Indeed, I felt much more impressed, and inclined to take off my hat in the Examination and Dining Halls, as I stood in the pictured presence of Irish worthies, and thought of them, and of others not there portrayed, in all their young power and promise. I thought of Archbishop _Ussher_, who, a boy of eighteen, contended with Jesuit, Fitz-Symonds, and was designated by his opponent as “acatholicorum doctissimus.” I thought of _Swift_, as well I might, having recently read, for the third time, that most touching essay on his life and genius from the master hand of Thackeray. 1 I could cry over that lecture any time; there is so much noble sympathy in it of one great genius with another--such a tender yearning not to condemn, and, all the while, such a grand, honest resolution to take side with what is right and true. I thought of Swift, “wild and witty,” in the happiest days of his unhappy life, getting his degree, “_speciali gratia_” (as a most particular favour), and going forth into the world to be a disappointed, miserable man--to fight against weapons which himself had welded, a hopeless, maddening fight. All must pity, as Johnson and Thackeray pity, but who can love? He put on the surplice for mere earthly views, and it was to him as the shirt of Hercules!
1 The English Humourists of the Eighteenth Century, three of whom, Swift, Steele, and Goldsmith, were Irishmen.
And next (could two men differ more?) of _Goldsmith_. I thought of him shy and silent (for he was a dull boy, we read, and never learned the art of conversation), chaffed by his fellow-students, and saluted by them, doubtless, in the exuberance of their playful wit, as Demosthenes, Cicero, &c., &c., until he might have felt himself, like his own “_Traveller_”
had there not been the “eternal sunshine” of genius, and the manifold soft chimes of poesy, to make his heart glad. “He was chastised by his tutor, for giving a dance in his room.” (was it a prance _à la Spurgeon_, and for gentlemen only, or was there a brighter presence of “sweet girl-graduates with their golden hair?”) “and took the box on his ear so much to his heart, that he packed up his all, pawned his books and little property, and disappeared from college.” 1 Horace Walpole speaks of him as “an inspired idiot,” and Garrick describes him as one