DISTINGUISHED GRADUATES

“The heavy and the weary weightOf all this unintelligible world”is not sufficiently emphasised, and that he must therefore take rank as a poet of society upon whom the eternal problems did not press heavily enough to make him a poet-philosopher. The indictment may indeed be partially true; but there is poetry which has as little of the character of a profound philosophy as have the cravings of the human heart. “The Meeting of the Waters” or “She is far from the land,” though unweighted by any profound or subtle thought, will outlive—to venture on prediction—the splendid unravelling of intellectual complexities in “Mr. Sludge, the Medium.” There is not, I believe, to be found in any literature more melodious utterance of real emotion than in the songs of this true poetic brother of Oliver Goldsmith—like him, and unlike many of his contemporaries, possessed of “the great poetic heart,” the possession of which, we have been told, is “more than all poetic fame.” The charm, as I have already observed, of the greater part of the poetry and prose of Ireland, lies in its unaffected purity and naturalness. The lyrical cry we hear in the music-marvels—“I saw from the beach” and “Oft in the stilly night”—has a piercing sweetness unrivalled by greater poets of vastly wider range. For the creator of a nation’s songs there is little need to fear, despite the critics, the verdict, in a phrase of Archer Butler’s, of “the incorruptible Areopagus of posterity.”“THE BURIAL OF SIR JOHN MOORE.”FAC-SIMILE FROM ORIGINAL LETTER IN THE LIBRARY OF THE ROYAL IRISH ACADEMY.(By Permission.)(second page)Yet other members of the Historical Society were found among the leaders of the revolutionary party in the troublous times of the Irish Rebellion. Wolfe Tone, the leader of the United Irishmen, had sat in the chair of the Society, obtained three of its medals, and delivered the closing address of one of the sessions. His place in history has been accurately defined by a brilliant young Irish University man of the present generation, Mr. T. W. Rolleston: “He found national sentiment the property of a small aristocratic section; he left it the dominant sentiment of the millions of the Irish democracy.”The author of “A Battle of Freedom,” Thomas Davis, may rightly be called the Tyrtæus of the national party. He too held the premier office, that of Auditor, in the Society above mentioned, and might, had he lived, have reached a high place, not only among Irish but among English poets.Dublin claims many other names of literary note—Sir Samuel Ferguson, recently lost to us, whose themes were the ancient traditions and legends of his native land; and (to go a generation further back) that poet who has earned the laurel by adding to the treasury of literature one poem not to be forgotten—“The Burial of Sir John Moore.” (See fac-simile,pp. 260, 261.)It is not part of my task to write contemporary history, of the Senate or the Bar, in the careers of Butt or Napier or Whiteside or Cairns. With students of philosophy Archer Butler is a name to be reverenced, and Stokes and Graves gave to the School of Medicine in Dublin a European reputation, as witness such a passage as this from Professor Trousseau: “As Clinical Professor in the Faculty of Medicine of Paris, I have incessantly read and re-read the work of Graves; I have become inspired with it in my teaching; I have endeavoured to imitate it in the book I have myself published on the Clinique of the Hotel-Dieu; and even now, though I know almost by heart all that the Dublin Professor has written, I cannot refrain from perusing a book which never leaves my study.” In theology, Magee—Archbishop of Dublin, O’Brien, Lee, and Fitzgerald, and in Irish antiquarian research Todd and Reeves, have made for themselves an abiding reputation.(bust of James MacCullagh)Mathematicians will not need to be reminded of the importance of the work done in their province by Hamilton and MacCullagh. Sir William Rowan Hamilton ranks with the greatest of the explorers of new scientific territory. To name the author of theGeneral Method in Dynamicsand the inventor of the method of Quaternions is sufficient; it is impossible here to do more. The position held by Trinity College in this century as a seat of mathematical learning is largely due to MacCullagh. He it was who introduced here a more comprehensive study of the work of Continental mathematicians, under the auspices of Provost Lloyd.LEVER.The Irish novelists, Maxwell and Le Fanu, have been overshadowed by the greater Lever. Lever’s descriptions of College life inCharles O’Malleyand other of his novels are a faithful reproduction of his own experiences. Take him all in all, he is one of the best story-tellers we have had or shall ever have; a romancer who holds his readers breathless till the last page is turned in his stories of adventure, and a dramatist whose situations are among the most powerful in fiction. The underlying melancholy which Thackeray saw in Lever gives to his later books, from which the high boyish spirits of the earlier tales are absent, a graver and deeper human interest. But he is the most cheerful companion of all the great story-tellers; and who does not feel a relief in taking up Lever after the motive-grinding and mental dissections of the modern novel of purpose?With the last mentioned name I shall close this review, for I must not enter the world of to-day. The careers which we or our fathers have watched in person havebeen too lately followed to be spoken of here. They must read many books who seek to know the fortunes and achievements of the graduates of Dublin in recent years, for a record of them will carry the reader into the political, military, and literary history of the English-speaking peoples in all the continents.BERKELEY’S TOMB.