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OUR NUMBER OF ALL NATIONS.
(Written after Six Lessons in “all Languages without a Master,”)

TRULY in these polyglot
days, when every newspaper
comes out in its three or
four languages, and no compositor is worth his salt
who can’t set up types of
all nations as readily as ff
he had served his time to
the Armenian priest-
printers at Venice, we are
really ashamed of the plain
roast-beef and plum-pudding
fare that we are in the
habit of serving up weekly
our readers. Shamed
into foreign tongues by the
example of the Morning Chronicle
and the Illustrated
London News, we have done
our best to remedy this
defect.
First, we tried to get our
jokes translated into all
languages. For this purpose we engaged, at a very
trifling expense, a German
gentleman, reputed lively iii
is own country; a Dutch-
man, who brought testimonials of sprightliness
from his ambassador; a
French literary gentleman,
Mr. GOBEMOUCHE some of whose admirable letters have already appeared in our columns; a
Castilian, resident in London, whose national liveliness has resisted even the depressing
influence of Spanish bonds a Turkish gentleman, who gave up, for our sake, a lucrative
rhubarb walk our friend, HE-SING, of the Junk, who declared in the flowery language of his
native land, that his wit should shine as the peacock’s feather in the cap of the mandarin;
HAMET EL-WAADEE, who is likely soon to be released from his attendance on the Hippopotamus, owing to the rapid increase in size of that animal and his growing relish for English
society; together with eminent professors of the dead languages; and a Privat-Docent of
Gottingen, who engaged to crack jokes in any language, living, dead, or paralytic, (that is,
half dead and half living,> such as the Provençal, the Lithuanian, the Rumonsch of the
Graubünten, the Frisian, the Wallachian, and a host besides. For the Celtic tongue we
secured an eminent native professor of the Erse, from the brown bog of Connaught (who
consented, at our request, to delay his departure on a tour in the southern hay-harvest
together with an enthusiastic Cymric master of tongues from the well-known
village of Cwmbdfgrbth in Merionethshire, and an interesting Breton from the remotest
uromontory of Morbihan. We were much pressed to include a corps of gentlemen of the
Hebrew persuasion, who were willing to have abandoned the sale of the pencil for the use
of the pen: and the Aborigines Protection Society in the handsomest manner placed at our
disposal their interestin peat Jyés Makee-to-ne-ka-to-me-pa (“ the Artful Dodger whose
tongue is in his cheek,”) from the Middle Island of New Zealand, and that truly pious and
awakened Caifre, Ma-ka-row. But we were obliged to decline all these valuable offers of
service, as we found that the office was already becoming a public nuisance.
Our first attempt was to set our staff of all nations at work to translate the jokes of
the current number. The result was not encouraging, and the sufferings of our foreign cot-
were terrific. Anything like the writhings of the German, in the agonies of a
pun, which never came, we do not remember to have witnessed before, even among the cattle
in a Smithfield Monday Market. Mr. Gobemouche was perfectly satisfied with his own
performance but laboured under the slight disadvantage of a total misconception of the meaning of the English which he was rendering. As for our lively Dutch friend, we have no
reason to believe he has yet been brought to comprehend even the nature of a pun; though
this may partly be attributable to the fact, that the German would explain to him what he
called the ‘ central idea of the ne-wart-spiel,” or original word-play. The Turk and the
Arab put our fun into such very fine language, that it read to us just like Mn. LANE’S
version of the Arabian Nights—in other words, was perfectly unreadable. HE-SING made us talk such intolerable truisms that our richest morsels came out of his hands as dry as bits
of his own Junk. Our Göttingen Professor, instead of translating our articles, went hunting
up distant philological relationships and remote ethnological affinities all through the room;
while the Erse Cymry, and Armorican took to quarrelling so violently about the relative
antiquities of their respective dialects, that it was only by setting them all three on the
unhappy Saxon that they were at last, induced to keep the peace towards each other,
need haral say that we did not recognise our children in their new costumes. They
were no more like the good, broad-faced2 fat jokes which we entrusted to the hands of the
foreigners, than the pale, long-haired, spindle-shanked, scatter-brained, and staid-mannered
boys and girls, that a travel-stricken parent brings home from a running education all over
the Continent, are like the rosy romping, rough-spun family that embarked under his care at
Dover six years before. And’ then, to prevent our jokes from hurting anybody, they bad
carefully broken off all the points. So we gave up that plan of getting out our’ NUMBER
OF ALL NATIONS.”