CHAPTER CLXV.

A QUESTION ASKED AND RIGHTLY ANSWERED, WITH NOTICES OF A GREAT IMPORTATION ANNOUNCED IN THE LEITH COMMERCIAL LIST.

“But tell me yet what followed on that But.”

DANIEL.             

Great, Reader, are the mysteries of Grammarians! Dr. Johnson considered But as only a Conjunction, whereas, says Mr. Todd, it is in fact a Conjunction, Preposition, Adverb and Interjection, as Dr. Adam Smith long since ingeniously proved. With Horne Tooke it is a verb to boot, being according to him the imperative of the Saxon beon-utan, to be out; but in this Mr. Todd supposes him to be out himself. And Noah Webster says it is also a Participle and a Noun. Pity that some one has not proved it to be a Pronoun; for then it would have belonged to all the eight parts of speech.

Great are the mysteries of Grammarians!

O Reader, had you in your mind
    Such stores as subtlety can bring
O gentle Reader, you would find
    A mystery in every thing.

For once, dear Reader, I who pride myself upon lucid order of arrangement, and perspicuity of language, instead of making, which I have heretofore done, and shall hereafter do, the train of my associations as visible as the tract of a hare in the dewy grass or in the snow, will let it be as little apparent as that of a bird in the air, or a serpent on a rock; or as Walter Landor in his poems, or his brother Robert's, whose poetry has the true Landorean obscurity, as well as the Landorean strength of diction and the Landorean truth and beauty of feeling and of thought: perhaps there is no other instance of so strongly marked an intellectual family likeness.

Thus having premised, I propound the following question: Of all the Birds in the air, and all the beasts in the field, and all the fishes in the sea, and all the creatures of inferior kind, who pass their lives wholly, or in part, according to their different stages of existence, in air, earth or water, what creature has produced directly or indirectly, the most effect upon mankind?—That, which you Reader, will deserve to be called, if you do not after a minute's reflection answer the question rightly.

The Goose!

Now Reader you have hit the But.

Among the imports in the Leith Commercial List, for June 1830, is an entry of 1,820,000 goose quills, brought by the Anne from Riga, for Messrs. Alexander Duncan and Son of Edinburgh.

One million, eight hundred and twenty thousand goose quills! The number will present itself more adequately to thy imagination when it is thus expressed in words.

O Reader, consider in thy capacious mind the good and the evil in which that million, eight hundred and twenty thousand quills will be concerned!

Take notice that the whole quantity is of foreign growth—that they are all imported quills, and so far from being all that were imported, that they were brought by one ship, and for only one house. Geese enough are not bred in Great Britain for supplying pens to schools, counters, public offices, private families, authors, and last not least in their consumption of this article, young ladies,—though they call in the crow-quills to their aid. Think of the Lawyers, Reader! and thou wilt then acknowledge that even if we were not living at this time under a government of Newspapers, the Goose is amply revenged upon mankind.

And now you understand Goosey-loosey's BUT.