RICHARD KIRWAN, ESQ.

There is scarcely a catholic family of gentility in Ireland, whose story, if impartially told, would not illustrate the misrule by which the prosperity of the country has been overthrown, and its genius nullified. From the beginning to the end of the last century, to have been born a catholic was a stigma, which no talent could efface, no patriotism remove. To exhibit either, was, at one period, to ensure proscription, or at least persecution; and the market opened for Irish abilities abroad, was so much more profitable, honourable, and secure, that few of the condemned faith remained in their native country, whose endowments exceeded the quality demanded for home consumption.

While all Europe applauded the genius and hailed the scientific researches of Richard Kirwan, (one of the most distinguished chemists and philosophers of his time,) he was utterly unappreciated, and all but unknown in his native land; and, but for an accident, he probably would never have returned to the country, from which his religion had banished him, to give to it the benefits of his knowledge and the glory of his name.

Richard Kirwan, of Cregg Castle, in the county of Galway, was the descendant of one of the most ancient and respectable families of Connaught,⁠[20] a province in which few families condescended to date from a more modern epoch, than the flood. He was born in the year 1734, a fearful time in Ireland. Being a younger son, he was (like all the cadets of his rank and class) sent to a foreign country to receive the benefit of a liberal education; and he passed his boyhood and early youth at the seminary of St. Omer, where, having completed his classical studies, he gave himself up to natural science and philosophical pursuits, with such enthusiasm and such brilliant success, as declared a higher vocation, than he would have been permitted to follow in his own country. The death of his elder brother, by calling him to the succession of a noble estate, enabled him to follow with more effect the bent of his intellect; and he continued to cultivate science with that persevering diligence, and eager love of truth, which are ever the tests of the highest order of genius. As a chemist, for many years he stood alone; and if, afterwards, he was outstripped in the career of improvement, by more youthful successors, he still led the way to some of their most important discoveries. Living much abroad, where he was most known and esteemed, he was elected a member of the academies of Stockholm, Berlin, Upsal, Jena, and Philadelphia; as he was, afterwards, Fellow of the Royal Societies of London and Edinburgh. It was not, I believe, till long after these foreign honours were showered upon him, that he was elected President of the Royal Irish Academy, and created a Doctor of Laws in the Irish University. His unrivalled mineralogical attainments pointed him out also to the government, as the fittest person to hold the office of Inspector General of his Majesty’s mines in Ireland.

From that period, he resided chiefly in his native country—sometimes at his mansion in Rutland-square, and occasionally, as long as his health permitted, at his patrimonial castle of Cregg. The victim of a singular affection of the throat, which prevented him from eating in company, Mr. Kirwan retired from what is called “the world;” and, much more celebrated than known, he lived only with the literary, the liberal, and the scientific, (in Ireland, a very select and circumscribed circle;) but he kept up a correspondence with all that was most distinguished in Europe. Of his numerous works, those most known are his “Elements of Mineralogy;” “Geological Essays;” “Analysis of Mineral Waters;” “Logic, or an Essay on the Elements, Principles, and Different Modes of Reasoning;” “Metaphysical Essays;” “Essay on Phlogiston;” and his work on the “Temperature of Different Latitudes,” which was, I believe, his last.

I remember, when I was a child (du temps du bon Roi Dagobert), hearing a great deal of Mr. Kirwan, and of chemistry: not that my family were particularly given to that, or any other of the sciences, (good folks!) though we had all a great calling to the arts. But the most eminent chemist of the day was an Irishman—and, still more, a Connaught man—and, more still, a Galway man—and, beyond all this, we were kin to the whole Thirteen Tribes of Galway, of which the Kirwans were one; “aye, in truth, dear, from Maoldal-hreock down,” as my father used to say: for upon such Irish lore I was fed from the cradle. Thus the name of Kirwan got associated in my infant mind, with that of Shakspeare, Handel, and Carolan the Irish bard; the three Dii majorum Gentium of our household altars.

My father (as fine and genuine a specimen of the true Irish soil, as the Irish wolf-dog) discovered in me an apt predisposition for all that was Irish—for its music, its poetry, its wild and imaginative fables, and local gossip; and “the genius of my country found me,” as the immortal Robert Burns said, not indeed “at the plough,” but on my father’s knee, listening, with open mouth, up-raised eyes, and tremulous attention, to that species of “rambling stuff,” called in the language of the land, so early my inspiration and my theme, Shanaos.

