“‘Very good,’ said he, ‘you have the genius, and will come to somethin’ yet:  now tell me the most moral line in Virgil.’

“I answered: 

‘Discere justitiam moniti et non temnere divos.’ *

     * He is evidently drawing the long-bow here; this
     anecdote has been told before.

“‘Depend upon it,’ said he, ’you will be a luminary.  The morning star will be but a farthing candle to you; and if you take in the learning as you do the cheese, in a short time there won’t be a man in Munsther fit to teach you,’ and he laughed, for you see he had a tendency to jocosity.

“He did not give me up here, however, being determined to go deeper wid me.

“‘Can you translate a newspaper into Latin prose?’ said he.

“Now the divil a one o’ me was just then sure about the prose, so I was goin’ to tell him; but before I had time to speak, he thrust the paper into my hand, and desired me to thranslate half-a-dozen barbarous advertisements.

“The first that met me was about a reward offered for a Newfoundland dog and a terrier, that had been stolen from a fishing-tackle manufacturer, and then came a list of his shabby merchandise, ending with a long-winded encomium upon his gunpowder, shot, and double-barrelled guns.  Now may I be shot with a blank cartridge, if I ever felt so much at an amplush in my life, and I said so.

“‘Your honor has hooked me wid the fishing hooks,’ said I; ’but I grant the cheese was good bait, any how.’

“So he laughed heartily, and bid me go on.

“Well, I thought the first was difficult:  but the second was Masoretic to it—­something about drawbacks, excisemen, and a long custom-house list, that would puzzle Publius Virgilius Maro, if he was set to translate it.  However, I went through wid it as well as I could; where I couldn’t find Latin, I laid in the Greek, and where the Greek failed me, I gave the Irish, which, to tell the truth, in consequence of its vernacularity, I found to be the most convanient.  Och, och many a larned scrimmage I have signalized myself in, during my time.  Sure my name’s as common as a mail-coach in Thrinity College; and ’tis well known there isn’t a fellow in it but I could sack, except may be, the prowost.  That’s their own opinion.  ‘Corcoran,’ says the prowost, ’is the most larned man in Ireland; an’ I’m not ashamed,’ says he, ’to acknowledge that I’d rather decline meeting him upon deep points.’  Ginteels, all your healths—­hem!  But among ourselves I could bog him in a very short time; though I’d scorn to deprive the gintleman of his reputaytion or his place, even if he sent me a challenge of larnin’ to-morrow, although he’s too cute to venture on doing that—­hem, hem!”