LAST VOYAGE OF CAPT. ROSS. 
555 
blance might have held good. Not more anxiously could that 
paragon of bigoted stupidity and intellectual dulness, the duke 
of Gloucester, await the answer to one of his sapient conun¬ 
drums from his toad-eater, than the commander of the Victory 
looked to Mr. Mc’Diarmid for his answer. To the son of Escula- 
pius the solution of the problem of the quadrature of the circle 
would perhaps have been an easier task—“Do you give it up ?” 
exclaimed the captain. “ I could compare you, with great 
propriety,” said Mr. Mc’Diarmid, “ to some of the great men. of 
antiquity, and even of modern times ; but I fear I should shock 
your well-known sense of modesty.’’ “Pooh!” exclaimed Capt. 
Ross, “you need not go so far back as Alexander or Confucius, 
for my resemblance: my name is Jack, is it not?” “Certainly,” 
replied Mr. Mc’Diarmid. “Then,” said Capt. Ross, “the re¬ 
semblance is two-fold—for do I not at this moment resemble 
little Jack Horner ? did he not put in his thumb, and pull out a 
plum -and have I not done the same?” Capt. Ross burst into 
a loud laugh, and so did the remainder of the officers—but, in 
the laugh of the two parties, there was both a resemblance and 
a difference: the captain laughed at himself, and the officers 
laughed at him ; the former laughed at his own wit, the latter 
at his foolishness. The poet laureat of the Victory did not 
allow this circumstance to escape him, for, on turning to his 
album, we find the following written on the 7th of September, 
1831: — 
The great Capt. Ross, 
Both haughty and cross, 
. Was eating his pudding and pie, 
He put in his thumb, 
And pulled out a plum. 
And said what a great fool am [. 
We may perhaps have given to this anecdote a higher degree 
of embellishment than its merits deserve; but as the scene ac¬ 
tually took place in the cabin of the Victory, it may staftd as 
illustrative of j 
The feast of reason and the flow of soul,. 
which rendered the cabin banquets so delightful and amusing. 
