ght than their
own brains. I intend in a short time to publish a large and rational
defence of this art; and therefore shall say no more in its justification
at present." But here, indeed, the comparison falls; for while Bickerstaff
postpones his proofs for another occasion, Betham proudly displays his
"reasonable and intelligible postulate," in his one fact, that the
dissyllable _Aesar_ is God alike in Etruscan and in Irish. Whence he
concludes that Etruscan and Irish are, therefore, the same language, and
that both consist of words of one syllable each. "The discovery," he says,
(Vol. ii. page 286,) "if 'wonderful' was also accidental, at least the
first clue to it was the solitary fact mentioned in Vol. i. p. 33, of the
passage in Suetonius' life of Augustus, where _Aesar_ is said to mean, in
the Etruscan language, _God_. So small a spark lighted up the large fire."
We are irresistibly reminded of Goropius and his "consequenter fatendum
est antiquissima hoc Psammetichi sententia."

The translation of the Eugubian tablets, however, is but a part of the
huge mass of absurdity piled up on these two little syllables, _Ae-sar_.
There is a second volume, in which all the topographical extravagances of
Scrieck are played over again, _praeconis ad fastidium_, with this
difference, however, that where Scrieck, in his interpretations, gave
genuine Dutch, Betham, in his, gives spurious Irish; for he owns himself,
that "if a sentence be formed of these obsolete monosyllabic words, the
translation in English making good sense, the original, if read to the
best Irish scholar of the day, will appear to him an unknown tongue." He
begins first with Sanconiathan, which he makes the name of the book, not
of the author, _sean cead na than_; i. e. "the old beginning of time,"
when the gods spoke in monosyllabic Irish, and called chaos _cead-os_,
"the first intelligence." And here it must be admitted that the Dutchmen
are outdone: for neither Becan nor Scrieck went above Adam. But Betham is
as much at home on Olympus as either of the Dutchmen was in Paradise; and
with the aid of his monosyllabic glossary, transmutes the celestials into
Teagues and Oonahs as fast as his sybilline syllables can be put together.
Apollo is _ab ol lo_, "the mighty lord of the waters;" (this is hardly as
good as the _off-hole-loose_ of Goropius:) Minerva is _Ma na er ar fad_,
(a terribly long recipe for a name this,) or "the good, the illustrious
guiding wisdom.