world,
presumes to dogmatize in this manner, we strip him in an instant, and have
no mercy in exposing to both learned and simple the nakedness of his
pretensions.

Still facts are facts, and if the fact be, that the tablets of Gubbio are
written in the Irish language, and that Sir William Betham, though as
ignorant of his subject as was the boy who invented the safety-valve of
the steam-engine, has happened in any way, by skill or by chance,
learnedly or unadvisedly, modestly or arrogantly, on the truth, let him,
together with the condemnation, have the credit he deserves, if not as a
Columbus of a new world of letters, at least as a Madoc or a Thorfinn.

The first line of the first table, reading from right to left, he reads
thus: we say _he_, for the very form of some of the letters are still
doubtful:--PUNE: CARNE: SPETURIE: ATUERIE: ABIECATI: NAROCLUM. Is this
Irish? If so, we would expect some six Irish words to be adduced, of
corresponding sound, and having a grammatical dependence and sensible
meaning among themselves. Instead of this, Betham professes to find the
equivalent expressions in _twenty-four_ Irish, or _quasi_-Irish words,
which have neither grammatical relation to one another, nor any coherent
meaning in their united senses--viz. _Pune car na is be tur i e at i i er
i e a bi e ca ta na ra ac lu am_; i. e. "Phoenician to Carne (the turn)
it is night voyage in it likewise in knowledge great in it the being away
how it is the going with water on the ocean." And this he tells us, being
interpreted, signifies, "O Phoenicians, this is a statement of the night
voyage to Carne, (the turn,[7]) and of the manner of going such great
seawise over by the waters of the ocean!"

The only glimmering of any thing like meaning in this string of
unconnected verbiage, appears in the detached phrases "night voyage," "the
being away," and "going with water on the ocean." But the syllable _be_,
which he renders "night," (on what authority Night and Chaos only know,)
is not found in the original; and "being away," depends for its meaning
wholly on the certainty that _e_ means "away" in that collocation of
words, and not "it," as in the phrases immediately preceding; and there is
no suggestion of any reason why it should not here have the same
signification as above, or why it should not mean "of" or "from," in both
of which senses the writer employs it in the subsequent sentences. "Going
with water on the ocean," owes it