It was in enumerating the glories of his native province, the worthies it had produced, and the antiquity and respectability of its Thirteen Tribes, that my father was wont particularly to dilate on the illustration thrown on the family of the Kirwans by some of its living members: and having sketched off the genealogical distinction of the Forts, or Fuentes, the Joyces, the Trenches, the Blakes, and Bodkins (or the “Buaidh Baudikin,” as he called them), he always paused in long digression on the family of the Kirwans—or, as he pronounced it the O’quirivans, “for, my dear, the Kirwans, I am sorry to say, dropt the vowel in the troubles; like many others, who dared not exhibit the O or the Mac;—(which was our own case, God help us!) and the Mac-owens, Anglice Owensons, and the O’quirivans, or O’Kirwans, remain stripped of these family patronymics to this day. But they are, ever were, and will be, a great family. It was one of the Kirwans of Castle Hacket who first introduced glass windows into county Galway; and I have heard tell that the first tea-pot seen in the province, was in the buffet of the Kirwans of Blindacre. But the Castle Hackets have to boast of producing that inspired preacher, Doctor Kirwan—the greatest pulpit orator, as Father O’Leary assured me, since the time of Bossuet. Then there are the Kirwans of Cregg, their chief, at this day, being the greatest chemist and philosopher in Europe. I remember well, when Richard Kirwan first returned from abroad to Cregg Castle, seeing him walk of a Sunday to the Mass House, on the road-side, in a rich suit of embroidered clothes; his chapeau-bras under his arm, and picking his steps along the dirty road, with brilliant stone buckles in his shoes. He was a tall, elegant, comely young man then, and spoke good Irish, though somewhat too fond of interlarding his discourse with foreign phrases. He was then, what is called in Irish a ‘chi shin,’⁠[21] and we little thought he would have turned out the greatest philosopher and chemist of his age.” This was an image; the true source of deep and indelible impressions: and there it is, fresh as I received it—a proof copy, not a line worn out.

It was probably this graphic sketch, and the ideas, associated with it, of the value of philosophy and the importance of chemistry, which, at a very early period of my life, influenced my pursuits. For before I was fourteen I had read Locke (which chance threw in my way in a parlour window) with infinite delight; and I imbibed a very ardent, but very short-lived passion for chemistry, not a little seduced by hearing a great deal of the charms of Pauline Lavoisier, and reading some of her experiments. My experiments, however, were cut short by my burning my fingers severely with phosphorus, while fired by the ambition of frightening my maid, by writing flaming letters on the walls of her bed-room in a dark night. The danger I incurred of being burned to death, and the fright my unlucky experiment caused to my family, checked my “vaulting ambition;” and thus my love of philosophy fell a victim to my love of fun. From that moment—

The restless vivacity of intellectual youth, feeling its way to truth, and impelled, by its own energies, to experiments upon all sorts of knowledge, is frequently mistaken for a decided vocation to some one subject, for which the student has neither will nor organization. Nature, however, left free to act, soon finds her own level, and discovers her own bent. It is the folly of parents to force or restrain her. She may be assisted—she cannot be reorganized: and though it may be easier to inculcate science, than to inspire a talent for the arts, yet mediocrity in both must be the consequence of those forced marches of mind, which enfeeble the victim, without attaining the end.

But though I gave up chemistry, I had not forgotten the chemist; and I borrowed and read the works of Richard Kirwan—at least, as much of them as I could understand; and perhaps a little more—for I dipped into his Elements of Mineralogy, worked hard at his Essays, and picked up just enough of his favourite doctrine of Phlogiston, to astonish the vulgar and amuse the wise;—among whom I reckoned my governess, and my writing-master. Truth, however, to tell, my ideas of the profound and celebrated philosopher still remained mixed up and associated with my father’s description of the tall, comely, elegant young man, picking his steps through the mud of Connaught roads, with diamond buckles in his shoes, and an opera hat under his arm.

