confusion of
identity, was that of the man who complained of having been "changed at
nurse;" and perhaps he is right. An Irishman, and he only, can handle
this confusion of ideas so as to make it a more powerful instrument of
repartee than the logic of another man: take, for instance, the beggar
who, when imploring a dignified clergyman for charity, was charged not
to take the sacred name in vain, and answered, "Is it in vain, then? and
whose fault is that?" I have doubts whether the saying attributed to Sir
Boyle Roche about being in two places at once "like a bird," is the
genuine article. I happened to discover that it is of earlier date than
Sir Boyle's day, having found, when rummaging in an old house among some
Jacobite manuscripts, one from Robertson of Strowan, the warrior poet,
in which he says about two contradictory military instructions, "It
seems a difficult point for me to put both orders in execution, unless,
as the man said, I can be in two places at once, like a bird." A few
copies of these letters were printed for the use of the Abbotsford Club.
This letter of Strowan's occurs in p. 92.]

Professional law-books and reports are not generally esteemed as light
reading, yet something may be made even of them at a pinch. Menage wrote
a book upon the amenities of the civil law, which does anything but
fulfil its promise. There are many much better to be got in the most
unlikely corners; as, where a great authority on copyright begins a
narrative of a case in point by saying, "One Moore had written a book
which he called Irish Melodies;" and again, in an action of trespass on
the case, "The plaintiff stated in his declaration that he was the true
and only proprietor of the copyright of a book of poems entitled The
Seasons, by James Thomson." I cannot lay hands at this moment on the
index which refers to Mr Justice Best--he was the man, as far as memory
serves, but never mind. A searcher after something or other, running his
eye down the index through letter B, arrived at the reference "Best--Mr
Justice--his great mind." Desiring to be better acquainted with the
particulars of this assertion, he turned up the page referred to, and
there found, to his entire satisfaction, "Mr Justice Best said he had a
great mind to commit the witness for prevarication."

The following case is curiously suggestive of the state of the country
round London in the days when much business was done on the road:--A
bill in the Exch