(Decorative section heading)DISTINGUISHED GRADUATESReferred to inChapter IX.PAGEPAGEAshe, St. George243King, William241Berkeley, George249Leslie, Charles241Boyle, Robert241Lever, Charles263Brady, Nicholas241Le Fanu, Sheridan263Brooke, Henry248Loftus, Dudley239Browne, Peter241M‘Calmont, Hugh, Earl Cairns262Burke, Edmund252MacCullagh, James263Bushe, Charles Kendel253Magee, William (Dublin)262Butler, William Archer262Magee, William Connor (York)253Butt, Isaac262Malone, Edmund253Clayton, Robert252Maxwell, William263Congreve, William246Molyneux, William243Conyngham, William, Lord Plunket258Moore, Thomas258Curran, John Philpot258Napier, Sir Joseph262Davis, Thomas262O’Brien, Sir Lucius257Delany, Patrick243Parnell, Thomas248Denham, Sir John241Sheil, Richard Lalor258Dillon, Earl of Roscommon241Skelton, Philip252Dodwell, Henry240Southerne, Thomas245Dopping, Anthony242Swift, Jonathan244Emmet, Robert259Tate, Nahum241Farquhar, George247Tone, Theobald Wolfe262Ferguson, Sir Samuel262Toplady, Augustus253Fitzgibbon, John, Earl of Clare255Ussher, James238Flood, Henry256Ware, Sir James239Goldsmith, Oliver252Whiteside, James262Grattan, Henry255Wilson, Thomas241Graves, Robert James262Wolfe, Charles260-261Hamilton, Sir William Rowan263Wellesley, Garrod, Earl of Mornington253MEADE.GARRET WESLEY.CAUFIELD.1760.1751.1690.CHAPTER X.THE COLLEGE PLATE.The earliest mention of any acquisition of Plate seems to be the list of subscriptions (in 1600) for the College Mace, which cost £12, a large sum in those days. I have heard Provost Humphrey Lloyd say that this ancient relic of the first days of the College was extant in his time, and sometimes used, but, being in the charge of the Bedell, disappeared when the larger and handsomer mace, now still in use, came to be habitually produced. This regrettable loss dates from that period in the history of the College when all ancient things were neglected.The next entry in the Registry seems to occur in the negotiations concerning a lease with John Richardson, Bishop of Ardagh, a friend of James Ussher. In addition to his rent, he promised to give Communion Plate to the value of £30—“a chalice, paten, and stoup of silver.” This precious gift (cf.p. 44) is still in use, having escaped all the violences, the negligences, the ignorances of many generations. The set contains more articles than those given by Richardson, some far later in date (1700, 1764, &c.), but all imitated from his gift as a model. The chalice bears the inscription—“1632. Johs. Richardson, S.T.P., hujus Collegii quondum socius,Esse sui dedit hoc monumentum et pignus amoris.”The flagons are of the finest Caroline design, perfectly simple, with slightentasislike a Greek pillar. One of them (of the year 1638) bears the inscription—Par fratrum pariles fecerunt esse lagenasMoses et Eduardus Hill generosi.[169]SALVER—GILBERT, 1734.It is remarkable that the two silver-gilt chalices now in use at S. Canice’s Cathedral, Kilkenny, are exactly the same in design, and dated (from the hall mark) 1635. They have been recently regilt, while ours has the gilding worn almost completely away. That this gift was not the first, or a solitary act, is proved by the note in a letter of Lord Cork, dated May, 1630: “I give my chaplain 50s. to pay the ffees to the officers of Trynitie Colledge, near Dublin, for the admittance of my two sons, Lewis and Hodge, into that house, and must also present plate.”[170]It would seem, therefore, that such gifts were still merely voluntary, whereas at some very early date the practice was adopted of taxing each student at matriculation forargent. In an account of the year 1628 occurs, “From Mr. Floyd, in lieu of two pieces plate to be bestowed on the College, £4.” If this was a matriculating Fellow Commoner, we can see that the custom was just then passing, like other “Benevolences” known in history, from being purely voluntary into the class of duties.But of all these early gifts, only the Communion Plate survives. What became of the rest appears from the following record (from the days of the great Irish Rebellion), which I quote from Dr. Stubbs:—[In] the College [there] had accumulated a considerable amount of valuable plate, which had been presented to it from time to time by noblemen and wealthy commoners, whose sons had entered as students. In one of the early books there is an inventory of the plate, “8 Potts; 14 Goblets; 2 Beakers, 9 Bowles; 3 Standing Pieces”; and the names of the donors are preserved.In the Bursar’s books we find the following entries:—