In process of time when school was up, and “Alley Croaker made a mighty noise”—when one “wild Irish girl” brought the other into notice—it became the fashion to ask that other and her Irish harp to Dublin parties. This (par parenthèse), not because she wrote novels, and was an honest, pains-taking little person, leaving no calling for the idle trade, and turning to account the petit bout de talent, given her, by Him, from whom all is derived, to lighten the burden, which misfortune had heaped on her family;—but because she was the enfant gâté of a particular circle, and lived with the Lady Harringtons, Asgills, and all sorts of great official English ladies. As for the Irish Protestant Ascendancy dames, the Mrs. Chief Baron this, and Mrs. Chief Justice that, Mrs. Commissioner of wide streets, and Mrs. Secretary of the paving board, she might have perished in the streets, in want or infamy, before one of their ascendancyships would have stretched forth a finger to save her from either. But, “let that pass,” as the Scotch novels say.

It happened, that shortly after the publication of the Wild Irish Girl, as I sat making up one of those “tissues of woven air,” in which I then clothed my heroines, and in which I intended to dress myself for a ball at the Barracks, given that night by Lady Augusta Leith,—a plain, dark, old-fashioned chariot drove to the door, and up came a card, thus inscribed—“Mr. Kirwan, to pay his respects to the fair authoress of the Wild Irish Girl.”—My stars! what a fuss! The great Richard Kirwan, the philosopher! the chemist! the comely! the elegant! the celebrated! What stowing away of breadths and gores (we had not come to ruches and falbalas)—what pushing of work baskets under the sofa, and ramming the Sorrows of Werter into the bread basket!—for work, Werter, and bread and butter, were then all in equal requisition.

I flew first to the harp, to get up an attitude, (like poor Mathurin), and then back to the table to seize my pen like ‘Anna Matilda;’ and when the door opened, I was placed in a thoughtful position, with the contemplative look of a doctor of the Sorbonne, or of Lydia Languish; but the apparition, which for a moment halted at the threshold, and then moved on in solemn gait, actually made me start. A tall, gaunt figure, wrapped from neck to heel in a dark roquelaure, with a large-leafed hat flapped low over the face, presented the very picture of Guy Faux, with nothing wanting but his dark lantern. The comely, the elegant young man disappeared from my imagination; and the venerable, but very singular-looking philosopher, “stood confessed.”

Mr. Kirwan, with all the grace of the old school, moved his hat, and instantly replacing it on a full, old-fashioned peruke, pleaded the necessity for covering his head, on account of some disorder, which rendered it dangerous to do otherwise, even in a warm room. After a few hems and haws on my part, and a fixed stare on his, we fell to discourse, and the conversation soon became animated, and to me highly interesting. It arose from his taking up a book that lay on the table, and had replaced my Werter. This was unlucky: he threw down the book with indignation, and cautioned me against what he called its “selfish sophistry,” adding, “Young lady, you have too much imagination and too much feeling, to give up your precious time to such works as this;” and he then attacked the doctrines of Helvetius, with more feeling than logic. His own philosophy being founded in his quick and almost morbid sensibility, he would not allow self-love to be the primum mobile of all human action. Sympathy was his leading dogma; and the predominancy of good his creed.

While we were talking, I perceived, from the window near which we were seated, the wretched skeleton of a scarcely living horse, which had been turned out to die on a piece of waste ground, not yet built on. The bones had nearly pierced the skin, and it fell as we looked on it, and died. “So much for the prevalence of good,” I said. “What must have been the sufferings of that poor animal, since it first began to fail in strength and utility, and was exposed to the brutality, ignorance, and disappointed avarice of its owner, who has thus turned it forth to die in agony and in want! Yet what had that poor beast done to merit such a fate? For him no future compensation exists—no bright hereafter repays, to all eternity, his sufferings on earth. But such is the lot of nearly the whole brute creation; to serve and suffer,—to be incapable of crime, and yet to feel its direst penalties.”

