Be this as it may, however, my wise man, Mr. Michael Lodge, used his heart, head, and hands, as zealously as he could to teach me most things that he did know, and many things he did not know; but with a skill which none of our schoolmasters practise, he made me think he was only amusing instead of giving me a task. The old man tried to make me inquisitive, and inclined to ask about the thing which he wanted to explain to me; and consequently, at eight years old I could read prose and poetry,—write text,—draw a house, a horse, and a game-cock,—tin a copper saucepan, and turn my own tops. I could do the manual exercise with my grandfather’s crutch; and had learnt, besides, how to make bullets, pens, and black-ball; to dance a jig, sing a cronaune,[[15]] and play the Jew’s harp. Michael also showed me, out of scripture, how the world stood stock still whilst the sun was galloping round it; so that it was no easy matter at college to satisfy me as to the Copernican system. In fact, the old Matross gave me such a various and whimsical assemblage of subjects to think about, that my young brain imbibed as many odd, chivalrous, and puzzling theories as would drive some children out of their senses; and, truly, I found it no easy matter to get rid of several of them when it became absolutely necessary, whilst some I shall certainly retain till my death’s day.
[15]. The Cronaune had no words; it was a curious species of song, quite peculiar, I believe, to Ireland, and executed by drawing in the greatest possible portion of breath, and then making a sound like a humming-top:—whoever could hum the longest, was accounted the best Cronauner. In many country gentlemen’s houses, there was a fool kept for the express purpose, who also played the trump, or Jews’-harp; some of them in a surprising manner.
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.