“The heavy and the weary weightOf all this unintelligible world”

“The heavy and the weary weight

Of all this unintelligible world”

is not sufficiently emphasised, and that he must therefore take rank as a poet of society upon whom the eternal problems did not press heavily enough to make him a poet-philosopher. The indictment may indeed be partially true; but there is poetry which has as little of the character of a profound philosophy as have the cravings of the human heart. “The Meeting of the Waters” or “She is far from the land,” though unweighted by any profound or subtle thought, will outlive—to venture on prediction—the splendid unravelling of intellectual complexities in “Mr. Sludge, the Medium.” There is not, I believe, to be found in any literature more melodious utterance of real emotion than in the songs of this true poetic brother of Oliver Goldsmith—like him, and unlike many of his contemporaries, possessed of “the great poetic heart,” the possession of which, we have been told, is “more than all poetic fame.” The charm, as I have already observed, of the greater part of the poetry and prose of Ireland, lies in its unaffected purity and naturalness. The lyrical cry we hear in the music-marvels—“I saw from the beach” and “Oft in the stilly night”—has a piercing sweetness unrivalled by greater poets of vastly wider range. For the creator of a nation’s songs there is little need to fear, despite the critics, the verdict, in a phrase of Archer Butler’s, of “the incorruptible Areopagus of posterity.”

“THE BURIAL OF SIR JOHN MOORE.”FAC-SIMILE FROM ORIGINAL LETTER IN THE LIBRARY OF THE ROYAL IRISH ACADEMY.(By Permission.)

(second page)

Yet other members of the Historical Society were found among the leaders of the revolutionary party in the troublous times of the Irish Rebellion. Wolfe Tone, the leader of the United Irishmen, had sat in the chair of the Society, obtained three of its medals, and delivered the closing address of one of the sessions. His place in history has been accurately defined by a brilliant young Irish University man of the present generation, Mr. T. W. Rolleston: “He found national sentiment the property of a small aristocratic section; he left it the dominant sentiment of the millions of the Irish democracy.”