The countenance of Mr. Kirwan became gloomy and agitated; he turned away from the window, and, seating himself by the fire, after a long silence, he addressed me, in a solemn and impressive manner, that affected me deeply, and left its influence fixed on my mind. He began by observing, that the apparent sufferings of the animal who had died under our eyes, had for a moment elicited the most painful and piteous sympathy; that the idea of sufferings imposed without a cause on the part of the sufferer, and which were to have no retribution, no recompense, was too painful an idea to indulge in, and too derogatory to the wisdom and goodness of the Supreme Being, to be credible; that he had therefore long been convinced, that those signs of suffering manifested by brute animals, were but means to cherish and promote the sympathies of men, and to check his natural tendency to tyrannize and misuse power, whenever it was granted him. In a word, that he was a sincere disciple and zealous advocate for the doctrine of Gomez Pereira, (which was popularized by Descartes,) who conceived that all appearances of sensibility manifested by animals are fallacious; and that the brute species are mere machines, divested of all feeling.

There is something so amiable in this horror of injustice, that it is impossible not to pardon the inconsequence of the reasoning. In what is the generally received notion of retributive vengeance, which gratuitously inflicts pain, where neither amendment nor example can be hoped, more consistent with the idea of infinite goodness, than that of the temporal miseries of unoffending brutes? The difficulties surrounding the admitted existence of evil in its simple relation to man, one would think were sufficient, without bringing the brute race into question. It is curious to remark, that the argument for the possible automatic nature of the brute mechanism, is precisely that of the materialists against the existence of the soul; all which is very good as it respects the animal, but, applied to man, is “stark naught;”—a good specimen of the fairness of theologians, which almost drives one on the mythology of Pope’s Indian, and makes one wish to take our dog along with us into the regions of immortality.

Father Bougeant, a jesuit, and too much of a jesuit not to see the difficulties of either system, cut the Gordian knot, by stating that brutes were animated by the souls of devils; and one might sometimes be tempted to think so, when a horse will gib, and a “pig won’t go to market”—when an ass proves as obdurate as Balaam’s, without the same cause—and a crocodile “puts its hand into its breeches pocket and sheds feigned tears,” after the manner of Sir Boyle’s illustration.

Speaking of an objection that lies against this opinion, drawn from the pleasure men take in the society of animals, the jesuit says, “If I am told that these poor devils are doomed to suffer eternal torments, I admire God’s decrees, but I have no share in that dreadful sentence. I leave the execution of it to the sovereign judge; and I live with my little devils, as I do with a multitude of people, of whom religion tells me that a great number must be lost.” In this good natured feeling, Bougeant is not singular. Most people have a lurking notion, that they themselves will escape reprobation; and as for their relations and friends, if they will try their chance of going “the other way, the other way,” as Mr. Moore delicately phrases it, why then, sauve qui peut.

In the charitable creed of Mr. Kirwan, I have often been tempted to put faith—after the fashion of St. Augustine, even though it were impossible—when I have seen the dreadful sufferings inflicted on domestic animals (and in Ireland they are worse treated, than in any other part of the world, in spite of our dear Dick Martin). On such occasions Gomez Pereira, and even the Abbé Bougeant, are often necessary to reconcile one to the spectacle.

From metaphysics and physics, the conversation turned to music. Mr. Kirwan was a devoted amateur of the divine art, which he had studied con amore, abroad. He had not, however, got a step further than the “Coin de la Reine,” and was as furious against Gluck, and as enamoured of Piccini and Sacchini, as when he assisted to hunt down the “Titan et l’Aurore,” of Jean Joseph of Meudonville, in spite of Madame de Pompadour’s patronage of French discords. I was at this time, with respect to Italian music, what St. Preux was before Lord Bomston had discovered the musical bump on his eye-brow, and gave him a new sense. I was so enthusiastic in my passion for Irish music, and had obtained such a pretty little success by playing the airs of Carolan on my Irish harp, that I had actually engaged with Messrs. Power and Golding, of London, to collect and arrange twelve Irish melodies, with words translated from the Irish, which they brought out shortly afterwards, supplying the idea to Mr. Moore of a similar, though immeasurably superior, publication. I thought, therefore, I would say a little word in favour of my poor Gramachrees, Emunch-a-Knuics, and other bardic strains, which had, even in infancy, produced the most extraordinary effect on (what is vulgarly called) my nerves. This was worse than Helvetius. Mr. Kirwan called my taste barbarous, and became quite vehement in his expression of abhorrence of Irish music.

