68 TRANSACTIONS OF THE PLYMOUTH INSTITUTION. 
mad on etymology, but not quite bad enough to be dangerous 
to life or limb and put into an asylum, though they play mad 
pranks with language. Etymology is a study of considerable 
risk to those who are not trained philologists, and many there are 
who follow it and tumble into the pitfalls that abound in its 
intricate ways. Poor Burke should be a warning to all such 
rash speculators, who should remember that the mind is delicately 
poised, and may be overthrown by a blow from any quarter. 
Playing with etymology is playing with edged tools, as Burke 
found. Burke was much given to writing, and Hicks, with the 
kindness habitual to him, supplied the scribe or scribbler with 
pen, ink, and paper to keep him quiet. I knew the asylum and 
some of the patients in Hicks's clay, and Burke used to send 
me sheets of foolscap covered with his manuscript. I give one 
specimen, as an example of the mind of a man gone mad on 
etymology — an example and a caution. This extract is one of 
the most coherent of many closely -written pages, a real mad- 
man's manuscript : 
4 4 THE BLESSING AND THE CURSE. 
"Now 0 ye Dignitaries, ye ycleped Divines of the Church, 
give us the root of these two words and I will engage that 
you shall convert or Eenew every soul in your congregation the 
next sermon you preach. 
"'The Blessing.' As we judge of men so we should judge of 
words — that is by their Havage, Descent or Family and by the 
company they keep. A sure criterion. Well then, there is 
something about this word that to the Phisiognomist, or Lavature, 
is very unfavorable from its having the self-same head as Blast 
and Blood, Bleed and Bled and Blasphemy, Black and Blackguard. 
It is rather ominous that Bless is formed of B and less, now less 
is minus, under, Infra, Below or sub, it all makes against the 
word being desirable, especially as Lesson is the same as Lecture, 
Discourse, Sermon, Homily, Dialogue, Decalogue (Diabolus) the 
infernal Law or Yoke." 
Then he gets very mad as he writes, which he always does, and 
proceeds with a curious chain of ideas. 
" However, Blessing and Curse is Gerizen and Ebal ; or 
Beatitude and Maimer ; or Good and Evil ; or God and Mammon ; 
or Gog and Magog ; or Man and Woman ; or Peace and Plenty ; 
