The Memoirs of Barry Lyndon, Esq. | Page 9

my mother cultivated to the best of her
power, and she taught me to step a minuet gravely and gracefully, and thus laid the
foundation of my future success in life. The common dances I learned (as, perhaps, I
ought not to confess) in the servants' hall, which, you may be sure, was never without a
piper, and where I was considered unrivalled both at a hornpipe and a jig.
In the matter of book-learning, I had always an uncommon taste for reading plays and
novels, as the best part of a gentleman's polite education, and never let a pedlar pass the
village, if I had a penny, without having a ballad or two from him. As for your dull
grammar, and Greek and Latin and stuff, I have always hated them from my youth
upwards, and said, very unmistakably, I would have none of them.
This I proved pretty clearly at the age of thirteen, when my aunt Biddy Brady's legacy of
L100 came in to mamma, who thought to employ the sum on my education, and sent me
to Doctor Tobias Tickler's famous academy at Ballywhacket--Backwhacket, as my uncle
used to call it. But six weeks after I had been consigned to his reverence, I suddenly made
my appearance again at Castle Brady, having walked forty miles from the odious place,
and left the Doctor in a state near upon apoplexy. The fact was, that at taw, prison-bars,
or boxing, I was at the head of the school, but could not be brought to excel in the
classics; and after having been flogged seven times, without its doing me the least good
in my Latin, I refused to submit altogether (finding it useless) to an eighth application of
the rod. 'Try some other way, sir,' said I, when he was for horsing me once more; but he
wouldn't; whereon, and to defend myself, I flung a slate at him, and knocked down a
Scotch usher with a leaden inkstand. All the lads huzza'd at this, and some or the servants
wanted to stop me; but taking out a large clasp-knife that my cousin Nora had given me, I
swore I would plunge it into the waistcoat of the first man who dared to balk me, and
faith they let me pass on. I slept that night twenty miles off Ballywhacket, at the house of
a cottier, who gave me potatoes and milk, and to whom I gave a hundred guineas after,
when I came to visit Ireland in my days of greatness. I wish I had the money now. But
what's the use of regret? I have had many a harder bed than that I shall sleep on to-night,
and many a scantier meal than honest Phil Murphy gave me on the evening I ran away
from school. So six weeks' was all the schooling I ever got. And I say this to let parents
know the value of it; for though I have met more learned book-worms in the world,
especially a great hulking, clumsy, blear-eyed old doctor, whom they called Johnson, and
who lived in a court off Fleet Street, in London, yet I pretty soon silenced him in an
argument (at 'Button's Coffeehouse'); and in that, and in poetry, and what I call natural
philosophy, or the science of life, and in riding, music, leaping, the small-sword, the
knowledge of a horse, or a main of cocks, and the manners of an accomplished gentleman
and a man of fashion, I may say for myself that Redmond Barry has seldom found his

equal. 'Sir,' said I to Mr. Johnson, on the occasion I allude to--he was accompanied by a
Mr. Buswell of Scotland, and I was presented to the club by a Mr. Goldsmith, a
countryman of my own--'Sir,' said I, in reply to the schoolmaster's great thundering
quotation in Greek, 'you fancy you know a great deal more than me, because you quote
your Aristotle and your Pluto; but can you tell me which horse will win at Epsom Downs
next week?--Can you run six miles without breathing?--Can you shoot the ace of spades
ten times without missing? If so, talk about Aristotle and Pluto to me.'
'D'ye knaw who ye're speaking to?' roared out the Scotch gentleman, Mr. Boswell, at this.
'Hold your tongue, Mr. Boswell,' said the old schoolmaster. 'I had no right to brag of my
Greek to the gentleman, and he has answered me very well.'
'Doctor,' says I, looking waggishly at him, 'do you know ever a rhyme for ArisTOTLE?'
'Port, if you plaise,' says Mr. Goldsmith, laughing. And we had SIX RHYMES FOR
ARISTOTLE before we left the coffee-house that evening. It became a regular joke
afterwards when I told the story, and at 'White's' or the 'Cocoa-tree' you would