“Madam,” he said, “I left Ireland at your age; and full, as you now are, of all the vulgar errors of enthusiastic patriotism, I thought there was no poetry like Irish poetry—no music like Irish music. When I returned, I could not endure either. However, at Christmas and other great festivals, I had the servants’ hall, at Cregg, thrown open to all comers, beggars, bards, and story-tellers, after the old Connaught fashion; and at night I took my place in the midst of them, round the blazing hearth, and made my eleemosynary guests each tell a story, recite a poem, or sing a song, in Irish; and it was amazing how few among them could not recite or sing: and some of them did both right well. It was thus I came at various fragments of Ossian, which Mr. M’Pherson has dressed up and changed at pleasure, and assigned to the Scottish bard. But the music was not endurable—at least it put my nerves to the torture. Madam, it was quite too much for me—it almost threw me into convulsions.”

While he was speaking, I had drawn my harp forward, and begged permission to sing to it the fine old cronan of Emunch-a-Knuic, or, “Ned of the Hills,” which dates back to the time of Henry VIII. He bowed his head in sullen assent; but before I had finished the first stanza, the tears gushed from his eyes, and seizing my hands, he said with vehemence, “Madam, I won’t hear you—’tis terrible—it goes to the very soul!—it wrings every nerve in the body!”

“Then, Sir, I ask no more—the effect which Irish music produces on you is the best proof of its excellence.”

“You may as well say that the howl of a dying dog, which would produce much the same effect, is the proof of its excellence; my dear child, give up your Irish harp and your Irish howl, and study Italian music—you are worthy of knowing it! for you have a true musical organization, but it is all perverted. You must take tea with me on Thursday next; it is my shaving day. I only pay visits, or receive ladies, twice a-week, on my shaving days. I have a good piano-forte, and a fine collection of Italian music; you shall try both—my tea-table hour is half-past five!”

It happened that on the very evening for which Mr. Kirwan engaged me to take tea at his house in Rutland Square, at half-past five, I had engaged myself to take tea at half-past seven with another celebrated invalid, Mrs. Henry Tighe, the charming Psyche of poetical fame, and my most dear and early friend.

The notes which reminded me of my double and very interesting engagements, lie at this moment before me; they are extremely characteristic:—

“Mr. Kirwan presents his best respects to Miss Owenson, and writes to remind her of her kind promise to take tea with him to-morrow evening, at half past five. She will meet Mr. Hamilton Rowan, and Professor Higgins. Mr. Kirwan will take the liberty to send his carriage for Miss O. at a quarter-past five.”

“My dear Glorvina,

“Lest, in your poetical flights, you should forget to-morrow evening, this is to request you will come early, and bring your best looks and best spirits with you; the beautiful Lady Charlemont is coming to meet you expressly. Lady Asgill brings Sir Arthur Wellesley,⁠[22] and William Parnel joins us as soon as he can—so come. If you would like Harry to go for you, say so.—Your’s ever,

“M. Tighe.”

The sober carriage of Mr. Kirwan was at my door to the moment; and, to the moment, I was at his. My punctuality pleased him; for his own whole useful and laborious life was governed by a sense of the value of time, and of the virtue of punctuality. I was received by his man, Pope, who seemed born and organized to be the servant of a philosopher—the perfect image of Dumps, the servant of old Rueful, in “The Good Natured Man,” pale, lank, solemn, and demure.

On entering the drawing room, the heat was so excessive, that I was afraid I should never go through the séance. Although it was a fine mild spring evening, an enormous fire blazed on the hearth; and a skreen, of considerable dimensions, drawn closely round it, excluded every breath of air. Within this enclosure, on a large cumbrous sofa, sat the advocate of phlogiston. He was dressed in the same roquelaure and slouched hat, in which he had visited me; with, however, the addition of a shawl wrapt round his neck. On either side him, were placed two persons, who, in their appearance, seemed to form the extreme links in the human chain. The one was the good and simple Professor Higgins, with his air de prêtre, the very beau-idéal of a catholic curate, from his own wild native district of Erris; the other a Roman tribune of Rome’s best day, already indeed past the prime of life, but with the figure of an athlete, and a bust of the antique mould: it was Archibald Hamilton Rowan, who had then but lately returned from his long exile in America. The impression made on me, by this now best and truest of old friends, has come forth, after a long lapse of years, in my last work, the “O’Briens and the O’Flahertys;” and some resemblance to what he then was may be found in his fine picture by Hamilton.