The author of “A Battle of Freedom,” Thomas Davis, may rightly be called the Tyrtæus of the national party. He too held the premier office, that of Auditor, in the Society above mentioned, and might, had he lived, have reached a high place, not only among Irish but among English poets.

Dublin claims many other names of literary note—Sir Samuel Ferguson, recently lost to us, whose themes were the ancient traditions and legends of his native land; and (to go a generation further back) that poet who has earned the laurel by adding to the treasury of literature one poem not to be forgotten—“The Burial of Sir John Moore.” (See fac-simile,pp. 260, 261.)

It is not part of my task to write contemporary history, of the Senate or the Bar, in the careers of Butt or Napier or Whiteside or Cairns. With students of philosophy Archer Butler is a name to be reverenced, and Stokes and Graves gave to the School of Medicine in Dublin a European reputation, as witness such a passage as this from Professor Trousseau: “As Clinical Professor in the Faculty of Medicine of Paris, I have incessantly read and re-read the work of Graves; I have become inspired with it in my teaching; I have endeavoured to imitate it in the book I have myself published on the Clinique of the Hotel-Dieu; and even now, though I know almost by heart all that the Dublin Professor has written, I cannot refrain from perusing a book which never leaves my study.” In theology, Magee—Archbishop of Dublin, O’Brien, Lee, and Fitzgerald, and in Irish antiquarian research Todd and Reeves, have made for themselves an abiding reputation.

(bust of James MacCullagh)

Mathematicians will not need to be reminded of the importance of the work done in their province by Hamilton and MacCullagh. Sir William Rowan Hamilton ranks with the greatest of the explorers of new scientific territory. To name the author of theGeneral Method in Dynamicsand the inventor of the method of Quaternions is sufficient; it is impossible here to do more. The position held by Trinity College in this century as a seat of mathematical learning is largely due to MacCullagh. He it was who introduced here a more comprehensive study of the work of Continental mathematicians, under the auspices of Provost Lloyd.

LEVER.

The Irish novelists, Maxwell and Le Fanu, have been overshadowed by the greater Lever. Lever’s descriptions of College life inCharles O’Malleyand other of his novels are a faithful reproduction of his own experiences. Take him all in all, he is one of the best story-tellers we have had or shall ever have; a romancer who holds his readers breathless till the last page is turned in his stories of adventure, and a dramatist whose situations are among the most powerful in fiction. The underlying melancholy which Thackeray saw in Lever gives to his later books, from which the high boyish spirits of the earlier tales are absent, a graver and deeper human interest. But he is the most cheerful companion of all the great story-tellers; and who does not feel a relief in taking up Lever after the motive-grinding and mental dissections of the modern novel of purpose?

With the last mentioned name I shall close this review, for I must not enter the world of to-day. The careers which we or our fathers have watched in person havebeen too lately followed to be spoken of here. They must read many books who seek to know the fortunes and achievements of the graduates of Dublin in recent years, for a record of them will carry the reader into the political, military, and literary history of the English-speaking peoples in all the continents.

BERKELEY’S TOMB.

(Decorative section heading)

Referred to inChapter IX.

