb evermore;
He converted a Choctaw, in purest Choctese;
Made a Mandarin weep at his flowing Chinese;
In Turkish persuaded a Bashi-Bazouk;
In Hindoostanee showed a Sikh how to cook;
Taught quadratic equations in Welsh to a goat,
And none of the consonants stuck in his throat.
If he failed to translate, or translated all wrong,
The Chinese inscribed on a chest of Souchong,
Not his be the blame—no, the odium must rest,
On the printer or reader who muddled that chest;
Had the text been entire he had read it with ease,
But he wasn’t prepared for an “out” in Chinese.