Over the chimney-piece was a portrait of Catherine of Russia, “whom,” said Mr. Kirwan, “I call Catherine the Great, in contradistinction to Frederick the Infamous, her rival, and by far her inferior.”

Meantime, a conversation, of the most scientific nature, was resumed, which my entrance had interrupted, and in which my ignorance and timidity, at the learned society into which I had been so strangely introduced, prevented me from taking a part.

As soon as Mr. Kirwan had settled the constitution of acids with Professor Higgins, he turned to me, with an air of great gallantry, and said, “Let us now revert to a sweeter subject.” Lord, how I fancied myself Miss Helen Maria Williams, gallanted by Dr. Johnson! After some very civil things, such as young ladies like to hear, even from old gentlemen (at least I did), he drew up a précis of the respective merits of Miss Edgeworth’s admirable “Castle Rackrent,” and my “Wild Irish Girl,” very flattering to both. On the exaggeration so unjustly imputed to Miss Edgeworth’s most graphic work, he related the following anecdote:—

“When I first returned to my native province, from abroad, I accepted an invitation to a gentleman’s house. After a day’s sport on his estate, I arrived late, and found that the house had been burned down the night before.—I was only one of many guests. We had a joyous supper in the roofless hall; and sheds and temporary sleeping places had been erected for us in the barn, behind the ruined mansion. When we retired for the night, I was led to my pavilion, accompanied by my two favourite dogs, like one of Ossian’s hunters. Extremely tired, and, perhaps, not particularly sober, I threw myself on the bed prepared for me, from which I had a distinct view of the stars, through the crevices of the roof. However, I slept soundly, though not uninterruptedly; for, the middle of the night, I was roused by extraordinary sounds of groaning, and grunting, and squeakings, and squallings, mingled with the sharp bark of one dog, and the low growl of the other, as if in deadly contest with some unwelcome intruder. All that I had then heard of the atrocities of the disturbed state of Ireland rushed to my mind. I started on my legs in search of my fowling piece, but fell over a huge bleeding body, which seemed to give out its last groan under my pressure; my fierce dog, as I supposed, still clinging to the wretch’s throat. I called for help—again got upon my legs; and staggering to the entrance, and opening the door, found that I had indeed been attacked, and by the swinish multitude. The fact was, that I had been lodged in the pig-sty, to which the lawful, but extruded proprietors had, by a natural instinct, made their way back in the night; and my faithful dogs, who had in vain striven to repel the invaders, had laid at my feet the mother sow, ‘with all her pretty little ones,’ bleeding and vanquished. The scene lay near Ballinoshe; the time was, literally, ‘the day after the fair.’”

While this conversation was passing, Pope made tea behind the screen, and served it with a most characteristic formality. The scene was a picture; and though I afterwards drank tea with Mr. Kirwan fifty times, this first impression was the strongest, and the most lasting. At eight precisely, the party broke up; and Pope conducted me back to the carriage. Before, however, I drove off, he was already employed in unscrewing the knocker:⁠[23] for, from that hour, the mansion of the philosopher was hermetically sealed against all intrusion.

The manners, the habits, the accent of Mr. Kirwan, were marked by all those distinctive peculiarities which belonged to his creed, his education, and the country and times in which he flourished. Born in an epoch of Irish story, the most marked, the most heart-rending, under that régime of terror, when the worst penal statutes against the catholics were first imposed;—born too, and receiving his first and deepest impressions in a province, poetically and historically the most Irish, he preserved, from the early part of the last century to the commencement of the present, the high and formal courtesy, the gallant bearing, and chivalrous point of honour, the broad guttural accent and the idiomatic phraseology, with which the brave officers who survived the siege of Limerick went forth into voluntary exile, to fight and perish in foreign lands for foreign interests.

