Father Tom and the Pope, or, A Night in the Vatican

Excerpt: "There are several questions which at this present time remain unsettled. One of them is, "who invented gunpowder?" Another is, which of them was it, Faust or Guttemberg, "that invented printing?" Another is, "whether the Deity created nature, or nature created itself?" That is a poser. Another is "whether the original egg was the parent of the chicken, or the egg was the original ancestor of that celebrated feathered fowl?" "De novum ovum," says Xinctillios, "inseperatum primero, cum possibilitas, et credentia, in meo judicio, quam supra calcis phospas, qui est, in the bones of the chicken." In other words, and to make it plain to the reader, he, Xinctillios, cannot understand how it is possible for human comprehension to see a new laid egg, without permitting in his judgment the idea of phosphate of lime existing in the osseous structure of the bones of the original hen. St. Bardolphus entertains a contrary opinion, "Anam, aname, mona mike," says he, "Barcelona bona strike," says he, "harum scarum, wy frone whack!" (I give you the original Coptic) "Harrico barrico, we won frac!" Between these two contending opinions I have nothing to say. The dogmas of the Roman Catholic Church, and the folatreries of the philosophers of the high school of nature, differ so widely, that it is impossible for common sense to adopt either the one or the other—and the Greek Church on these points has given no decided opinion Such a dilemma presents itself when we come to consider the contents of this volume. Who wrote it? Some say, Lord Brougham; and some attribute it to the Duke of Wellington, who understood the Irish vernacular to a dot. I have a shrewd suspicion that Maginn, a high tory, although a good Roman Catholic, and one of the prominent contributors to Blackwood, lent his helping hand to it, if he were not the real author of it all? "Howandiver," to use a phrase of the author, let us look into the history of it."