258 Anecdotes and Conversations. [SEPT. 



The conversation afterwards turned on taxation, and Dundas, holding 

 his glass to the light to look for the bce's-wing, said it was a thousand 

 pities, so it was, such wine should be taxed, when a halfpenny a pot on 

 porter would raise a greater revenue. Pitt said, that something must be 

 done now and then to please the populace ; but he added, facetiously, he 

 was sorry to lean so heavily upon Harry's prime article of consumption, 

 at which, says Botherum, we all laughed very heartily. A certain bishop 

 who was at table suggested, that the clergy, at least, ought to drink the 

 orthodox liquor tax free ; and, as for the people, they had nothing to do 

 with the taxes but to pay them. True, replied Botherum, taxation 

 sharpens industry. It is taxation that has made England the first commer- 

 cial nation in the world ; poverty, as Theocritus observes, being the 

 mother of all the arts. The bishop begged to drink wine with the doctor, 

 and thus commenced a friendship which ended only with the lives of tho 

 parties. Three days afler this visit Dr. Botherum got his archdeaconry, 

 and on his return, wrote his famous pamphlet against Priestley, to shew his 

 gratitude to the administration. An angry and acrimonious polemical war 

 ensued, in which there was no lack of abuse on either side ; but the arch- 

 deacon used to say that Priestley was not worth the powder and shot. 

 " He is a shabby fellow, Sir, and not orthodox even in vituperation." 

 While in London, Botherum was elected fellow of the Antiquarian Society, 

 and put in his elaborate account of Braintown Parva, which he proved to 

 have been a Roman station, and the site of a Druidical college. On this 

 occasion, he presented the society with three fragments of broken pottery, 

 and a pike-head, which he had himself dug from a barrow, and received 

 the thanks of that learned body. About this time, also, he supplied Syl- 

 vanus Urban with his elaborate account of the monumental inscriptions on 

 Mucklepudding Church-yard, together with an elegant view of the ruins 

 of the chancel (Gent.'s Mag. vol. ccccxxiii.), which, truth to tell, was 

 drawn by the parish clerk ; and also a fac-simile of a Celtic inscription in 

 the tree character. This drew upon him a somewhat unpleasant contro- 

 versy ; for the surgeon before-mentioned (probably out of pique at the 

 archdeacon's rebuke), privately conveyed intelligence to a rival antiquary, 

 that the inscription which he interpreted, " Divus Belus," was merely the 

 initials of a stonemason's name, who was yet living in the memory of the 

 older parishioners, with the date of the year -turned upside down.* Upon 

 turning the stone, as the archdeacon continued, topsi-turvy or, as his 

 opponent would have it, the right side upwards, there certainly did appear 

 a provoking resemblance to the Roman capitals and Arabic figures, neces- 

 sary to establish the hostile hypothesis ; which caused the wicked wits of 

 the day to laugh at the archdeacon's expense. But the doctor made an 

 excellent defence ; clearly proving that Ins inscription ought to have been 

 erected in the very place where it was found ; and strengthening his case 

 with great erudition by many pregnant analogies. In the appendix to this 

 paper, he gave an ample account of the bowl of a tobacco pipe, found rive- 

 ana twenty-feet below the surface of a peat bog, in the neighbourhood of a 

 Roman station ; which distinctly proves, that the Romans were in the 

 habit of smoking, if not tobacco, at least some indigenous weed ; a 

 neglected verity, still further corroborated by many classical texts, especi- 

 ally Virgil's account of Cacus : 



* Thi* fact i said, likewise, to have occurred to an Irish antiquarian. 