His opinions were as singular as his appearance and his manners. Abhorring the atrocities of the fatal re-action, which retarded the benefits and stained the cause of the French Revolution, he was frank and loud in his reprobation of that ruinous continental war by which the British empire was drained and demoralised, to revive pernicious institutions, and restore a race, the antitypes of the unfortunate family which England had herself spurned and dethroned. It was curious to hear him calculate the expenses of this war, and the disbursement which would have been required to build a causeway or pier that should extend across the channel.—“Works,” he said, “of almost equal magnitude had been completed by the ancients, with less aid from science than could now be had. Bonaparte,” he would add, “would effect works as useful and as sublime, if the old dynasties would let him alone.”

Starting with his favourite maxim, that—“with labour and money nothing is impossible,” he was wont to bring all his wonderful geological knowledge to bear upon this favourite scheme. He tumbled the mountains of Wicklow into St. George’s Channel—played with Bray-head and the Sugar-loaf, as if they were jack-stones,—finished by walking dryshod from Howth to Holyhead, and reckoning his way, not by knots, but by milestones.

His opinion on the antiquity of knowledge was as original as his belief in the mechanism of the brute creation. He asserted that we borrowed much of our astronomical lights from the antediluvians, and that Adam spoke Greek with a purity that might have elicited the applause of the Portico. In his religious opinions he was equally paradoxical; and he remained unsettled upon some leading dogmas to the last, though it has been said of him, “that he died ferme catholique, as he had lived preux chevalier.” He was extremely fond of female society, and not only invited ladies of all ages to his early tea-parties, but went to theirs; always stipulating for leave to bring and make his own tea, and to come and go at his own hours.

The last time I ever saw him was at a tea-party made expressly for himself at my sister’s, Lady Clarke’s, a few months before his death; and the company which he upon that occasion drew round him, formed a curious contrast with the grave and learned philosopher who was its centre. It is the misfortune of all the high officials who come to Ireland, that they are, instantly on their arrival, surrounded by a certain heir-loom circle, whose interest it is to keep aloof from the lords of the ascendant the genuine talent and true and independent gentry of the country. Whoever takes the trouble to read the court circular of the Irish dignitaries, will find, that precisely the same persons dine with his excellency Lord B., who dined with his excellency Lord A.; and so on through the vice-regal alphabet: while commanders-in-chief, and chief commanders, run the same gauntlet, and “go by the scrip,” just as their military predecessors did before them.

At a moment when Mr. Kirwan’s name and works were familiar to all Europe, and when he was a fellow of nearly all its learned societies, the fact was utterly unknown to the English officials, military and civil, who then held the dessus du pavé, that Dublin was distinguished by the constant residence of one, who did such honour to its literary and scientific annals. Having to plead as an excuse to Sir Charles and Lady Asgill, for a late attendance at their dinner-party, that if I were served up with the game of the second course, it would be because I was first to assist at a tea-party given to Mr. Kirwan, they expressed not only surprise at his residence in Dublin, but an anxious curiosity to be of the tea-party.

Not to take the philosopher by surprise, the proposition was made to him by Lady C—— and myself—and I remember his answer was, “Madam, I am always pleased to mingle with people of the world. I never knew one, even the lightest and most frivolous, from whom something was not to be learned, that threw a light upon the follies and virtues of society. I once lived much in the world of fashion myself; and was as foolish and as vain as the worst. But I stipulate for my own hours, my own tay, and my own tay-pot.”—This being agreed, the party assembled in Lady C.’s drawing-room, at the usual fashionable hour for morning visits. Under the pretence of bringing his staff, Sir Charles Asgill was accompanied by his amiable nephew and A. D. C., Captain Bouverie, and several other young officers; and Lady Asgill smuggled in General and Lady Augusta Leith. In short, the whole 8 o’clock dinner-party of Merrion-square were seated at my sister’s tea-table before six.

