CHAPTER CLXXVI.

THE DOCTOR DISCOVERS THE ANTIQUITY OF THE NAME OF DOVE FROM PERUSING JACOB BRYANT'S ANALYSIS

OF ANCIENT MYTHOLOGY. - CHRISTOPHER AND FER

DINAND COLUMBUS. - SOMETHING ABOUT PIGEONPIE, AND THE REASON WHY THE DOCTOR WAS INCLINED TO THINK FAVOURABLY OF THE SAMARI

TANS.

An I take the humour of a thing once, I am like your tailor's needle; I go through. - BEN JONSON.

Dove also was a name which abounded with mystical significations, and which derived peculiar significance from its mysterious conjunction with Daniel. Had it not been said "Be ye wise as serpents and harmless as Doves?” To him the text was personally applicable in both parts. Dove he was by birth. Daniel by baptism or the second birth, and Daniel was Dan, and Dan shall be a serpent by the way.

But who can express his delight when in perusing Jacob Bryant's Analysis of ancient Mythology, he found that so many of the most illustrious personages of antiquity proved to be Doves, when their names were truly interpreted or properly understood! That erudite interpreter of hidden things taught him that the name of the Dove was Iön and Iönah, whence in immediate descent the Oän and Oannes of Berosus and Abydenus, and in longer but lineal deduction Æneas, Hannes, Hanno, Ionah, Ιοάννης, Johannes, Janus, Eanus among the elder Romans, Giovanni among the later Italians, Juan, Joam, Jean, John, Jan, Iwain, Ivan, Ewan, Owen, Evan, Hans, Ann, Hannah, Nannette, Jane, Jeannette, Jeanne, Joanna and Joan; all who had ever borne these names, or any name derived from the same radical, as doubtless many there were in those languages of which he had no knowledge, nor any means of acquiring it, being virtually Doves. Did not Bryant expressly say that the prophet Jonah

was probably so named as a messenger of the Deity, the mystic Dove having been from the days of Jonah regarded as a sacred symbol among all nations where any remembrance of the destruction and renovation of mankind was preserved! It followed therefore that the prophet Jonah, Hannibal, St. John, Owen Glendower, Joan of Arc, Queen Anne, Miss Hannah More, and Sir Watkin Williams Wynn, were all of them his namesakes, to pretermit or pass over Pope Joan, Little John, and Jack the Giantkiller. And this followed, not like the derivation of King Pepin from "Οσπερ, by a jump in the process, such as that from διάπερ to napkin; nor like the equally well known identification of a Pigeon with an Eel Pye, in the logic of which the the Doctor would have detected a fallacy, but in lawful etymology, and according to the strict interpretation of words. If he looked for the names through the thinner disguise of language there was Semiramis who having been fed by Doves, was named after them. What was Zurita the greatest historian of Arragon, but a young stock Dove? What were the three Palominos so properly enumerated in the Bibliotheca of Nicolas Antonio. Pedro the Benedictine in whose sermons a more than ordinary breathing of the spirit might not unreasonably be expected from his name; Francisco who translated into Castillian the Psychomachia of the Christian poet Aurelius Prudentius, and Diego the Prior of Xodar, whose Liber de mutatione aeris, in quo assidua, et mirabilis mutationis temporum historia, cum suis causis, enarratur, he so greatly regretted that he had never been able to procure: what were these Palominos? what but Doves? Father Colombiere who framed the service for the Heart of Jesus which was now so fashionable in Catholic countries, was clearly of the Dove genus. St. Columba was a decided Dove; three there were certainly, the Senonian, the Cordovan and the Cornish: and there is reason to believe that there was a fourth also, a female Dove, who held a high rank in St. Ursula's great army of virgins. Columbo the Anatomist, deservedly eminent as one of those who by their researches led the way for Harvey, he also was a Dove. Lastly, and the Doctor in fine taste always reserved the greatest glory of the Dove name, for the conclusion of his discourse - lastly, there was Christopher Columbus, whom he used to call his famous namesake. And he never failed to commend Ferdinand Columbus for the wisdom and piety with which he had commented upon the mystery of the name, to remark that his father had conveyed the grace of the Holy Ghost to the New World, shewing to the people who knew him not who was God's beloved son, as the Holy Ghost had done in the figure of a Dove at the baptism of St. John, and bearing like Noah's Dove the Olive Branch, and the Oil of Baptism over the waters of the ocean.

And what would our onomatologist have said if he had learned to read these words in that curious book of the &c. family, the Oriental fragments of Major Edward Moor: "In respect to St. Columba, or Colomb, and other superstitious names and things in close relationship, I shall have in another place something to say. I shall try to connect Col-omb, with