A spirit of uncompromising fortitude or enthusiastic gallantry generally spreads over the countenance some characteristic trait. Undisciplined followers are fascinated by ferocious bravery: they rush blindly any where, after an intrepid leader. But a languid eye, unbraced features, and unsteady movements, palpably betray the absence of that intellectual energy, and contempt of personal danger, which are indispensable qualities for a rebel chief.
To reflect on the great number of respectable and unfortunate gentlemen who lost their lives by the hands of the common executioner in consequence of that insurrection, is particularly sad;—indeed, as melancholy as any thing connected with the long misrule and consequent wretched state of brave and sensitive Ireland—which is now, at the termination of seven hundred years, in a state of more alarming and powerful disquietude than at any period since its first connexion with England.
I had been, as stated in a former volume, in long habits of friendship and intercourse with most of the leading chiefs of that rebellion. Their features and manners rise, as it were in a vision, before my face: indeed, after thirty long years of factious struggle and agitation, when nothing remains of Ireland’s pride and independence but the memory, every circumstance occasioning and attending that period, and the subsequent revolution of 1800, remains in freshest colours in the recollection of a man who once prided himself on being born an Irishman.
I made allusion, in a previous part of this work, to a dinner of which I partook in April, 1798, at Bargay Castle, County Wexford, the seat of Beauchamp Bagenal Harvey,—who, I may as well repeat here, was a month afterward general-in-chief over an army of more than thirty thousand men (mostly of his own county), brave and enthusiastic; and, in two months more, died by the hands of the hangman. He had been my school and class-fellow, and from nine years of age we held uninterrupted intercourse: he was a most singular example of mixed and opposite qualities; and of all human beings, I should least have predicted for him such a course, or such a catastrophe.
Harvey was son of one of the six clerks of chancery, who having amassed a very considerable fortune, purchased the estate and castle of Bargay.
Beauchamp Bagenal, his eldest son, was called to the Irish bar, and succeeded to his father’s estates. It was said that he was nearly related by blood to that most extraordinary of all the country gentlemen of Ireland, Beauchamp Bagenal, of Dunlickry, whose splendour and eccentricities were the admiration of the continent while he was making the grand tour (then reserved as part of the education of the very highest circles). This relationship was the subject of much merriment after a duel which Harvey’s reputed kinsman provoked my friend to fight with him, in order to have the satisfaction of ascertaining, “whether or no the lad had metal.”[[41]]
[41]. Mr. Bagenal provoked Harvey to challenge him. They met. Harvey fired, and missed. “D—n you, you young rascal,” cried Bagenal, “do you know that you had like to kill your god-father? Go back to Dunlickry, you dog, and have a good breakfast got ready for us. I only wanted to see if you were stout.”