be our lot to see the same
follies revived in our own time, and among ourselves. But follies are like
fashions, which, having once prevailed in the metropolis, usually run the
round of the provinces. And so this fantastic trick of interpreting the
names of antiquity by modern equivalents, spreading from the schools of
Antwerp and Ypres, still shows itself occasionally in the outskirts of the
republic of letters, and has here lately had a new Avatar, fully as absurd
as any of its prior exhibitions, among those Jupiters Stators of every
exploded folly of the Continent--the English writers on the antiquities of
Ireland.

This new Irish Becceselana is entitled "Etruria-Celtica. Etruscan
Literature and Antiquities investigated, or the language of that ancient
and illustrious people compared and identified with the Iberno-Celtic, and
both shown to be Phoenician, by Sir William Betham, Ulster King-at-Arms,
Vice-President of the Royal Dublin Society, F.S.A., M.R.I.A., &c. &c."[6]
This title exhibits a design in no respect different from that of Goropius
and Scrieck, except in the substitution of the Iberno-Celtic, by the Irish
writer, for the Belgico-Celtic equivalents of the Dutch. If there were
sufficient reason to suppose that the vice-president of the Royal Dublin
Society was acquainted with the Greek and Latin writers who concur in
establishing the non-identity of these nations, we would say that he
exhibits as culpable a contempt for their authority as his Batavian
precursors; but Sir William Betham appears scarcely to have read on the
subject at all; and what was wilful presumption on their part, may be the
innocence of mere want of knowledge on his; for both Scrieck and Becan
were perfectly aware that, in identifying so many nations of antiquity
with their own, they were flying in the face of all authority; but Betham
Hibernicizes all the nations from Taprobana to Thule, apparently
unconscious of any recorded reason against their universal identity.

That the Etruscans spoke Irish, he concludes just as Goropius concluded
that the Phrygians spoke Dutch, from the coincidence of a single word
having, as he alleges, the same sound and meaning in each; and as a single
passage from Herodotus was the sole foundation for the vast inverted
pyramid of nonsense piled up by Goropius on that individual point, (and
kept from toppling over only by sheer force of impudence,) so the single
well-known passage from Suetonius, ascertainin