PAGEPAGEAshe, St. George243King, William241Berkeley, George249Leslie, Charles241Boyle, Robert241Lever, Charles263Brady, Nicholas241Le Fanu, Sheridan263Brooke, Henry248Loftus, Dudley239Browne, Peter241M‘Calmont, Hugh, Earl Cairns262Burke, Edmund252MacCullagh, James263Bushe, Charles Kendel253Magee, William (Dublin)262Butler, William Archer262Magee, William Connor (York)253Butt, Isaac262Malone, Edmund253Clayton, Robert252Maxwell, William263Congreve, William246Molyneux, William243Conyngham, William, Lord Plunket258Moore, Thomas258Curran, John Philpot258Napier, Sir Joseph262Davis, Thomas262O’Brien, Sir Lucius257Delany, Patrick243Parnell, Thomas248Denham, Sir John241Sheil, Richard Lalor258Dillon, Earl of Roscommon241Skelton, Philip252Dodwell, Henry240Southerne, Thomas245Dopping, Anthony242Swift, Jonathan244Emmet, Robert259Tate, Nahum241Farquhar, George247Tone, Theobald Wolfe262Ferguson, Sir Samuel262Toplady, Augustus253Fitzgibbon, John, Earl of Clare255Ussher, James238Flood, Henry256Ware, Sir James239Goldsmith, Oliver252Whiteside, James262Grattan, Henry255Wilson, Thomas241Graves, Robert James262Wolfe, Charles260-261Hamilton, Sir William Rowan263Wellesley, Garrod, Earl of Mornington253

MEADE.GARRET WESLEY.CAUFIELD.1760.1751.1690.

The earliest mention of any acquisition of Plate seems to be the list of subscriptions (in 1600) for the College Mace, which cost £12, a large sum in those days. I have heard Provost Humphrey Lloyd say that this ancient relic of the first days of the College was extant in his time, and sometimes used, but, being in the charge of the Bedell, disappeared when the larger and handsomer mace, now still in use, came to be habitually produced. This regrettable loss dates from that period in the history of the College when all ancient things were neglected.

The next entry in the Registry seems to occur in the negotiations concerning a lease with John Richardson, Bishop of Ardagh, a friend of James Ussher. In addition to his rent, he promised to give Communion Plate to the value of £30—“a chalice, paten, and stoup of silver.” This precious gift (cf.p. 44) is still in use, having escaped all the violences, the negligences, the ignorances of many generations. The set contains more articles than those given by Richardson, some far later in date (1700, 1764, &c.), but all imitated from his gift as a model. The chalice bears the inscription—

“1632. Johs. Richardson, S.T.P., hujus Collegii quondum socius,Esse sui dedit hoc monumentum et pignus amoris.”

The flagons are of the finest Caroline design, perfectly simple, with slightentasislike a Greek pillar. One of them (of the year 1638) bears the inscription—

Par fratrum pariles fecerunt esse lagenasMoses et Eduardus Hill generosi.[169]

Par fratrum pariles fecerunt esse lagenas

Moses et Eduardus Hill generosi.[169]

SALVER—GILBERT, 1734.

It is remarkable that the two silver-gilt chalices now in use at S. Canice’s Cathedral, Kilkenny, are exactly the same in design, and dated (from the hall mark) 1635. They have been recently regilt, while ours has the gilding worn almost completely away. That this gift was not the first, or a solitary act, is proved by the note in a letter of Lord Cork, dated May, 1630: “I give my chaplain 50s. to pay the ffees to the officers of Trynitie Colledge, near Dublin, for the admittance of my two sons, Lewis and Hodge, into that house, and must also present plate.”[170]It would seem, therefore, that such gifts were still merely voluntary, whereas at some very early date the practice was adopted of taxing each student at matriculation forargent. In an account of the year 1628 occurs, “From Mr. Floyd, in lieu of two pieces plate to be bestowed on the College, £4.” If this was a matriculating Fellow Commoner, we can see that the custom was just then passing, like other “Benevolences” known in history, from being purely voluntary into the class of duties.

But of all these early gifts, only the Communion Plate survives. What became of the rest appears from the following record (from the days of the great Irish Rebellion), which I quote from Dr. Stubbs:—

[In] the College [there] had accumulated a considerable amount of valuable plate, which had been presented to it from time to time by noblemen and wealthy commoners, whose sons had entered as students. In one of the early books there is an inventory of the plate, “8 Potts; 14 Goblets; 2 Beakers, 9 Bowles; 3 Standing Pieces”; and the names of the donors are preserved.In the Bursar’s books we find the following entries:—

In the Bursar’s books we find the following entries:—

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