Jonah Barrington - Personal Sketches of His Own Times, Vol. 1 (of 3)

This course of education I most sedulously followed, until it pleased God to suspend my learning by the death of my grandfather, on whom I doted. He had taught me the broad-sword exercise with his cane, how to snap a pistol, and shoot with the bow and arrow; and had bespoken a little quarter-staff, to perfect me in that favourite exercise of his youth, by which he had been enabled to knock a gentleman’s brains out for a wager, on the ridge of Maryborough, in company with the great grandfather of the present Judge Arthur Moore, of the Common Pleas of Ireland. It is a whimsical gratification to me, to think that I do not at this moment forget much of the said instruction which I received either from Michael Lodge, the Matross, or from Colonel Jonah Barrington, – though after a lapse of nearly sixty years!

A new scene was now to be opened to me. I was carried to Dublin, and put to the famous schoolmaster of that day, Dr. Ball, of St. Michael-a-Powell’s, Ship-street; – one of the old round towers still stands in the yard – towers which defy all tradition. Here my puzzling commenced in good earnest. I was required to learn the English Grammar in the Latin tongue; and to translate languages without understanding any of them. I was taught prosody without verse, and rhetoric without composition; and before I had ever heard any oration, except a sermon, I was flogged for not minding my emphasis in recitation. To complete my satisfaction, – for fear I should be idle during the course of the week, castigation was regularly administered every Monday morning, to give me, by anticipation, a sample of what the repetition day might produce.

However, notwithstanding all this, I worked my way, got two premiums, and at length was reported fit to be placed under the hands of a private tutor, by whom I was to be finished for the University.

That tutor was well known many years in Digges-street, Dublin, and cut a still more extraordinary figure than the Matross. He was the Rev. Patrick Crawly, Rector of Killgobbin, whose son was hanged a few years ago for murdering two old women with a shoemaker’s hammer. My tutor’s person was, in my imagination, of the same genus as that of Caliban. His feet covered a considerable space of any room wherein he stood, and his thumbs were so large that he could scarcely hold a book without hiding more than half the page of it: – though bulky himself, his clothes doubled the dimensions proper to suit his body; and an immense frowzy wig, powdered once a week, covered a head which, for size and form, might vie with a quarter-cask.

Vaccination not having as yet plundered horned cattle of their disorders, its predecessor had left evident proofs of attachment to the rector’s countenance. That old Christian malady, the small-pox, which had resided so many centuries amongst our ancestors, and which modern innovations have endeavoured to undermine, had placed his features in a perfect state of compactness and security – each being sewed quite tight to its neighbour, every seam appearing deep and gristly, so that the whole visage appeared to defy alike the edge of the sharpest scalpel and the skill of the most expert anatomist.

Yet this was as good-hearted a parson as ever lived: – affectionate, friendly, and, so far as Greek, Latin, Prosody, and Euclid went, excelled by few: and under him I acquired, in one year, more classical knowledge than I had done during the former six, – whence I was enabled, out of thirty-six pupils, to obtain an early place in the University of Dublin, at entrance.

The college course, at that time, though a very learned one, was ill arranged, pedantic, and totally out of sequence. Students were examined in “Locke on the Human Understanding,” before their own had arrived at the first stage of maturity; and Euclid was pressed upon their reason before any one of them could comprehend a single problem. We were set to work at the most abstruse sciences before we had well digested the simpler ones, and posed ourselves at optics, natural philosophy, ethics, astronomy, mathematics, metaphysics, &c. &c. without the least relief from belles-lettres, modern history, geography, or poetry; in short, without regard to any of those acquirements – the classics excepted, – which form essential parts of a gentleman’s education. 13

Nevertheless, I jogged on with bene for the classics — satis for the sciences – and mediocriter for mathematics. I had, however, the mortification of seeing the stupidest fellows I ever met, at school or college, beat me out of the field in some of the examinations, and very justly obtain premiums for sciences which I could not bring within the scope of my comprehension.

My consolation is, that many men of superior talent to myself came off no better; and I had the satisfaction of hearing that some of the most erudite, studious, and pedantic of my contemporary collegians, who entertained an utter contempt for me, went out of their senses; and I do believe that there are at this moment some of the most eminent of my academic rivals amusing themselves in mad-houses. One of them I lamented much – he still lives; his case is a most extraordinary one, and I shall mention it hereafter: – ’twill puzzle the doctors.

Whenever, indeed, I seek amusement by tracing the fate of such of my school and college friends as I can get information about, I find that many of the most promising and conspicuous have met untimely ends; and that most of those men whose great talents distinguished them first in the university and afterward at the bar, had entered, as sizers, for provision as well as for learning: – indigence and genius were thus jointly concerned in their merited elevation; and I am convinced that the finest abilities are frequently buried alive in affluence and in luxury: revolutions are sometimes their hot-bed, and at other times their grave.

The death of my grandmother, which now took place, made a very considerable change in my situation, and I had sense enough, though still very young, to see the necessity of turning my mind toward a preparation for some lucrative profession – either law, physic, divinity, or war.

I debated on all these, as I thought, with great impartiality: – the pedantry of the book-worms had disgusted me with clericals; wooden legs put me out of conceit with warfare; the horrors of death made me shudder at medicine; the law was but a lottery-trade, too precarious for my taste; and mercantile pursuits were too humiliating for my ambition. Nothing, on the other hand, could induce me to remain a walking gentleman : and so, every occupation that I could think of having its peculiar disqualification, I remained a considerable time in a state of uncertainty and disquietude.

Meanwhile, although my choice had nothing to do with the matter, by residing at my father’s I got almost imperceptibly engaged in that species of profession exercised by young sportsmen, whereby I was initiated into a number of accomplishments ten times worse than the negative ones of the walking gentleman: – namely, – riding, drinking, dancing, carousing, hunting, shooting, fishing, fighting, racing, cock-fighting, &c. &c.

After my grandmother’s death, as my father’s country-house was my home, so my two elder brothers became my tutors – the rustics my precedents – and a newspaper my literature . However, the foundation for my propensities had been too well laid to be easily rooted up; and whilst I certainly, for awhile, indulged in the habits of those around me, I was not at all idle as to the pursuits I had been previously accustomed to. I had a pretty good assortment of books of my own, and seldom passed a day without devoting some part of it to reading or letter-writing; and though I certainly somewhat mis-spent, I cannot accuse myself of having lost, the period I passed at Blandsfort – since I obtained therein a full insight into the manners, habits, and dispositions of the different classes of Irish, in situations and under circumstances which permitted nature to exhibit her traits without restraint or caution: building on which foundation, my greatest pleasure has ever been that of decyphering character, adding to and embellishing the superstructure which my experience and observation have since conspired to raise.