The contrast of the gay and gallant militaires, with two or three learned professors who had been invited to meet Mr. Kirwan, and above all with the strange costume and erect posture of the philosopher himself, formed a pleasant picture. It was very evident, that there was a previous inclination on the part of the fashionables towards mystification; and that a very active system of quizzing had been organized by the two grandes dames de par le monde, in which every beau present was to have played his part—(within, however, be it acknowledged, the bounds of perfect good breeding,—a virtue never transgressed with impunity in the society of the polished and courteous Sir Charles Asgill). It happened, however, in this instance, (as I have known it happen in a hundred others, when genuine talent is brought to stand the brunt of that frivolous persiflage, in which fashion delights and exults,) that those who came to scoff, remained—to admire. Unconsciously led on to talk, by the insidious propositions of the mystifiers, to whom his charming, unadulterated brogue was a feast, he gradually dilated into the most communicative pleasantry. His ever anecdotic mine was opened to its richest abundance; and so full of interest, novelty, and information, was his discourse, that even appetite stood in check while he spoke; and Mr. Kirwan, (whose tea was his supper,) was the first to give notice to his delighted listeners, that it was time for them to go to dinner.

Like all people of eminent talent, Mr. Kirwan was extremely naïve; and, where his feelings gave the impulse, he seldom “stood on the order” of form, or of cold discretion. At that deplorable period which preceded the rebellion, when a gentleman of the highest respectability, of large fortune and of ancient family, was imprisoned, tried, and condemned, for a libel on the nefarious government of those times, it entered into the littleness of the Irish Secretary of State to refine upon the severity of punishment, by adding to it the indelible stain of disgrace:—in a word, it was intended to place a member of a noble family, a man of the highest character, in the pillory. When the intelligence was communicated to Mr. Kirwan, his emotion is said to have been extreme; and ordering his carriage, he instantly drove to the castle—pushed by the familiars who filled the ante-room of the Secretary of State’s office, and bolting into the presence of the arbitrator of a nation’s fate, demanded if what he had heard was true? A placid and rather affirmative smile, was the equivocal and somewhat contemptuous answer. After a moment’s indignant pause, Mr. Kirwan, drawing up his figure to its full height, in his broadest brogue and deepest tones, said—“Sir, if this unfortunate gentleman is guilty of high treason, bring him to the scaffold; if of a libel against your government, fine and confine him: but if you send such a personage to the pillory, you will revolt the whole order of gentlemen throughout Europe against you.”—The order of gentlemen was, in Mr. Kirwan’s estimation, the first order in the world; and none better illustrated its pervading spirit than himself.

The long and truly paternal kindness, with which Mr. Kirwan honoured me, from the moment of our first acquaintance till his death, I consider as among the proudest circumstances of my life. When the first attack was made on me, in the first number of the Quarterly, he was nearly as indignant as when Mr. —— was threatened with the pillory—not more through his partiality to me, than through the disgrace it might inflict on the “order of gentlemen,” should any one suppose a gentleman capable of so unmeasured an attack upon a young and defenceless woman.

He was extremely desirous, at that epoch, that I should write a prize essay for a premium, offered by the Dublin University, for the best essay on Literary Fiction. I wrote my essay—but it was not a prize one. It was my first and last attempt at writing “to order,” and was undertaken, against my taste and will, merely to please him. Having found it some years back, I gave it to Mr. Colburn for the “Literary Gazette,” at that time under his direction.

The last letter which I had the honour to receive from Mr. Kirwan, a short time before his death, is extremely characteristic of that high tone of courtesy which he always assumed with women; and it is remarkable for the perfect intellect it displayed, even when its gifted writer was dropping into the grave:—

“Dear Madam,

“I received your letter about three weeks ago; and your present, which does me so much honour, about a week ago: but I cannot say that your letter gave me any pleasure, as it announced your intention of speedily departing from this country.

“Allowing you to do so, is indeed an accumulated proof how little it is worthy of the praises you bestowed upon it. Sentiments corresponding with your own, are now to be found only among those of genuine Irish origin, who now, alas! constitute the lowest class in the wretched population of the western coast of Connaught—despised and persecuted for nearly three centuries; though you will probably be rendered much more happy, by absence from a scene which would daily afflict a heart of such exquisite sensibility as your own—a sensibility which, I must say, among your numerous accomplishments, forms the essence of your character.

“It will, I hope, if report says true, be engrossed by a person worthy of its selection, who in return will derive his happiness from repaying it by equal constancy and intensity.

“This is the ardent hope of your faithful friend, and most affectionate humble servant,

“R. Kirwan.

“Dublin, January 25th, 1812”