INTERCHAPTER IV.

ETYMOLOGICAL DISCOVERIES CONCERNING THE REMAINS OF VARIOUS TRIBES OR FAMILIES MENTIONED IN SCRIPTURAL HISTORY.

All things are big with jest; nothing that's plain
But may be witty, if thou hast the vein.
                                                                    HERBERT.

That the lost ten Tribes of Israel may be found in London, is a discovery which any person may suppose he has made, when he walks for the first time from the city to Wapping. That the tribes of Judah and Benjamin flourish there is known to all mankind; and from them have sprung the Scripites, and the Omniumites and the Threepercentites.

But it is not so well known that many other tribes noticed in the Old Testament are to be found in this Island of Great Britain.

There are the Hittites, who excel in one branch of gymnastics. And there are the Amorites, who are to be found in town and country; and there are the Gadites who frequent watering places, and take picturesque tours.

Among the Gadites I shall have some of my best readers, who being in good humour with themselves and with every thing else, except on a rainy day, will even then be in good humour with me. There will be Amorites in their company; and among the Amorites too there will be some, who in the overflowing of their love, will have some liking to spare for the Doctor and his faithful memorialist.

The Poets, those especially who deal in erotics, lyrics, sentimentals or sonnets, are the Ah-oh-ites.

The gentlemen who speculate in chapels are the Puh-ites.

The chief seat of the Simeonites is at Cambridge; but they are spread over the land. So are the Man-ass-ites of whom the finest specimens are to be seen in St. James's Street, at the fashionable time of day for exhibiting the dress and the person upon the pavement.

The free-masons are of the family of the Jachinites.

The female Haggites are to be seen, in low life wheeling barrows, and in high life seated at card tables.

The Shuhamites are the cordwainers.

The Teamanites attend the sales of the East India Company.

Sir James Mackintosh, and Sir James Scarlett, and Sir James Graham, belong to the Jim-nites.

Who are the Gazathites if the people of London are not, where any thing is to be seen? All of them are Gettites when they can, all would be Havites if they could.

The journalists should be Geshurites, if they answered to their profession: instead of this they generally turn out to be Geshuwrongs.

There are however three Tribes in England, not named in the Old Testament, who considerably out number all the rest. These are the High Vulgarites, who are the children of Rahank and Phashan: the Middle Vulgarites, who are the children of Mammon and Terade, and the Low Vulgarites, who are the children of Tahag, Rahag, and Bohobtay-il.

With the Low Vulgarites I have no concern; but with the other two tribes, much. Well it is that some of those who are fruges consumere nati, think it proper that they should consume books also: if they did not, what a miserable creature wouldst thou be, Henry Colburn, who art their Bookseller! I myself have that kind of respect for the consumers which we ought to feel for every thing useful. If not the salt of the earth they are its manure, without which it could not produce so abundantly.